8mm Forum: Watching Digests Without Watching the Feature First?

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Topic: Watching Digests Without Watching the Feature First?

Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted June 30, 2016 03:11 PM

-once I found out it's about a movie studio making the transition to sound, wanting to see it became kind of a lock.

The title itself is no clue, neither are the clips you keep seeing. All I knew about it until recently is it's got some guy singing his heart out at a time and place most people would be seeking a taxi and some dry underwear!

Maybe this is something like me living in New York for half a century and never getting to the Statue of Liberty even once: it's just something that's always been there and always will be, until you become motivated you never go see it!

(Actually, I'm working on seeing the Statue as well!)

The pros and cons of digests are a subject almost beyond discussion (or at least agreement...), each of 'em is different and they mean different things to different people for different reasons.

-as I said: I really appreciate listening to their fans talk about them. You listen to this talk and you start to appreciate most of the knowledge is first hand: they didn't read a book or take a course. Even what they've learned second hand is usually directly from another collector.

It's like tribal knowledge, almost an oral tradition!

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Tom Photiou
Film God

Posts: 4837
From: Plymouth U.K
Registered: Dec 2003

posted June 30, 2016 03:22 PM

Definitely agree with you there Janice, & Phil & CHC has the feature for a snip at £130 [Wink]

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Douglas Warren
Master Film Handler

Posts: 282
From: West Chester, OH, USA
Registered: Feb 2008

posted June 30, 2016 03:56 PM

For me digests,if they're well edited (and in some cases even if they're not) are a real hit of nostalgia. I tend to collect features in 16 mm and mostly digests (and short subjects) in 8 / Super-8. The notorious Columbia narrator was mentioned,and sadly he ruined what could have been some really nice titles. I quickly sold my copies of "The Caine Mutiny" and "Bridge on the River Kwai" due to the senseless amount of narration. "Born Free" was a very nice digest from Columbia with (thankfully) only one utterance from Mr.Narrator. "Fail Safe" is another excellent 400 footer from them. Ken Films had their problems with narration on some of their releases as well. The two best in my opinion (with little to no narration) was "The Flight of the Phoenix" and "The Emperor of the North". The latter is one of Ken's best edited digests and you can tell it must have been a labor of love for the editor. I almost walked away entirely from 8 / Super-8 early this year but I'm now back and picking up (you guessed it) several digests that have been on my want list for years !

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Turn out the lights,the movie is starting!

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Daniel Macarone
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 224
From: Summit NJ, USA
Registered: Nov 2015

posted June 30, 2016 04:11 PM

I can relate to you, Steve, still having to discover some of the great classics. I've been trying to see as many as I can over the years and I always have a ton in my Netflix queue. We may define our taste in movies by some of our favorite old movies we grew up watching, but then, as an adult, I'll see a classic for the first time and think I've really been missing out and I wish I'd had this movie with me since childhood.

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Andrew Woodcock
Film God

Posts: 7477
From: Manchester Uk
Registered: Aug 2012

posted June 30, 2016 04:44 PM

Its not the Derann later low fade version though Tom or else I'd have bought it by now.

You are right about Airplane though Graham, I'd forgotten about that one being a marketing release.
To be fair I really enjoy one of my favourites, Marathon Man.
I love Laurence Olivier in this film.
But would I prefer it if it was the full feature??...you bet I would!!

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"C'mon Baggy..Get with the beat"

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Paul Suchy
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 199
From: Westchester, IL, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted July 01, 2016 07:50 AM

A friend of mine sent me a digest of Midway and that was the first time I watched a digest without having seen the feature. I don't think it spoiled anything since I never intended to see it anyway. What I like about digests is having titles I would never buy as a feature even if they were available. You couldn't give me a full print of Earthquake , but I really enjoy having 17 minutes of it (as well as the other cheesy disaster movies I grew up with). Disney did well with their extracts and it's too bad others didn't follow the idea of releasing full sequences (Universal 8 failed with their "Great Scenes" series because they released stuff that was already available). I'm sure a box marked Ben Hur: The Chariot Race would have flown off shelves back then. Even a bad movie like Nine To Five has the sequence in which the women fantasize about killing the boss and that would have been a good extract. Any other suggestions for the "Great Extracts That Never Were" series?

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Paul Suchy

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted July 01, 2016 01:18 PM

It almost wants to be some piece of back story that stands on its own.

-for example the first couple of minutes of "UP", where Ellie and Carl have their life together, all in a very well done couple of minutes.

Part 1

Part II

-a nicely filled 200 footer.

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Paul Suchy
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 199
From: Westchester, IL, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted July 02, 2016 07:22 AM

Absolutely classic sequence, Steve. It must hold some sort of record; getting choked up during the first five minutes of a film!

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Paul Suchy

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Paul Adsett
Film God

Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted July 02, 2016 08:46 PM

Went to the Enzian today to see a special showing of Jaws on the big screen. I have not seen this movie in years, but while watching it I remembered every single scene that was in the U8 digest! And it made me appreciate what a fabulous editing job U8 had done.
So I saw the complete feature today, and tonight I am putting the digest up on the GS1200! [Big Grin]

Crazy hobby! [Big Grin]

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The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection,
Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade
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Graham Ritchie
Film God

Posts: 4001
From: New Zealand
Registered: Feb 2006

posted July 02, 2016 11:05 PM

We ran "UP" when it came out as one of our big ones for the school holidays. The effect on a full audience during the first few minutes "kids and the adults" was amazing, you could hear a pin drop in the cinema, this was serious stuff "on life" on the screen and not what anyone would expect from a kids CGI film.

"UP" is a brilliant film, and to this day I am kicking myself for letting go one of the two 35mm prints we had. One had a damaged reel when it arrived, the other was the replacement which we screened. I could have taken the first few minutes of the damaged print "that part was fine" as a stand alone short, and nobody would have been any the wiser, as in the end that print went to the scrap [Frown]

For me with those Super8 digests, its nostalgia, great to return to a time before VHS tape, where to watch anything larger than a small B/W TV at home, those digests were really something "movies at home" [Cool]

buying features back then, if you could afford to get them was way out of my price range, so the digests were just the thing, sadly so much film from that era has by now been subject to a certain amount of fade, sadly just like the owners [Frown]

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Osi Osgood
Film God

Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005

posted July 05, 2016 11:43 AM

I'm sure that some would not agree with this statement, but, even though i have the scope ALIEN feature, I actually prefer to watch, in most cases, the 400ft digest, which is an excellent edit of the film, (but sadly, not scope).

This is mostly due to time restraints and my children not having a very long attention span (curse you, Sesame Street!!!)

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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Brian Fretwell
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1785
From: London, UK
Registered: Jun 2014

posted July 05, 2016 02:27 PM

I always thought both the VHS tape and Super 8 digests of film were just souvenirs of a film. One giving a small screen low definition of the original the other a higher definition large screen one.

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Andrew Woodcock
Film God

Posts: 7477
From: Manchester Uk
Registered: Aug 2012

posted July 05, 2016 11:53 PM

For the Super 8mm 400ft 15-17 minute digests of feature films, that is a very good way of putting it Brian, "souvenirs".

For 400ft of film, I think far more meaningful storylines can be included when it's an animated collective personally.

Lots of these work fine, but for the feature release digests, very often I was always left wanting much more until at least owning a 2x 400ft digest.

By the time you arrive at some of the 2x 600ft edits, these can often be every bit as good as owning the full thing if the editing was done really well imo.

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"C'mon Baggy..Get with the beat"

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