I am featured on the Derann facebook page

[Chip Gelmini]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1811...ibextid=W9rl1R

[Ed Gordon]

Chip, this is not available unless you are a Facebook member.

[Chip Gelmini]

COLLECTOR'S CORNER

A fortnightly series in which film and video collectors relate their tales. [If you have a story to tell then send it to my personal messenger, and a photo or two would be nice. PS the posts are being sent out in the order that I received them. GED]

THIS CHAPTER FEATURES CHIP GELMINI, A COLLECTOR FROM THE USA AND A REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR TO THIS GROUP. HE BECAME A MEMBER IN AUGUST 2018.

It was 1963 and I was introduced to the Argus Showmaster 500 movie projector. My Dad unwound a few feet of white plastic film and began to thread manual into the film path. When he turned it on, I was amazed how the sprocket wheels pulled it in and out, and the gate loops bounced up and down all in perfect harmony. The mechanics of this seemed more interesting to me than the family gatherings being shown on the tripod screen 12 feet away. The very idea that small spool could hold hundreds of separate images – each one uniquely different – and move them at lightning speed was surreal to me. But heck, I was only 3 years old, but I knew back then it would need more investigating.

By the time I was 8, I was hand cranking cassette cartoons through my Kenner Easy Show Projector. Easy to thread, and worked on the basis of a flash light – there I was in the downstairs hallway projecting on to a closed bedroom door.

In 4th grade we did well on a reading assignment, and the school brought in a feature print of a Disney movie. I don’t know for sure – but I remember something called HANG YOUR HAT ON THE WIND. That was either the title or a song in the movie. This opened up a whole new world for me. Movies, slight wider in format (16mm) and it had sound. And those giant 1600 foot reels! Oh my!

But it was a summer trip to the drive in. I went with Dad to the snack bar, and as we returned to the car we stopped at the projection booth. My Dad was actually interested…not me. But, now the film was even wider (35mm) it also had sound, and the reels were bigger (2000ft) and spinning so fast at start up. I was probably 11 or 12. Well that changed everything. In high school I joined the A/V club, and began wheeling projectors throughout the classrooms for film days. I later would start training in theaters for a 35+ year career in cinemas and drive ins running the analog 35mm.

But through it all, I never gave up on the 8mm. In 1972 I was introduced to super 8 black and white silent digests and quickly acquired many of them. The strange thing was, they looked like it was running too slow. If the character walked across the screen, it appeared it was slower than normal speed. I soon realized the digest was taken from a sound print, running at 24 frames per second, and I was running the digest through a silent machine at 18fps.

In 1978 I had my first super 8 sound film, the Ken digest of Star Wars a New Hope. And along with it, my first sound projector a Bell & Howell 1733BZ. I was on my way off to a flying start warp drive never looking back. Now I own over 425 features on super 8. I also have about 14 on 16mm. I’m also a dedicated GS1200 collector and LOVE this machine. Takes a while to get one serviced properly but once you do it is a workhorse of a machine that you can depend on.

I still to this day don’t look or hold back. Always collecting films and equipment. For the rest of my life…… Chip Gelmini

The photo is of the front wall of his booth it was used from 1980-2018.

To be continued….. Chip has provided a second chapter!

(The second part of this post will appear on Monday 21st August)

[Chip Gelmini]

The photo as mentioned