|
|
Saturday 12 August 2006 |
|
Home Movie Day 2006 The NRFTA's Home Movie Day took place in the Constantine Lecture Theatre on the University of Teesside campus. We had a total of 23 visitors during the day, who came with a variety of footage. While visitors' films were being prepared for screening, we showed a selection of preserved home movies from the NRFTA's own collection, some of which had been blown up to 35mm (where money allows, we try to make 35mm viewing prints of the most important amateur films in our collection, believing that this process 'unlocks' detail in a small gauge image which wouldn't be visible otherwise, even in a high quality telecine transfer). We think we're probably the only Home Movie Day event to have screened every gauge from Standard 8mm to 35mm in a single day! |
|
This 9.5mm film contained amateur footage of the Dunkirk evacuations in May 1940. |
|
It clearly captured the attention of the assembled audience! |
|
The technology which makes big screen projection of small gauge possible: MWA FlashScan telecine machines. The one on the left runs Standard and Super 8mm, while the unit nearest the camera is for 9.5mm. We connected these to the theatre's 7,000 lumen, S-XGA LCD video and data projector. |
|
Montse lacing up the 8/S8 FlashScan. |
|
More visitors arriving. |
|
Waiting for the next film to start. |
|
While Montse projected, Leo cleaned and spliced. |
|
These visitors hadn't seen their home movies for over 20 years before today. |
|
The 8/S8 FlashScan in action. It's an entirely continuous motion machine, and the light source is an LED array, meaning that no heat is exposed to the film as it passes through the mechanism. The three replacement drive sprockets above the camera housing are for swapping between Standard and Super 8. |
|
OK; enough of this wussy small gauge stuff. Now it's time for some proper films. Although there's no denying that the CLT auditorium screams 'university lecture theatre!' at anyone who steps inside, we've got some pretty serious image technology to compensate. The projection booth is equipped with two Kinoton FP-20 35mm projectors, which can run flicker-free at all speeds from 16-30fps and in all ratios from full-gate silent to 'scope. The FP-20s are equipped with 2kw xenon lamphouses. There is also an FP-18 16mm projector with a 500w xenon. |
|
Here is the FP-18 in action (FP-38 denotes the single chassis, dual FP-18/FP-20 mechanism model), running a visitor's film. Because this projector uses a Maltese Cross intermittent mechanism (not a claw-in-the-gate pulldown, like most portable classroom 16mm projectors) and has a water-cooled gate, it is incredibly gentle to film, despite firing 500w of xenon illumination through it. This film is stock marked 1932 and has shrunk a bit, yet the footage (original cement splices and all) purred its way through the projector, maintaining a rock-steady image throughout. |
|
And here is the real deal! As you might have gathered by now, our projection booth is pretty small: so small, in fact, that it's quite simply impossible to get a camera where it is needed to take a close-up of the film path. A couple of years ago we were fortunate enough to get a project grant to have an important collection of Dufaycolor 9.5mm and 16mm films from the '30s blown up to 35mm separation negatives, a combined interneg and a viewing print. We showed some of these while Montse was preparing visitors' small gauge material for screening, and they made a big impression. The level of detail and the subtlety of the colour shades which were unlocked by the 35mm blowups is worth every penny. Oddly enough, I've found that 16mm Kodachrome tends not to blow up (as in expand - I'm not referring to my preferred method of disposing of decomposed nitrate!) quite as well as Dufay. |
|
More visitors enjoy their first glimpse of their home movies - in this case 16mm - for over a generation. |
|
This page was last updated on 12 August 2006. The text and images on this page are copyright of NRFTA Ltd., or of third parties and published here with their permission. You may not copy or use any part of this page in any way without our written permission. |
|