- This
column by John Cosway is a mix of 50 years of media memories
and 15 years of buying and selling experiences via live and online
auctions, flea markets, antique stores and markets etc.
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- Cosway's Corner -
Home movies, famous and not so famous
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- Home movies are sometimes very collectible
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- By John Cosway
 Steven
Spielberg had to borrow
his father's home movie camera for that Boy Scout photography
merit badge project in 1958.
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- Abraham Zapruder wasn't going to take his home movie
camera to Dealey Plaza that day in 1963.
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- Roger Patterson's rented 16mm camera was overdue when
he and Robert Gimlin drove into Six Rivers National Forest
in 1967.
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- Just a few of the countless
fascinating stories focusing on people, their 8 mm and 16 mm
home movie cameras, and how using them changed their lives.
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- Home movies in the digital age
are captured on one, small video camera that instantly produces
footage in colour, with sound.
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- But for more than 70 years,
home movies involved larger 8 mm or 16 mm cameras, lightbars
with glaring lamps for indoor use, film that had to be mailed
for processing and a projector and screen for viewing in the
dark.
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- Home movies from the early 1900s
to the late 1970s were, for most users, silent movies.
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- Sound film cameras and projectors
were just too expensive for blue-collar workers.
- While the first film cameras
for home movie use were introduced in the late 1890s, they didn't
catch the wave of popularity until the 1920s and 1930s. In the
1940s, 1950s and 1960s, they were must-have items for families.
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- Donald J. Bell and Albert S. Howell, two Chicago
movie theatre projectionists, launched Bell & Howell Company
in 1907, but the company didn't get into amateur movie cameras
until 1919.
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- Kodak introduced its first 8
mm film, cameras and projectors for amateurs in 1932, but it
was Kodak's economical Brownie 8 mm movie camera unveiled in
1951 and Brownie projector in 1952, that took sales to new heights.
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 The
Brownie camera/projector combo was our family's first choice
in 1957 and the camera got excellent mileage during vacations,
birthday parties, weddings and other special family events through
to about 1974.
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- Precious memories, mixed with
erratic footage of the sky, shoes, walls and ceilings that would
one day be edited for easier viewing at family gatherings.
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- But except for my 1960s stock
car races at the CNE, footage of a 1959 Alan Freed rock and roll
Christmas show in New York, and a variety of vintage cars, there
was little noteworthy footage.
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- Which brings us back to the
three amateur film stories that did change lives:
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- Steven Spielberg was 12 and
already comfortable with his father's 8 mm home movie camera
when he borrowed it again to film a nine-minute western, The
Last Gunfight. It was 1958 and it earned the future Oscar-winning
Hollywood director a Boy Scout photography merit badge.
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- "That was how it all started,"
Spielberg said during an interview.
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 Abraham
Zapruder, 58, a Dallas dress manufacturer, and his wife, Lillian,
were on their way to Dealey Plaza to see President John F. Kennedy
on Nov. 22, 1963, when he decided to return home for his movie
camera.
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- Zapruder had his standard 8mm
Bell and Howell 414PD Director Series camera focused on Kennedy's
limousine as it passed. The year-old camera caught Kennedy's
assassination on 26.6
seconds of film.
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- Within a week, Life magazine
paid Zapruder $125,000 for the print, TV and motion picture rights.
His widely viewed and debated original footage is reported to
now be worth more than $16 million US.
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- Roger Patterson's rented 16
mm movie camera was overdue when he and Robert Gimlin drove into
Six Rivers National Forest in California on Oct. 20, 1967. Patterson,
41, and Gimlin, 36, became media celebrities with 24 feet of
film of a Bigfoot-like creature walking upright in the woods.
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- Critics called it a hoax. One
author said a man was paid $1,000 to dress up like Bigfoot. But
Patterson, a retired rodeo rider, claimed on his deathbed in
1972 that the much discussed and often disputed film footage
was not faked. The footage has been widely viewed and can
be seen on YouTube.
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- Three men and their home movie
cameras.
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- The introduction of Kodak's
Super 8 mm camera in April of 1965 spawned a new and dedicated
following of aspiring filmmakers and family home movie enthusiasts,
with easy-to-use 50-foot cartridges.
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- Kodak says numerous acclaimed
cinematographers and directors credit Super 8 mm for allowing
them to hone their skills at filmmaking and purists are still
using them in the digital age.
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- Film for your vintage home movie
cameras can still be purchased, but with the dawn of home video
age in the late 1970s, most folks simply switched.
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- And as video become more popular,
people with reels and reels of regular 8 mm, Super 8 and 16 mm
home movies began transferring them to videotape. Years later,
procrastinators are now transferring their films to DVD.
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- Flawed footage aside, home movies
shot in the decades before the arrival of home video contain
irreplaceable footage of family members young and old, pets,
cars, memorable vacations etc.
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- This being the September/October
edition of the Wayback Times, what a perfect time to stop procrastinating
and tackle the home movie transfer project for completion in
time for Christmas gift giving.
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- If your films have been properly
stored over the years - on 50-foot reels in their boxes or on
larger reels in film cans - the quality, with a little enhancement
from the transfer service, should look as good as new.
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- Edit and splice your family's
old movies in chronological order, making notes along the way
about the content on each reel. Transfer your edited film to
300-foot reels, put them in cases and number each case.
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- Or you can just give the transfer
technician a bag full of small reels and hope for the best, although
they usually charge extra per edit and you might be paying for
wayward shots of the sky, the ground and ceilings.
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- Pricing for film transfers is
usually per foot, plus edits. There are numerous film transfer
services in Ontario and prices and results do vary, so devote
some time to price comparison.
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- If you need a working projector
for the project, no problem. Working and affordable projectors
are not that difficult to find at auctions, flea markets, antique
markets, online sales etc.
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- Over the years, this writer
has purchased working 8 mm projectors for as little as $1 and
a maximum of $10. A few were Kodak projectors still in the boxes.
The key is to try them before purchase. Bulbs are expensive.
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- Our most treasured find at a
Corneil's auction in Little Britain about 10 years ago was a
working 16 mm sound projector for $1.
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- So what do you do with your
aging 8 mm and 16 mm home movie footage after you have transferred
it all to videotape or DVD?
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- If you have the right stuff,
sell it to private collectors or to stock film footage companies
that have blossomed in North America in the past 20 years as
filmmakers and documentarians search for fresh vintage home movie
scenes.
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- You might not think your home
movies are of value to anyone but you, but long forgotten footage
discovered in private collections include footage in demand:
vintage scenes with old cars, trains, main streets, sporting
events, public transit, special events, celebrities, accidents
etc.
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- Stock footage companies buy
home movies and then lease footage to filmmakers looking for
specific footage - say small-town traffic from the 1940s, or
vintage family gathering scenes. Clips from your home movies
could end up in a major movie or in a documentary.
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- But don't sell yourself short.
If you have unique vintage footage that you think might be worth
more than a one-time stock service offer, do the research. Some
rare celebrity footage or previously unseen exclusive footage
of historical importance could be quite valuable.
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- Stories about rare amateur footage
of the Beatles, Elvis Presley and other celebrities are
surfacing more often as people rescue old home movies from storage
areas for screening and editing for transfer to tape and DVD.
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- There could be money along with
memories in your home movie collection.
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