Tag: Film

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Light Reviews

This series brought back so many memories for me, from watching the ‘Making of…’ specials on TV to reading Starlog magazine.

A lot of the people in the series were my heroes back in the day: John Dykstra, Dennis Muren, Phil Tippitt, Richard Edlund, Ken Ralson all worked on stuff that I loved and still love.

If I wasn’t so gung-ho about computers back then, I probably would have followed in their footsteps.  I have my own stop-motion movies that I made back in the day.

Part of it was also a history lesson, or more a refresher.  I remember reading about the digital effects revolution and how it shook up the film industry.  I remember how I felt the first time I saw a dinosaur in Jurassic Park.

Highly recommended series if you love these kind of movies and/or oral history shows.

I really liked this movie, though it was a very stressful one to watch, from moment to moment all seemed lost until it wasn’t, if that makes any sense.

It probably looked cool in the theatre, but it wasn’t one I felt compelled to see on the big screen, as much as I love Toy Story, and Buzz in particular.

The reveal was one that I didn’t see coming (maybe) and also made me go, “really?”

Anyways, recommended if you love Toy Story or good space adventure stories.

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Film to Digital

As if I didn’t have enough hobbies/projects in my spare time…

Since a little after my Mom passed away, I had this idea of converting any and all Super 8mm film that I could find into digital video files.

The cost of offsite conversion concerned me, along with the idea of shipping these memories elsewhere.

After Dad passed away, I started looking into getting a home system to do this, but again, the price was a bit high.

Recently I checked pricing on these units again, they had dropped to an affordable price point, and decided to pick one up.

It seems to do the job well, having digitized about a dozen and a half 3-minute reels of film (at a rate of around 30 minutes per reel) and I’m pretty satisfied with the output.

For example: from about 45 years ago, Christmas 75.

Watching these films reminded me of another reason I didn’t convert them right away, it was still painful to see home movies of ones who have moved on, but age has made it a bit… less painful to watch.

It’s also fun to watch my niece, reacting to movies of her mother (my sister) as a baby.

Gotta say that’s it’s oddly satisfying and emotional to do this, seeing memories from over 40 years ago, and preserving them.