So go grab some popcorn and watch some movies!
Mom and Dad had a 8mm movie camera. They never really made 8mm film. 16mm was the size of the day. It had sprockets down both sides. Even when I was in the AV club in High School, the movies we got to show were 16mm. SO, an 8mm camera only shot HALF of the frame. After you shot the length of the film, you turned the film cartridge over and shot the other side. When they processed it, they developed it then cut it in half lengthwise to make 8mm films. Super-8 was the same, but it took a larger frame size.
It is because of that cartridge flipping thing that you will find some double-exposed films. If the cartridge wasn’t flipped correctly, you shot the same frame twice. This means that you had two overlapping images and then half a reel of blank film. I’ve cut out the blanks where I found them.
The other thing I’ve noticed with these films is that people are frequently missing their heads. I think this is because of the way the camera worked. It had three lenses — telephoto, normal and wide. The lenses were on a turntable type arrangement, and you swung it around so that the lens you wanted to use was over the aperture. The eyepiece looked something like this:
This wasn’t “Through the Lens” technology. If you had the wide angle lens in position, you used the entire eyepiece. The “normal” lens used the smaller area encompassed by the dashed lines, and the telephoto the smallest area. SO, if you were using the “normal” lens, but you composed the image using the entire eyepiece — no heads.
The films came on 100ft, 3in reels. But dad spliced them onto 500ft 7in reels. This was nice for viewing them, but turns out to be bad for digitizing. First, the scanner I got only takes reels up to 5 inches. Secondly, the splices are getting caught in the scanner. They have degenerated over time to be sticky on both sides. For “reel_01”, I used movie editing software to join everything back together. This made a 1.2GB file. I think for future reels, I’ll leave them separated into multiple, shorter files.
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Reel_01This reel starts out with Mom, Carolyn and I swimmming. Superimposed over it seems to be images from a church. Either that, or we were swimming in a lake with stained glass windows. This morphs into a picnic on the beach, with ghosts of Aunt Lu, Grandma and Grandpa Heidbreder, and great-Grandparents Shine. Then we switch to President Kennedy speaking at Carolyn’s third birthday party. Now we move to the Headless Wedding. If I had to guess, I think it was Uncle Roy and Aunt Eleanor’s wedding. There are a lot of legs, very few heads. I see dad (Edward) in one of the shots, so Mom was probably taking the pictures. Then it is back to the beach. A quick cut at Ridgeview. Then 103 York Way. Suddenly we find ourselves in Deer Forest, in Michigan. If I had to guess, I would say it was 1961. Carol looks about 4, me about 2 and mom is noticeably pregnant. Now we find ourselves at a zoo — I don’t recall if Deer Forest had a zoo or not. Obviously, the zoo is not up to modern standards. The bear has no where to move. And what insurance company would allow patrons to hold fish over barbed wire whilst sea creatures with a lot of sharp teeth jump up and grab at it?? After a brief stop at the prairie dogs, we find ourselves on Christmas Morning at 103 York Way – first inside, then outside playing with the new wagon and scooter. I am guessing this is about 1967. Doug looks about 2 and the car was a 1961 that dad got used when the previous owner passed away. When he used it up, he sold it to be used in a demolition derby. He was offered tickets, but couldn’t bring himself to watching his car be destroyed. Of course, the next question is why was the car parked on the road when the house had a garage? Not sure when this is, but Douglas looks about the same age — still in a playpen. As I recall, he was jamming to some music on the TV. We’ll have to ask Eileen if his dancing skills have improved. We dance our way to camping, then either a prison or a fort. Lastly, we find ourselves gliding across the ice at the 1967 Ice Follies. The music attached is:
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