What's On This Film?
Here are vintage sound home movie films from 1976 and 1979. They are fairly static (these are not travel films!). Like the earlier, silent films on this channel, these document the continued goings-on of a middle-American family from the Detroit, Michigan area. These later, sound films were made by the “middle child” in those earlier films. Still trying to get attention.
00:14 “October 1 and 2, 1976 • Dallas, Texas”
Father and the middle child (with the camera) drive 700 miles to visit number one son in Dallas. Most of this film involves the attempt by the middle child to corral the father and number one son into saying something filmworthy when they clearly don’t want to be filmed at all. Some clowning ensues. Most of this film was underexposed and has been pushed up quite a lot to make anything visible. This makes the picture quite “grainy.”
02:38
More inanity as the cast of characters, now inside, search for something to say. Number one son at least has the sense to keep quiet which is more that can be said for the other two.
03:44 “Christmas 1976 at the Dundases” • St. Clair Shores, Michigan
Fondly remembering extended family Christmases of the past, our middle child/cameraman returns to his hometown Christmas 1976 and visits with the aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandparents at the family Christmas gathering on Christmas Eve. Put “on the spot” to do something for the camera, they gamely give it their best. Much more successfully so than the previous reel. Regrettably, the last known footage of the grandfather, Roderick Macdonald, is dark and out of focus!
07:22 “Christmas 1979” • Garland, Texas
The grandmother visits her daughter for Christmas, who is mother to the young adults seen at beginning and end. The middle child is there too—with the camera— but sadly is only slightly better at wielding it than he was three years earlier. I should note in his defense that such cameras were not at all as easy to operate as video cameras are today. This Super 8 film was made on a Chinon camera that had manual focus. The operator’s valiant but ultimately futile attempt to shoot in a more natural, available light exacerbated focus issues. At the end, number one son, at the urging of his mother, tries half-heartedly to re-enact the Christmas morning surprise exhibited by the children in all the earlier, silent films the family made.
In all of these films, it should be remembered that there were no retakes, no second chances, and no opportunity to see what you had until two weeks had passed and the film was back from the lab.
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