My introduction to film-making.

This 'year of the virus' has provided plenty of opportunity to clear out accumulated junk. In my garden shack there was an old movie projector and a box of old cinefilm. So I decided to digitise the movie content, and put it on the internet for the family. I think I made a stab at doing this some years ago but don't know what happened to all that. So I'm doing it again, properly.

First problem was that the old Bell & Howell projector didn't work. It wouldn't transport the fragile celluloid film properly. I homed in on the clutch on the takeup spool and ended up fitting a stronger spring, it had obviously relaxed over the many years of just sitting there. So with that fixed the next problem was the light bulb - the original tungsten unit had corroded away in the damp conditions. Finding a replacement would be difficult. And here is the amazing bit. While searching in my melodeon bag for some old guitar wire (I know I had some there) to make a new spring for the clutch, I came across a pack of 5 tungsten bulbs! There was no wire and I can't remember how the bulbs got there - someone obviously gave them to me and I stuffed them in and forgot about them. They are the wrong size but the right voltage. Wattage a bit low but they'll do. I drilled out the old bulb from its holder and cemented in a new one using air drying clay - it had to be something that would withstand the high temperature from the tungsten bulb. A few days later the clay had set - I had a working projector!

I have several hours of cinefilm, taken in the 70's. It was Standard8 format and film had to be loaded in the camera in the dark, exposed, carefully unloaded, again in the dark, then sent off for processing. A week later I'd have the film - about 3 minutes of it. I did some basic editing, using a razor blade and a spicing block where I could accurately glue together the two cut ends. This was slow and tedious so editing was kept to the minimum. I bout the camera when I was 30, my first experience of video,  and I was amazed at its power. I think I bought it to record the early years of Lindsay our second daughter. I only wish I'd had it for Sherolyn, 4 years earlier.  

The camera was a Quartz, made in Russia in the 60's & 70's. A Clockwork camera - I wound it up just like a clock and it would then run for a few minutes. No worrying about batteries running out. And it came with a range of closeup lenses and filters. It could also do high speed filming (for slow motion effect). And it was very affordable and a brilliant bit of kit.

The std8 film cell is less than half the size of my small fingernail but when the illusion of motion is added by flickering the images 25 times a second that tiny bit of celluloid takes on a life of its own. 

To capture the cinefilm I simply project in a dark room on to a white card about 2 feet away and set up my modern digital movie camera on a tripod to capture the screen image. Then it's a matter of transferring  the digital file from SD card to laptop where I can edit it. Serif MoviePlus5 is my editor of choice, very powerful and fast. Like the std8 it too is now obsolete. Its developers, Serif, couldn't make enough out of it to survive.  Some day soon I'll be obsolete too, but I'll have left behind an awful lot of data on the internet!  

The results of my recovered cinefilms are now up on my web site at www.mecol.co.uk

The cinefilm was taken in the mid 70s.  Almost half a century ago. There was no soundtrack with std8, any sound had to be recorded separately and for more professional film work would be added in at the editing stage. I never got that advanced so all my cinefilm work was silent. For that reason I've resisted the temptation to add sound during the re-editing. I think a silent film captures its time nicely.