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It can be rather hard to actually come up with a new filmic topic, so I of a potential variation on a subject. The question is, when did you actually fall in love with celluloid? For instance, you may have grown up around celluloid, around film, but it was, perhaps, a singular event that makes you a hopeless romantic when it comes to film, something that so "smites" you, that you will forever be in love with it. For instance, my dad had always had a Eumig P8, and while a lovely little projector, that wasn't when I actually fell in love with film. So what is your love story?
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For me it was first seeing a neighbor's home moves. I was just a little kid, but I thought "What a wonderful way to tell a story!".
-later years when I could get a camera of my own, I "told" quite a few. What's interesting about these stories is since they are personal, my perspective on what they mean changed with time and circumstance. For example I have this Kodachrome film I shot at a railroad museum up in Maine maybe 40 years ago now. I shot it over the course of about four trips up there, with different people coming along for the ride each time.
Back maybe 1985, this was strictly a railroad film, it was and is still a good one. These days it's become more personal than that: a lot of friends and family, some of whom are gone now, and at least one close friend several decades too early, keep drifting into frame and it's evolved into personal history for me.
It's become what film is so good at being: a window through time. I project that reel, and I'm a medium-goofy college student again enjoying life as it was. maybe imagining it will always be exactly the same! (Of course, with time we learn this just isn't so!)
Later on, when I got into sound, it became a way for other people to tell their stories: people from all over the World and from decades before and since I was even born. I enjoy their stories too, and I'm glad to welcome them in. -
I didn't finish my love story. Though I mentioned it in previous posts, that wonderful night, when my dad took me to "work" with him, ( I was six ), and I watched dad working with that 35mm projection, the wonderful hum and driving of the gear work, ( bear in mind, to a six year old, that early 70's 35mm projector looked like a giant! ), and that little glass window, the audience down below, looking back up and seeing that those images entering this behemoth, the turning of the reels, and even the sight of my dad, really enjoying this work, ( I rarely saw dad ever smiling ), THAT was the day I fell in love. It's funny, though celluloid is the largest part, it may we'll have been the combined effect that I fell in love with. It makes me wonder, is this why some leave the hobby over time? Those that leave, never really fell in love with film? They fell in love with "stories", but not the overall presentation? Perhaps this is why celluloid lovers never truly leave the hobby? Sure, the modern digital technology makes it easier and more affordable, but it was never about affordability, it was and always will be... A great love affair?!Comment
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I’ve always loved mechanical gadgets. Movie projectors included. Got my first projector at age 8. Super 8 at 14. Camera at 15.Comment
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I cant say I was ever in love with film, I enjoyed going to the cinema on a Saturday morning when I was young, but was more interested in what was on the screen than how it got there. That interest would come much much later, although in saying that the first projector I did see was a 16mm. That was when we lived in Glasgow, when me and a friend were invited in by other children at a nearby children's home to watch a film. I do remember sitting on the floor watching some boring Disney nature 16mm film, instead found the projector more interesting to look at. It was nice that those kids invited us in, never forgot that. As a family we never got involved in 8mm, the odd still photo, but actual 8mm was never thought about. My interest really kicked in when I was working at the Aero Club, when the boss there suggested I should buy a Super8 camera and that's when things clicked. Its the making of films that really catches my attention, hence my interest in special feature that come with a blu-ray and the like.
I don't really have a love affair with film, I do like it, and it is special to project/handle and to watch it
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My first taste of Super 8mm was a film show above a pub in Tooting,South London at a kids birthday party, it was a colour sound Tom & Jerry cartoon, nearly 50 years later and I still have the film collecting bug!!!Comment
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Film remains special because that is how we were introduced to the magic of the making and the presentation of motion pictures. I like film, but my love is motion pictures, regardless of the technology used to make them. I have dozens of films (8mm, Super 8, 16mm, and 35mm), but I also have hundreds of motion pictures in digital format. Back in the day, an 8mm Kodachrome film projected on a 4x5 foot screen made that 19" black and white TV look like the crude early technology that TV was compared to film. I don't dislike the new digital technology. How could I dislike being able to present a bright crystal clear 12 foot wide image along with 8 channel sound that would make a 1950's Hollywood movie mogul green with envy?
At the same time, film remains important. It is how motion pictures began and all efforts to preserve it and it's place in history is worthwhile. Today, large format film presentations remain superior to digital. However, economics and rapidly advancing technology will replace that as well. But the nostalgia for film will never end.Comment
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For me either early visits to the cinema in my street with my mother on afternoons in the holidays when at primary school - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Campbell's Kingdon, The Parent Trap (though the last may have had me fall for Hayley Mills!!) or watching 8mm films of holidays at my uncle's house.Comment
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I was a very young boy early elementary school days. Dad shot family movies. He always said I was more interested in the Argus 500 than what was being shown on the screen. I echo back everything that has been written here.Comment
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These posts, as well as a myriad of others throughout the years, makes it clear that what collectors have is a love affair with the whole process, film, projectors, maintenance ECT. This is why I believe, that, while a person may leave the "hobby", so to speak, they are inevitably drawn back to it as, while, yes, with digital technology , you can project an image, sharper than super 8, 16mm and perhaps at times, even 35mm, with sound that far out does film and even the best projectors, it does not have the romance, the magic, that actual film projection has always had and at least as long as this present generation, which has actually experienced actual film and projectors and everything involved with film, always will. I actually feel sorry for those that are entering into a world without film, mere pixels on a screen, as, life has a little less magic to it.Comment
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I’ll never forget the excitement of getting my films back from the lab! Especially after the holidays because I shot multiple reels and then spliced them together. Plus, it was fun to gather the family together to watch the movies on a projector. Now you can just share a file. Not the same excitement. I love digital too, but there’s something about the “hands-on” aspect of film that’s still appealing to me.Originally posted by Osi Osgood View Post
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Good Topic, Osi. So difficult to be precise when it actually became love, although fair to say it was at a pretty early age; lots of reasons why I became infatuated.
But I was thinking about this and given the close association between memory and smell;
How scent, emotion, and memory are intertwined — and exploited — Harvard Gazette
I really do think that the very smell of film makes me nostalgic and happy and may have a lot to do with it!
The smell of chemicals when opening my first roll of Kodachrome camera film aged 6, the smell of leather, metal and oil from my Uncle's borrowed standard 8 camera...
I remember as a kid opening new prints of say Empire Strikes Back or Raiders of the Lost Ark, and each had their own unique chemical lab smell. To this day, I only have to open the box of Raiders and that chemical smell is still right there, transporting me back to being 11 years old.
The smell of Thermofilm...Filmguard...
Call me weird if you like, I don't care...instant happy memories of handling film over the years.
The problem with digital media, as great as it is, it just doesn't smell of anything...Comment
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Yes, it smells of "temporary" 😀Comment
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Rob, you are so right about the smell of film!
Before the film collecting bug ever bit, filming with my parents' 8mm movie camera was one of my favorite things. We'd go on trips and at some point they'd hand over the camera and say it was my turn. My love of film started with their Kodak Brownie Model 2. The last film camera we used for home movies was a Sankyo XL40s.
True love means keeping the boxes they came in!Comment
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Cant say that in the 10 years in that projection room that film had a smell
might be just me but that goes for my Super8 as well, however
over the next few days I will sniff though some film and see what I can come with.
In the past I have looked at old Movie Maker and Film Making magazines from the 1950-60s era. One thing that stands out, is how expensive it was to buy a projector, or even a camera in relation to what folk earned in the way of a living wage back then. There was no way most folk could afford it, just not on the radar. In todays world though
these days however, everyone can make a movie of sort if they wish, many older film have had large sums of money and time spent on them getting them restored for DVD, blu-ray, 4K, for release onto the home market. Watching movies at home for the average person has never had it so good.
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