Watching Home Movies, L.A., 1959
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s it seemed like every family took home movies. My family did – with a super 8 movie camera. I loved the sound of the film turning inside of it. For a couple of years, around the time I was about nine or ten, my parents used it occasionally, until they cast it aside and lost interest in it. Ten or so years ago after not seeing my family’s home movies since I was a kid I had them transferred to video. Ever so eager to see them again, I was more than disappointed to discover that out of an hour and a half of film I was hardly in them at all. Oh well.
The first “home movies” were taken in 1923. They were 16mm and taken by the revolutionary “Cine Kodak" Camera. In 1932, in the middle of the depression, Kodak introduced the new 8mm format. But it wasn’t until the 1950s that masses of moms and dads became home movie makers. Super 8, introduced in 1965, became the next and last popular home movie format. In the 80s we all crossed over to the age of home video and bought a Camcorder. Too bad, film is a much more luxurious medium. If you have old family movies of course I encourage you to get them out, dust off that old projector and have a look at them. Invite the whole family.
For all your home movie film, camera and projector needs I recommend the Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles. They are located at 1200 N Alvarado St, Los Angeles 90026, echoparkfilmcenter.org , 213-484-8846. Check out their website for the schedule of screenings. It’s a one-stop-shop for all of your home movie needs. The fine folks there will take care of you very nicely. They even have those now hard-to-fine projector bulbs. Make sure to tell them I sent you!
God Bless Americana and Home Movieana!
This must be a wealthy family, That’s actually the venerable Bell and Howell
16mm sound proector (takes me back to my days on junior high projection crew)
I love 8mm. My father starting shooting it in black and white in the 30s
with a wind up keystone camera, and the results, now transfered
on tape, are wonderful.
He wound-up the old Keystone then pulled its trigger while we listened to it click its life away recording ours.
The rolls were only 3 or 4 minutes long unless eventually edited together into reels on the Mansfield Reporter.
I remember the viscous smell of the film that Kodak sent back to us several weeks later. That and the odd rubber band with a handle on it wrapped around the tiny, plastic roll.
Unless it was something really special, we usually just waited for Dad to edit them all together before watching.
At the “Gathering of the Uncles, the projector would be taken out of the back of the den closet.
The screen would be unveiled and locked into place before the projector was carefully leveled with old “Readers Digest” magazines.
My favorite part was watching the elegantly designed, black crinkle paint, projector AUTOMATICALLY THREAD AND FEED ITSELF… RIGHT ONTO ITS TAKE-UP REEL!
Several of us would then call out, “Lights!”
We watched our lives play out on a flickering screen while listening to the loud whir and occassional metallic screech emanate off the amazing Keystone projector.
On the longer, edited rolls, later into the night… there was a dull silence that fell over the numbed families at the end of a reel.
Someone would mumble out, “Lights!”
That’s when the children spread-out on the living room’s harvest-gold shag carpet sprang back to life! They would jump up and start a clumsily synchopated dance, smiling at each other while exciting singing, “Freeze it. Everybody… FREEZE!”
They would stop dead in their tracks upon “FREEZE!” with only their eyes darting back and forth to survey whether the other children had indeed been “frozen”.
The machine would then feed itself once more followed by, “Lights!” The children fell back into the luxurious shag with gaudy pillows or the belly’s of thier cousins to rest their heads upon.
I can still see the parents, uncles, grandparents, and cousins… THE NEXT MOVIE REFLECTED IN THIER CURIOUS EYES.