Preserving the past

Today a box arrived for me in the post. I was expecting it, of course. In it was a secondhand camcorder I bought off eBay earlier in the week. It's a Digital 8 model by Hitachi, and I suspect it's almost 10 years old. But I needed it.

You see, despite already having a new Mini DV camcorder, I wanted this Digital 8 one in order to transfer some of my old Hi8 camera footage to my computer and back it up, edit it, and keep it for posterity.

Footage such as our honeymoon in Thailand, including lots of me, sunburned and drunk, singing karaoke with the Filipino band at our resort.

Footage such as the wife and I getting tattooed in celebration of our engagement.

Footage such as the documentary we started shooting about the trials and tribulations of getting married abroad.

Footage from the short film I shot and might now be able to do a redux edit of on the Mac; ditto a music video I shot for a friend of my dad's.

Footage of our nephews and nieces and, I suspect, various animals we have known. There may even be footage of people who are no longer with us.

There is a whole lot of stuff waiting to be rescued from obscurity. My only hope is that the motor and/or heads of this machine still have lots of life left in them.

It'll probably be a few weeks before I'm really able to throw myself into this labour of love. Wish me luck...

Ain’t mates great?

Sometime back in March it was Buy A Friend A Book week, and my blogmate Karen was kind enough to give me a gift voucher for Amazon.co.uk

At that time, shortly after my birthday, I had a few books that I had yet to get around to reading. Birthday gifts some, but also some Christmas ones. Hell, who am I kidding? I've got books from years ago that I've never got around to...

Anyway, bottom line is, I didn't want to rush out and buy the first thing that came into my head only to have it sitting there doing nothing. I wanted to pick the appropriate gift. And I wanted to pick something as close as possible to the value of the voucher, so that Karen bought me a whole book.

The book I eventually bought, just a couple of weeks ago, was Digital Film-Making by Mike Figgis, director of Leaving Las Vegas and Internal Affairs and one of the biggest proponents of DV in Hollywood.

What a book! I couldn't put it down. For about a week it felt as though I was superglued to that book. In a good way. And it's small enough to carry with you wherever you go. If you are interested in low- and no-budget film-making, this book is an essential purchase. It will now take pride of place on my bookshelf alongside that other low-budget film-making bible, Robert Rodriguez's Rebel Without A Crew.

So, thanks Karen, for buying a friend a book. Sorry it took so long for me to redeem your voucher, but I hope you know it was worth the wait!