For several years now, I have been intending to transfer a box full of old 8mm movies to videotape. Of course, in those few years, technology is passing me by. Forget ‘videotape’, and even the DVD’s that have replaced it. Online archiving and display is currently the best way to distribute.
Most of the reels are silent, color films that I shot myself as a teenager in the early 1960’s with a used Kodak movie camera. However, also included in the box are two 200′ reels of b&w film that my father shot, probably just before World War II, in 1939 or 1940.
Those 70-year-old films are in pretty bad shape, with a lot of breaks, torn sprocket holes, and burned spots, which would occur when the film got jammed in the gate and the heat from the bulb would melt the film’s acetate base. Luckily, these films aren’t old enough to be ‘Nitrate’ film, which is extremely flammable, and highly unstable.
A few years ago, I purchased on eBay, a ‘video transfer kit’, which is basically a plastic box with a small rear-projection screen, and a lens for a video camera. Inside is a mirror, which allows for the film to be oriented correctly in the resulting video. (it would be reversed without it).
After several hours of experimentation, my son Micah and I were able to capture most of the film onto video tape, and download it to my MacPro where it now awaits editing in Final Cut Pro. Since the films were in such bad shape, it seems that I will have to do a little more work to cut out bad spots and weak splices, to make them run through my 50-year-old Bolex projector. Additionally, throughout the process, we discovered how to better set up the equipment, so much of it will gain quality from a reshoot.
Despite all of the problems, here is a short clip from one of the films. This is my aunt, Julia Van Jura as a young girl showing off her new hairstyle. Julie, my father’s youngest sister, passed away August 23, 2007 at the age of 80. In this film, which based on some evidence seen in the film, was shot in 1939 or 1940, she would have been about 13 years old.
