A car enthusiast and sound designer from the 1960’s has revealed some gems this week!
A client got in touch when he found his late father’s collection of 35mm slides, 1/4 inch reel to reel recordings and 8mm Cine film. His father was a musician in the 60’s and heavily into sound design and theatre work - so you can imagine the diversity of the content that’s been discovered.
First job was to capture all the 1/4 inch reel to reels using an ex-BBC workhorse Ferrograph Logic 7 modified to accept half track and quarter track recordings. Each reel contained a mixture of mono and stereo tracks, recorded at different speeds, so these were all imported into Protools audio restoration software for equalisation, editing and final mastering for modern standards. In one section a spooky backing track is accompanied by the deep monotone voice of the client’s father telling an extremely scary halloween story … The individual recordings will now be easily accessible as separate audio files on a USB stick.
400+ colour and B&W slides have been individually cleaned and scanned at high resolution using an Epson scanner and Silverfast software.
The standard 8mm Cine reels have been captured at 1080p using my own scanning system, although two contained an audio strip, which is quite rare, so these have been outsourced to a specialist film company. More about 8mm Cine film audio strips here
1/4 inch reel to reels, 35mm slides, and 8mm cine film from the 1960’s revealed by this client.
Mister Digitise in Hurst Life
The lovely team at Hurst Life have printed an article about Mister Digitise in this month’s magazine!
Hassocks Parade 1970
Lovely footage of the Hassocks Float Parade circa 1970. Were you there? Do you recognise anyone?
Cine film clip used with kind permission of Eric & Celia Parrott, Hassocks residents.
Valentines special!
I can digitise your wedding film (from cine/camcorder/video) from just £14. Check out this collection, there’s beautiful footage in here from 1930s, 60s, 80s, 90s and the noughties. Local pick up available. Bring your old formats safely back to life. Contact me today to arrange
Unstable 8mm Cine film footage with iffy colour & exposure?
These problems can be greatly improved using digital processing ... It takes time but its worth the effort! Check out how I corrected issues from this clip from 50 years ago shot on standard 8mm.
The London to Brighton Bike Ride 1989
Did you participate? Looked like a glorious day of 80's t-shirts, unbroken sunshine, 10-speed racers, and very little in the way of mobile phones and cycling helmets! I was 18 at the time ... Feels like a bygone age ...
Footage and interviews before, during and at the finish line. Wonderful late eighties fashion, bikes and virtually no helmets!
Did you have your 8mm Cine film transferred to VHS in the 80's or 90's (usually by recording a projection with a VHS camcorder)
You will be blown away by the difference in quality that Mister Digitise can do. Brighter images, vivid colours and sharper focus. Facebook's compression on this clip doesn't give it justice but it does show how much brighter, in focus and more colourful the end result can be.
An evocative 8mm Cine film clip
Digitised from the collection of a family friend, filmed in 1964 at the junction with Pont Du Mont Blanc next to Lake Geneva .... trams, Citroëns, VWs and Jags ... a Swiss traffic policeman in a white hat .... The Hotel Des Bergues is now the 5 star Four Seasons
Audio restoration of Wedding Speech
Originally recorded in 1966 on a reel to reel tape recorder during a wedding speech in Jamaica .... Mains hum galore and quite a few other problematic frequencies having to be tamed with some drastic corrective and tight EQ. Some more gentle Hi and Lo pass to clean it up a bit and finally a little multi band compression to hold it all together. Listen using headphones and not using laptop speakers!
Where it all started …
Super Eight cine film of yours truly being fed lunch in the back of a Mini Clubman, somewhere near St Tropez in 1971 .... ! (No audio)