Sunday 13 September 2015

In which I almost become Animated

Ever since I was a callow youth of fifteen, one of my obsessions was to one day own an 8mm cine film camera. Not just any old cine camera, you understand, but one with the magic words "single frame facility". I didn't want to make ordinary movies, I wanted to make stop-frame animation.  It wasn't my only obsession - others included a Fender Stratocaster, an Adana Printing Press and a Garden Workshop - but it was probably the one which has stuck in my memory the longest. I owned ordinary cine cameras and wasted considerable time sticking sections of film together with clear editing tape and inserting links and titles but that was well short of the continuous animation I had seen described in a Junior Encyclopaedia.

For several decades I could never pass a second-hand camera shop without doing a swift 90 degree into their premises to pore over their stock for the prized single frame button - I was always disappointed. I eventually gave up my quest and began to imagine that such single-frame cine cameras only existed in the Professional World of Hollywood and were not actually available to everyday members of the public like myself. My own version of Morph or Gromit was just a dream that would never come to fruition - Walt's Did but mine Disney.

This memory was brought back to life last week when I came home from the Camera Auction with a mixed box of assorted cameras, opened a black case and there inside was this:



A clockwork Argus 8mm Cine Camera made in Chicago Illinois and offering four different speeds, light-powered meter, clockwork zoom action and YES! Single frame control!

For a moment my excitement got the better of me and I started reliving my plans to make an impact in the cartoon world. I became quite animated.

Then I suddenly remembered that in my pocket sat an iPhone 6. A comparatively tiny little pocket device capable of shooting HD movies, stop-frame, fast-action live motion pictures that could be edited and even published immediately to a Worldwide audience via YouTube. Why hadn't I done that?

I suppose it's all just a bit too easy.  

4 comments:

Z said...

That'd be far too easy - give it a go. You know you want to.

Tim said...

Aye, but can tha mount t' phone on a tripod, and then stop un wobbling when tha' teks the pics? Think on, lad.

(Sorry, for some reason I seem to be writing in a Northumbrian accent.)

Rog said...

I'm far too busy servicing mine and Lily's social media profile Z.

Canny though but Tim lad.

Crowbard said...

I get the impression, Rog, that you have the kind of mindset that would produce outstandingly compulsive viewing, and with the mechanical technology it should be hard enough to be satisfying regardless of audience response. Have you set up your dark-room yet?