Personal film-making

There was a book at the university library, published in the early '70s, called Personal Filmmaking. It was written, if I remember correctly, by a community college instructor. He taught a class on the subject.

His students would get their hands on an 8mm movie camera, easy enough to do back then. You had to ask around if you didn't own one. I don't know if they showed up as often in the Goodwill stores as they did a few years later. All it cost was a few bucks for a roll of film.

Basically, they'd make little movies. Some did art films. One example was something where a guy had his friends act out a funeral. Another was about two hunters. As they drive into the countryside, they hear a report on the radio that a killer had escaped from the state hospital and was on the loose.

Say what you will, they sound more interesting than most student films.

I don't know if home video has ruined this sort of thing. The movies they did had the advantage of being silent or with unsynchronized sound.

I wish people would do stuff like that with their Flip cameras.

But then, I used to buy home movies whenever I came across them in junk stores. I had one wedding movie (4 minutes, regular 8), a Super 8 movie of a homely baby's first birthday. They set up the camera, put an ornate birthday cake in front of the baby and encouraged her to dig her hands into it and tear it up. I had some 16mm films of a family drinking and riding around on minibikes with guns. A teen, aware that he's being filmed, tries not to react to a groin injury while on his minibike.

There was an odd movie where a couple carried their tiny baby into the middle of a lake. Then they stand there with it. They walk back. In another scene, they put the baby in a wading pool, holding its head up and splashing water on it.

I only came across a couple of examples of people trying anything artistic. One was a a roll of black leader that had some stuff scratched into it.

Even back then, few people tried to create anything narrative.

One of the more interesting things I bought was a large set of slides. They were pictures of two elderly couples on vacation in Hawaii in the early 'seventies. We see some typical tourist stuff. We see the building where Steve McGarrett's office was in Hawaii Five-O. Then it all changes. After a certain point, all the pictures were of massive storm damage. Trees blown down. Lamp posts blown down. Cars smashed. Buildings damaged. They had an interesting trip.