8mm Forum: "FOUL", I SAY!!!

This is topic "FOUL", I SAY!!! in forum General Yak at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on January 13, 2011, 01:55 PM:

I was watching a show about the Library of Congress on the History Channel. They described one of the Library departments as:

"A repository for audio and video images. We have original negatives for every culturally significant movie ever made stored here"

Those Sir, are not "video images"!

A curator of cultural artifacts needs to understand the media as well as the message. Otherwise they could just transcribe the Magna Carta or the Declaration of independence into Word files, and toss away those musty old papers!

This Rant ends here: Thank You for your kind attention!"

Posted by Claus Harding (Member # 702) on January 13, 2011, 05:03 PM:

Unbelievable....the creeping illness of digital seems to rot everyone's brains, even those of the folks who preserve the negatives.

Claus.

Posted by Tony Stucchio (Member # 519) on January 13, 2011, 05:50 PM:

It's like the people who, when they see your film collection, ask if you've considered having them copied to DVD.

What would you rather have -- The Mona Lisa, or a high-definition, 5 gazillion-pixel image of it that will fit in your wallet?

Posted by Bill Phelps (Member # 1431) on January 13, 2011, 05:55 PM:

I'll take the Mona Lisa.

Bill [Smile]

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 892) on January 13, 2011, 06:25 PM:

Yeah, and people watch what I'm doing or see a stack of my films and refer to them as "tapes."

What is the world coming to!

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on January 13, 2011, 08:50 PM:

By virtue of our 8 year old, we do a lot of stuff with the Cub Scouts.

At Christmas I show a couple of films for the boys. Last year one of the Moms asked in all seriousness: "Are you having them transferred before they deteriorate?"

It'a like "FILM!!...must....tranfer!!"

I'm imagining myself with about 50 DVD's

"Steve, what is that?"

"Well..It was my film collection before we homogenized it."

What's troubling to me about calling all of motion picture history "video" is it's forgetting a great technology, the people that developed it and the people that made magic with it.

-As much as I love photography, an oil painting is still a painting and it's insulting to the artist and the artform to call it a "photo". This is the same thing.

Posted by Guy Taylor, Jr. (Member # 786) on January 14, 2011, 08:57 AM:

George Eastman is probably rolling over in his grave.

Posted by David Erskine (Member # 1244) on January 14, 2011, 02:21 PM:

Guy - do you mean "Pinwheel" Eastman???
Cheers, David E

Posted by Dave Schmidt (Member # 2246) on January 17, 2011, 07:27 PM:

Not to step on anyone's toes,,or diss the quality of film - but I do digitize a lot of film - all old family heirlooms that would probably get melted into obscurity if they weren't cleaned and digitized. We are a society that demands immediate sate at the cost of quality (mp3,,uggg). What I digitize does not match the quality of the original, does not compete with the sound of a finely tuned projector,,and does not match the fun evening of watching true home movies. Understanding that there is millions of feet of home video, that will probably never be viewed again unless it is digitized,,,I admit to committing film sinnery. [Eek!]

Posted by Bill Phelps (Member # 1431) on January 17, 2011, 08:00 PM:

Well, I too convert film over so I can give copies to family and to do some editing. I still cut the film together on an editor most of the time. I think it is more of a case of people thinking the film HAS TO be converted because it's going to turn into dust! Well I know people that transfered their 8mm home movies to VHS back in the 80's and threw the film away! Now the tapes are junk and they don't have anything.

There are merits to digital conversion but good heavens...keep the original! Nothing compares to the original up on the big screen!

Bill [Smile]

Posted by Dave Schmidt (Member # 2246) on January 17, 2011, 09:18 PM:

Must agree. VHS tape has degraded significantly when compared to film. I transfer a lot of VHS to dvd and find a significant amount with what I call white mold, generally on the edge of the tape which tends to warp. Makes tracking a neverending problem. Anybody know how to clean VHS? My apologies for getting off subject.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on January 17, 2011, 09:30 PM:

There's nothing wrong with transferring film over to digital. There are a lot of benefits from being able to do it and as a matter of fact I do it myself.

My basic gripe is when people become so video fixated that the existence of motion pictures on film is basically erased from memory. More than a few times I've heard people talk about "Video shot during the depression", for example, when they really mean 16mm film.

Of course, we should accept that not everybody is technically inclined, so this is nothing to get in a fistfight over...it's just that when a curator of one of the major media libraries of the world starts thinking film and video are interchangeable ideas, it's gone too far.

What if you went to an aircraft museum and heard the director call a helicopter an "airplane"?

-What's the big deal?

They do the same thing!

Posted by Dave Schmidt (Member # 2246) on January 17, 2011, 09:57 PM:

When you show your films to the Boy Scouts, my guess is that the kids are thrilled and full of questions. When my grandkids come over (all under 10), it's easy for mom to plop in a DVD to show the latest hollywood drivel. It usually captures their attention for 1/2 hour at the most. But when Grandpa pulls out the screen and fires up the old Keystone and puts in a silent "Shirley Temple",,the kids are enthralled. Questions galore,,,just ain't nothing like the smell of an old projector filling the room.

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on January 18, 2011, 03:05 AM:

A few years ago we got a new cinema manager who upon watching me running a 35mm print from one screen to another down the roof refered to it as video tape [Roll Eyes]

so as you see, all those years I have been getting it wrong its not 35mm film but 35mm video tape being projected on a video projector [Smile]

....well I soon corrected her with that video tape thing. The word "film" seems to have been forgotton which is a shame. I remember someone here refering to it as "film tape" I think thats what he said.... whatever that is. [Big Grin]

I hope to transfer our home movies soon onto DVD so our grown up children can watch them, however the last few weeks I have been sitting next to our Elmo ST180 projector and projecting those old films around 3000ft of the stuff taken over the last 35 years for everyone to watch and they still look good like they were shot just yesterday....Kodak... nothing can beat it and sitting there with a projector running watching all those old silent films... although the depressing part for me was what happened to all those years? [Eek!]

Graham.

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