8mm Forum: The Magic of Home Movie Memories

This is topic The Magic of Home Movie Memories in forum General Yak at 8mm Forum.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=001809

Posted by Claus Harding (Member # 702) on March 16, 2011, 04:02 PM:

Among my friends is an older gent originally from Johannesburg.
Last year, he brought out a bunch of Kodacolor II Standard-8 reels from 1962-1964 he had collected from family in South Africa and wanted to know if we could show them.
He didn't have to ask twice [Big Grin]

I assembled the reels onto 400-footers, cleaned them with FilmRenew and off we went.
We had a beautiful, very emotional evening showing these using my Bolex M-8; some US-based relatives of his had come along to see the films as well.

He then told me he wanted to have them transferred to video, and would also like to edit them. Narration was mentioned. Suddenly this was becoming a project.

I received the hard-disc transfer of the raw footage yesterday, and made two PAL DVDs for him to take with him on a trip back to Jo'Burg today.

When reviewing the footage (beautifully transferred in HD by Tom Houston on a WorkprinterXP machine) I was (again) mesmerized by the elusive beauty of the KII film and the images.

A place I haven't visited, a family I don't know...and yet the quality of the images somehow draws you, making you wish you could go back and see these moments.

Alternately subtle and bold, the colors and the texture are special:

A rainy day becomes something almost out of a feature film:

And of course, with Kodak, you get reds [Wink]

And here he is, the young man to the right in the blue shirt, on a warm long-ago day in Africa.

Now he's back there again to visit.
He's been there before over the years, but without the "new" Kodacolor memories in the back of his head.
This time he is taking pictures to be included in the video....

There is magic in home movies.

Claus.

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on March 16, 2011, 08:31 PM:

Claus
Those images look great a friend of mine has a lot of Standard8 film from that era all shot on Kodachrome the brilliant colours make it look so alive and really nice to watch.

Graham.

UBB.classic^TM 6.3.1.2