How to Make Good Movies (late 40's- early 50's)

Hello again, hello again! Boy, have a I got a book for you gals and guys this morning. Let me explain with a brief prologue.

If there's one thing I'm a monumental sucker for at estate sales, it's cameras. Cameras, cameras, cameras. Old snapshots are always of high interest, but to that same extent, flash attachments, projectors, slide viewers, editing machines... pretty much any items that fall under the heading "vintage photography" just sing out to the twentieth century shutterbug I am at heart. I have about 36 vintage cameras right now, picked up from antique stores and sales for less than $5 in most case, which range in age from the early 20's box cameras to mid 70's Polaroids. Anything with a lense, that I don't already have-- I will usually buy. Anything that GOES WITH something with a lense... be it a red Kodak 300 portable projector (pulled out of a garage at a sale in West Meade, $10), a Bell and Howell 16 mm Filmosound projector (courtesy of Babu's dad, complete with a stack of educational films from the St. Louis Public library), or a Panavue slide viewer... the amount of obsolete camera equipment in one house, that belongs to someone under 60, who is not a professional photography would make your head spin.

SO! You can imagine I was pleased as punch to come across this 1940's/1950's (not copyright dated, oddly) Kodak guide to movie making.



Yes! This could be you! Enjoying your homemade movies in full, late forties' style! This book serves as a primer for the weekend family filmmaker or "cinamateurs", as they're sportingly called in the first chapter. Unlike many mid century instructional texts, which can be as dry as Wheaties with regard to literary style, the writing in this manual is just as crisp and flip as you could ask. "Some descriptions of the mechanics of cameras and projectors... will be found within its covers. But all superfluous technicalities have been rigidly tabooed," reads the introduction. And well said!



Kodachrome film, of Paul Simon fame, was made by Kodak-Eastman from 1935 until 2009. Those super bright, popping, delicious hues from many slides and 8 or 16 mm home movies of the time were a product of that color reversal type film. Here, I strongly covet the mint green playsuit and red belt of the nicely coiffed brunette to the right, while being encouraged by the ad copy to take advantage of its "full, rich, and amazingly realistic color". Sign me up, sir.




Here are some examples of linear storylines you could add to your home movie, which, when you think of it, is kind of a good suggestion. 99% of other people's home movies I've ever seen are of the person's family (natch), awkwardly waving at the family documentarian, with one cut up maybe making some halfhearted attempt at physical humor, and then small children opening presents/hunting easter eggs/being small children (which makes for scintillating viewing). I like the idea of the early 50's man or woman staging out a narrative for her children and relatives to act out, so you wouldn't just see how pretty Grandma Florence used to be, but also see her in her first and only stage appearance as "Gypsy Woman 1". Right? Right.



One of many adorable features of the manual is the use of a narrative couple who spend all the time trying to verbally figure out how to use that chapter's material to better serve them as amateur filmmakers. For example, in the above illustration, Mr. and Mrs. Kodak plan to use the family dog as the star of their next small screen spectacle. Below, they continue to wonder about their roles as cinematographers in several different panels. The text encourages them to write out an outline or scenario to follow, THEN make a movie of Billy Kodak and his dog. Brilliant!




Some of the photos used as illustrations, as you would expect from film experts, are really breathtaking. All the photo on the left is missing is the name "Paramount" and the stars! At right, you're shown how to use close-up shots and editing to vary the interest of your film. I swear to goodness, before I started taking film classes in college, I never noticed the individual shot composition of movie making. We had to dissect a two minute scene from Goodfellas once for a project that had something like 200 individuals cuts in it. DEAR. LORD. See how even these three make what's probably twenty seconds of screen time into something far more interesting than a static shot.



The importance of tripods to steady camera movements, and lenses to sharpen focus, are stressed. The picture on the left reminds me so much of stills of Henry Hathaway or Joseph von Sternberg on set in the 30's... look how cool you look with a tripod and the right collar!



Things I've learned from the text:

1) When you buy a 25-foot reel of film, you actually get 33 feet, as no matter how carefully you load your film, some of the negative will be "light-exposed". In addition to this, you need a little wiggle room at the beginning and end of the reel to feed into the camera (the famous 4...3....2....1... you see at the beginning is to keep that first few seconds of actual film footage intact!), so the manufacturers throw in a few feet extra in light of these considerations.



2) Many, many people send their film, to Kodak development stations or through their dealers, with missing information, adding to a huge catalog of "homeless films". Every attempt, the text assures us, is made to find the film's owner, but often to little avail. Think how cool it would be to see this vast, family-less film archive in 2011! But, I'm sure, il n'existe plus. It's my hope most of them were eventually reunited with the people who made them. Write legibly and with complete information, 1950's people, or you may never see Timmy's birthday party footage! Come on.

3) Everyone wants use Kodachrome all the time! ALL THE TIME!

There's more, but let's keep moving.



The left hand photo was used to illustrate "focusing the camera"-- I prefer to focus on the gentleman's perfectly folded breast pocket handkerchief. Bravo! To the right, the SPITTING IMAGE of Joel McCrea takes a peek through the viewfinder. I wonder if it actually is him.



Two beautiful pieces of equipment, the CineKodak K-100 ( see a great manual for it scanned in HERE) and the Kodak Royal Projector (see an ad for this big hunk of gorgeous HERE). I don't have either one of these... YET.



Here, the Brownie Movie Projector and a device for editing your home movies... I love thinking of literally cutting and splicing film together with a rubber cement like film glue. Reminds me of accounts of Charlie Chaplin locking himself in a shack in upstate California to try and edit his early great movies without the interference of the studio... so "hands on"!







Above: A shot of the editing process in full swing. Get 'em, tiger.

Below: Two narrative films in action... how great are the comments that accompany each panel? Read them top to bottom, like a column.



Kodachrooooome. Look how beautiful the colors are here! I mean, they're actually BETTER than real life.



For this sequence, cue a soundtrack of "Town Without Pity" by Gene Pitney. Gritty nightclub nightlife looks GREAT in color!



And now for some decidedly wholesome Kodachrome fare:





Give me that dress... and let me grab those suspenders and plaid workshirt for Bab off the Gregory Peck-ish guy to the right.

Do you have any Kodak memorabilia lying around the house, either in pile or piecemeal? Do you collect any kind of vintage film paraphernalia? I know I'm not the only one.

LOTS of dresses to show you guys coming up. LOTS. Have a great Wednesday night!

Weekend Finds

Finds! And finds a-plenty! The fish were biting two weekends ago, when I found these items. And here they are, dragged off the (occasionally faulty) memory of my Kodak, for your viewing pleasure. Pardon the lighting conditions-- I assure you these were all taken at my home, at night, with a malfunctioning flash... and not, in fact, during a solar flare, or on Mars.

The half-price, first Saturday event at area Goodwills came and went last Saturday, but I managed to sneak in earlier in the week and snag this mega-ton of Pyrex for a song. (Expert tip: the week before the half-off sale is the week the staff wheel out all the items from the back! Avoid the half-price situation altogether, it's not worth it!) I saw the tiny condiment-sized containers first, and it was like that camera effect in the movies where the shot goes from a tight closeup (condiment containers) to a fast, zoom out wide shot (Pyrex! Everywhere!) with accompanying, moment-of-wonderment music on the soundtrack.

I wrestled with the idea of buying the whole kit and caboodle for several moments, fully cognizant of my almost clinical addiction to kitchenware and the toll it has taken on the amount of cabinet storage space in my ever seam bulging home. Seconds after putting the dish back on the shelf, it was in the hands of and being scrutinized by a woman in a pair of khaki shorts with a buggy-ful of kids clothes in tow. I had no beef with her until she tried to buy my Pyrex... and then it was as if we were on a field of battle. After several agonizing moments of small talk (Khakis:"Aren't these neeeat? You never see them with the lids anymore." Lisa, in the most mournfully dejected tone: "Uh-huh." Khakis: "You know my grandmother had a ton of these, I wonder what they're worth now?" Lisa: ((mentally)) Please please please decide not to get my Pyrexes, I promise the moment you set them down I'll buy them, omg). The showdown ended after some moments of my absent mindedly looking at tupperware until she put the piece back on the shelf, and whereupon I snatched all seven pieces up in a makeshift, extremely breakable pile and headed for the front of the store, gleeful. Total expenditure... around $18. Which, in the words of that guy in the real estate office in the beginning of Psycho, isn't exactly buying happiness, but buying off UNhappiness. As I would have been very depressed indeed if the lady ran off with my dishes, bound for her own home rather than mine.

Cow creamer set, from an estate sale where I also bought three matching home made dresses (one of which will show up in a clothing post sometime this week). I was knocked for a loop when I saw these little guys on a shelf full of not-very-old items. I love how the first one is full bodied, the second one cuts off at the neck, and the third one is just a head. JUST A HEAD! Not at all weird, right? But somehow still totally cute. I've been trying to think of ideas for a coffee klatch sometime just so I can USE these. Any excuse to throw a get together will do.



This doll was from an estate sale where she was the largest and most detailed of a number of cloth, 1920's dolls. The piece of paper pinned to her waist reads in a washed out, handwritten scrawl "Virgin Islands". I just love her. Look at her 20's clothes! And all the detail that went into her! I tried, REALLY HARD, not to buy this doll for about fifteen minutes of carrying it around the rest of the house and sale, but it finally made its way home with me. And I'm glad it did.

At the Goodwill in Clarksville, Tn.... what may be the holy grail of Goodwill finds. I try and try to explain to people that Goodwills, and junk/thrift stores in general, are not, as they seem to be in some people's conception, just stuffed to the gills with 50's prom dresses and Bee Gees lunchboxes. Maybe they were at some glorious, pre-ebay moment I was, due to my youth, not culturally aware enough to enjoy at the time, but no longer does the retail space look like Quentin Tarantino's house threw up in it.

I stress the idea that thrift store success is about 90% dogged persistence. I will look through a hundred 90's teacher-jumpers appliqued in school buses and bees before I will find ONE sixties dress that may or may not be in my size. Or I might go through five and have four of them be perfect, 1970's maxidresses. It's all luck of the draw, but you can of course up your chances by going two or three times a week to different locations, every week. In this case, the powers that be rewarded my tenacity with what I at first thought was a nurse's scrub top in the women's short sleeve blouses section.

Except. It. Wasn't. OMG.

This is an apparently handmade 1970's man's v-neck shirt, with front pocket, made out of licensced The Six-Million Dollar Man material. Dotting an overall pattern of Steve Austin's FACE are playing card sized tableaux of the kind of trouble a bionic man can get himself in and out of in the course of a 54 minute episode.

Let me just say, that it was one of my finest thrifting moments. I keep trying to decide if I'll wear it (it fits), make Matthew wear it (it fits, though it's tight), or hang/frame it as decor (it's really a priceless national treasure)

Some pretty amazing movie tie-in sheet music, including... oh, could that be my patron saint Joan Crawford?

The piece on the right is a Western she made in 1930, and at right, 1933's Dancing Lady, the third of eight movies Gable and Crawford made together.

My favorite movie title...ever? Also, I love anything to do with Marion Davies, so this was a triple coup...Gable, Marion Davies, and a 30's play-on-names that I love. The only way the sheet music on the right could be better would be if pre-The Awful Truth Cary Grant had made an appearance on the cover as well as in the movie.

Two more of my favorite movies. Whoever bought this sheet music in the 30's and 40's was obviously a kindred spirit.



And last but not least on this lot of music, two Astaire/Rogers pieces (eek!). Look at the Marmaduke dog on the right, to Astaire's left... a face after my own heart. The seller at this sale had two or three tables in his front yard, one of which was heaped with the sheet music you see before you. His mother taught music in the front room of their house throughout his childhood and up until she was well in her 80's. I bought maybe thirty pieces total and a package of novelty cocktail napkins from the 60's for $5. The less photogenic of these are all twenties' popular tunes, Boswell sisters kind of stuff. AND FANTASTIC. I can't wait to make my live-in piano player take a crack at these.

As if the next sale had read my mind, I found even MORE sheet music:

Killer, right? I felt bad for the gal in short shorts who was crouched at the bin next to me, a bin which apparently was completely filled with hymnals. The one I chose (again, luck of the draw) was nothing but pop hits. She watched, pie-eyed, as I flipped, pie-eyed, through the selection, piling them in my arms. Complete songbooks of "best ofs" comprising hits by Gordon Lightfoot, Bread, Elton John, Tom Jones... and then a few older selections with a colossal Judy Garland compilation (including sheet music from pretty much her entire filmography, movie by movie), a best of Frank Sinatra from the time he cut that record with Antonio Carlos Jobim (making it pretty much a collection of Antonio Carlos Jobim music plus a few Sinatras, but NO ONE IS COMPLAINING, I love Brazilian music and Jobim in particular), Duke Ellington, and Henry Mancini.



"Wow, you really found some good ones. Did you leave anything worthwhile in there?" she asked. Me, somewhat guiltily, "Um, there's some stuff left in there." Kind of. I mean, stuff you wouldn't want, but stuff. I can't tell you how many times I've been on the other side of this exchange, watching someone sweep away with all the best of a sale MOMENTS before I got to the hot spot. You win some, and you lose some.Total cost for all books shown? $5.

Dark Shadows SOUNTRACK ALBUM, OMG. In pretty decent shape!



WITH the double sided, fold out, album-sized poster? OMG. Bear with me as I go into a nostalgia induced coma for setting the VCR to tape episodes of this from the Sci-Fi channel in middle school so I could watch them when I got home. Will there ever be so un-sexy a middle aged sex symbol as Jonathan Frid somehow managed to be on this show? I had such the crush on him. And then Quentin came along and Barnabas was supplanted in my affections. I wonder how the Tim Burton remake will fare?

Last but not least, some record selections from Goodwill:

Michael Parks is the Sheriff Earl McGraw at the beginning and Esteban near the end of Kill Bill... and he has a record? Well, this platter is scratched to heck, but I think I'll try and play it on my portable record player to save my console the wear and tear and see how he sounds. Patsy, of course, sounds like an angel, as always, and don't you love her ensemble on the cover of this album?

I spoke earlier of Brazilian music, and here's some of the best instrumental summer music you could possibly imagine, courtesy of Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd. This Flipper recording is SEALED! I haven't gotten up the gall to open it yet, but I will.

What's better than finding one Charles Aznavour record for 99 cents? FINDING FOUR CHARLES AZNAVOUR RECORDS FOR 99 CENTS APIECE.

I think my heart almost stopped when I found these. One of my favorite French singers, period, and some kind hearted, francophile like myself donated them so I could snatch them up at the Rivergate Goodwill.

My(second, as "Jezebel" 's embed feature on youtube is disabled) favorite song from the album in the upper right hand corner, "Je t'aime comme ça". Play us out, Aznavour! Did you guys beat anyone to the punch this last weekend on a fantastic estate sale/thrift store find? Make me feel less guilty about my snatcheroos by telling me about yours!