A lady called me and asked if I could try and salvage some movie film that had been in a house fire. The house had burned to the ground but they found 6 cans of film. The film was warped and a lot had melted together on the reel but to my amazement I was able to seperate a large amount of the film and watch it on my viewer. Even though it had bubbleling and evidence of severe shrinkage I was able to run it through my projector and transfer nearly 40 minutes of footage to video. Some of the film was beyond hope or so brittle that I could not project it but still I think if this had been video tape there is no way you could have retrieved one second of it. Here is a link to a frame, it doesn't show a lot of the heat damage but it is a testiment to the resilence of film.
http://home.att.net/~rjbrown7/sled.jpg
Super 8mm Survives a Fire
Moderator: Andreas Wideroe
