Do you look for old 8 mm films at flee markets?

[son-of-bubba]

I don't buy them but I have been doing transfers for a growing circle of friends, relatives, acquaintances etc.....

I thought I might occasionally run into something interesting. It hasn't happened yet. I've seen lots of Disney Park footage, tons of birthdays, some weddings and, of course, many feet of film just following the baby around. I'm sure there are a few diamonds out there but they are hard to find.

I do the same for old analog video. I find that video and film are quite similar with respect to their subjects but there is just SO MUCH MORE boring material on video. Some families set the camera up on a tripod and just let it run for 2 hours or more.

I guess that because of the limited time available when using R8 or S8 families took pains to film the most important scenes. Not so with video.

Since I began doing these film and video transfers I have developed greater respect for the power of a single photograph or a series of photographs.

Pat

[etimh]

I remebered, one thing that is cool about other peoples super 8 is when you can cut it into your films.
I made a film about Paris and whilst there I found footage by someone, able to back-wind, of Paris rooftops views disolving into one another. It was really old but then Paris buildings havn't changed that much in the last 150 years. It made a really nice title sequence for my movie.
I have some great train set footage which I will use next time I make a film with a train journey in it.

Anyone else use found footage with their own? not just for loops and scratching.

Mat

I cut found footage from both home movies and commercial documentary stuff into my films. I try to do it sparingly, using it for specific references or cut-aways that help the edit. I'm always looking for specific stuff like car crashes, real NASA space scenes, people shooting guns, old 70s motocross or stunt cycle footage, and any nudity/porn. I always find places I can use this kind of imagery.

Evan: that nuclear blast footage sounds awesome. I've been looking for that, but have really only been able to find lots of stock war footage with good explosions.

Mat: liked your reflections and descriptions of the freaky feelings you get when thinking about the "captured" moment of light on the faces of people from the past. Film is strangely metaphysical when you begin to think about it this way. I think Andre Bazin wrote about how film is a process of "mummification," preserving the dead forever in the cinematic representation. Not sure if that's what you were thinking, but I liked hearing someone get kind of transcendental about the film experience.

Cheers,

Tim

[espo]

For a couple of quid I picked up a 400ft reel depicting the Twickenham Technology College Marketing students trip to Wuppertal and the surrounding area in about 1975. It was obviously a bit of coursework and the person who'd done it had gone to a lot of effort with the sound effects and the snazzy titling. They had really tried to enliven a very dull subject - there are some excellent shots of travelling down Autobahns in the seventies and some inspiredly cheesy inserts. It was narrated in German and the filmmaker had an endearing obsession with the Wuppertal monorail - shots of promotional leaflets at the beginning before the group had left England and than an orgy of 9fps on finally reaching the holy grail itself.

It kept me happy for an evening anyway. I really want to cut it up and use the footage but I can't bring myself to destroy someone's masterpiece!

[namke]

I got a really nice 200ft regular 8 sound film when I got a couple of projectors recently - it's of a boat trip from Portsmouth (?) to Cherbourg. On the way the boat strikes some debris, and has to stop over in Alderney for a prop to be fixed. Once done, the trip continues and once in Cherbourg we see the Queen Elizabeth (ocean liner) leaving to cross the Atlantic. the QE was retired in 1968.

The person who did the film obviously knew his stuff, nice commentary, period music etc. - but unfortunately no titles

Absolutely fascinating stuff - got my eye out for some more tho.... ;)

john..

[moviemat]

Another thing I did once, bit of a confession, I found a home movie with a sound stripe. It was pretty banal really the kids voice (who was being filmed) and what was on the TV in the back ground (i think it's a snooker game). I bleached the film and started to try to do an animation directly on the film to be in synch with the sound. Felt bad about bleaching the image but kind of relates to the ghostly quality of the voice from the past thing.

thanks for your kind words Tim. film can get really metaphysical (whatever that reaaly means) when you think of it's history as an object. I would saw film is like a letter to video's email - a true relic (the object itself not the medium of course). Anyone else stare into the projector instead of the screen.

Mat