More Home Movie Stuff

As I mentioned in my previous post, I took all of the 8 mm reels of home movies my dad had taken and converted them into digital format. 

This is the type of machine I used.  This is a picture I took off of Amazon because my brother has my machine that he borrowed a few years ago and never returned! 

Most of the movies I converted were on 3-inch reels. The machine copies the movies frame by frame. I would set it up with the original film on the left and the film would slowly move through the machine, one frame at a time winding up on the right side. Then I would have to rewind the film back to the original reel.  After that I would take the SIM card out of the machine, load it into my computer and save it into a file before erasing it to use for the next reel. 

I also had a few 8-inch reels that were too big to fit on the machine. Rich came up with this solution.

A pen taped to the top of a tissue box that was taped onto the desk. That got the reel far enough away and it was able to turn on the pen while the film was being fed through the machine! Whatever works, right?  

It was a long process that took me months and when I was done, I had 45 separate files of movies! I put them all on a USB drive. 

I had my brothers and their spouses over for drinks and dinner one night and played all the movies on our TV. It was a lot of fun to watch them all together! Plus I gave them each a USB drive with the movies so they could show them to their kids. 

It was worth all the work! 

I thought it would be fun to show you a few shots from some of those movies. The quality isn't great because I just took a picture of my computer screen. 

Me and my mom on my first communion 1965.

Easter 1960. I was three years old. My dad used to get me and my mom corsages every Easter. 

Me on my first birthday, 1958, already getting excited over cake!

This is my mom in the front walking my older brother and my Nonnie in the back walking me. My brother was 3, I was a little over a year and a half old and I don't know if you can tell but my mom was pregnant with my younger brother. 

Here she is in about 1965. 

This is me and my brothers in Mackinaw City that same year. That's my oldest brother Jim on the left, then my younger brother Tom and next to me on the other slide is my youngest brother Don. 

I love looking at these movies and remembering what it was like to be so young and carefree. I grew up in a very loving family and have wonderful memories of those years! 

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends!