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Hello, all;
Just thought I'd take a moment to introduce myself, I just signed up yesterday but I've been reading the old forums for a while. Nice place you've got here. :-) Thanks for having me.
My friend Bob and I used to make epic 5-minute science fiction films back in the mid 70's using my dad's 8mm (not S8) Bell & Howell camera. We didn't make all that many, film was expensive. But the camera had single-frame capability (as well as slow motion, wow) so I also got into animation a bit at the time. Bob was a lot better an artist than I was, still is, so I figured I'd focus (ha) on special effects epics. We went through a lot of fire crackers and plastic models in our time, captured forever (or until we lost the reels) on celluloid, as it were. And yeah I know it's not celluloid anymore, but celluloid just has that ring to it. Also I was gonna be a writer, do my own screenplays and such. Even went to school to learn Radio-TV-Film at San Jose State back in the 80's. But while going to school I started working at a video transfer shop that did telecine conversions from 8mm/S8/16mm onto VHS/Beta/U-Matic (but mostly VHS). Had a great time doing that, enough so that I even though of starting up m own business doing that. But then my mom got sick, very long story that you all know how it goes, I ended up moving to be closer to family and got a job working in the AV department at a community college. Moved a lot of TVs and 16mm projectors around, and started teaching myself dBase so I could track the movies/videos coming and going from our campus. This was in the days of floppy drives and monochrome screens, and it was a hell of a lot of fun to play with computers. Flash forward some 28 years and whaddya know, computers are still here. Whoda thunk. My dad's 8mm camera died sometime around 1980, I think ... but I still have the matching B&H projector. Still works great, has that vintage smell and sound ...
Got a stack of old 8/S8mm projectors in the attic, part of my telecine project I've been working on for the past half dozen years or so, kind of a mix of old-fashioned film and new-fangled computers all working together to (theoretically) transfer all my family's old movies (lots and lots of 50-ft reels, vaguely labeled in pencil back in the day) to digital. Building and testing all these technological transfer devices is a lot of fun, even when they don't work, and one of these days I'll probably get around to actually digitizing all these films. Not that anybody is clamoring to watch them, but still, it keeps me off the streets.
Again, thanks for having me and I look forward to learning from you all!
Onnie
Just thought I'd take a moment to introduce myself, I just signed up yesterday but I've been reading the old forums for a while. Nice place you've got here. :-) Thanks for having me.
My friend Bob and I used to make epic 5-minute science fiction films back in the mid 70's using my dad's 8mm (not S8) Bell & Howell camera. We didn't make all that many, film was expensive. But the camera had single-frame capability (as well as slow motion, wow) so I also got into animation a bit at the time. Bob was a lot better an artist than I was, still is, so I figured I'd focus (ha) on special effects epics. We went through a lot of fire crackers and plastic models in our time, captured forever (or until we lost the reels) on celluloid, as it were. And yeah I know it's not celluloid anymore, but celluloid just has that ring to it. Also I was gonna be a writer, do my own screenplays and such. Even went to school to learn Radio-TV-Film at San Jose State back in the 80's. But while going to school I started working at a video transfer shop that did telecine conversions from 8mm/S8/16mm onto VHS/Beta/U-Matic (but mostly VHS). Had a great time doing that, enough so that I even though of starting up m own business doing that. But then my mom got sick, very long story that you all know how it goes, I ended up moving to be closer to family and got a job working in the AV department at a community college. Moved a lot of TVs and 16mm projectors around, and started teaching myself dBase so I could track the movies/videos coming and going from our campus. This was in the days of floppy drives and monochrome screens, and it was a hell of a lot of fun to play with computers. Flash forward some 28 years and whaddya know, computers are still here. Whoda thunk. My dad's 8mm camera died sometime around 1980, I think ... but I still have the matching B&H projector. Still works great, has that vintage smell and sound ...
Got a stack of old 8/S8mm projectors in the attic, part of my telecine project I've been working on for the past half dozen years or so, kind of a mix of old-fashioned film and new-fangled computers all working together to (theoretically) transfer all my family's old movies (lots and lots of 50-ft reels, vaguely labeled in pencil back in the day) to digital. Building and testing all these technological transfer devices is a lot of fun, even when they don't work, and one of these days I'll probably get around to actually digitizing all these films. Not that anybody is clamoring to watch them, but still, it keeps me off the streets.
Again, thanks for having me and I look forward to learning from you all!
Onnie
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