Misplaced Pages

#199800

29-603: The Archives were founded by Rick Prelinger in 1982 to preserve what he calls " ephemeral " films: films sponsored by corporations and organizations, educational films, and amateur and home movies. Typically, ephemeral films were produced to fulfill specific purposes at specific times, and many exist today only by chance or accident. About 65% of the Archive's holdings are in the public domain because their copyrights have expired, or because they were U.S. productions that were published without proper copyright notice. The stated goal of

58-619: A fourth and fifth, Yesterday and Tomorrow in Detroit , 2014 and 2015) and All-Is-Well (2016). He received the Creative Capital Award in 2012 to make the home movie compilation film No More Road Trips? , which premiered in Austin, Texas , at South by Southwest in March 2013. A summary of his 2019 film Useful Prophecies states that: "While the distance between cinema and truth

87-403: A prophetic portrait of futures to come as proposed by filmmakers who let these visions speak through them." He wrote The Field Guide to Sponsored Films (2007) which "describes 452 historically or culturally significant motion pictures commissioned by businesses, charities, advocacy groups, and state or local government units between 1897 and 1980." It is available as a book and as a free PDF from

116-405: A revolution in the making of home movies. Videocassettes were extremely inexpensive compared to film and they could even be erased. This had the effect of greatly increasing the hours of footage of most family video libraries. It took a few years before consumer video cameras and portable VCRs were introduced, and later combined to create camcorders , but by that time, many consumers already had

145-761: Is best known as the founder of the Prelinger Archives , a collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002 after 20 years' operation. Rick has partnered with the Internet Archive to make over 6,000 films from Prelinger Archives available online for free viewing, downloading and reuse. With the Voyager Company , a pioneer new media publisher, he produced fourteen LaserDiscs and CD-ROMs with material from his archives, including Ephemeral Films ,

174-481: Is often impossible to bridge, some films reveal more than we might think any films could. Such is the case with the long-neglected body of useful cinema —films produced because they had jobs to do, like sponsored, educational, and industrial films— and home movies, sometimes revelatory works that seem to spring from the unconscious. Built from the collections of Prelinger Archives, one of the world’s largest collections of nonfiction films and home movies, this program builds

203-786: The Internet Archive and a professor in the Department of Film & Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz . With spouse Megan Prelinger he is co-founder of the Prelinger Library , a reference library located in San Francisco , California. His feature-length film Panorama Ephemera , consisting of 64 self-contained segments from various ephemeral films, opened in Summer 2004. He has also produced such archival home movie compilation films Lost Landscapes of San Francisco (15 annual films, 2006–2020), Lost Landscapes of Detroit (three films, 2010–2012 and

232-483: The Internet Archive . All the films in the archives can be licensed for production use through Getty Images . Prelinger Archives currently focuses principally on collecting home movies and amateur film, and has approximately 30,000 items as of Fall 2023. Rick Prelinger Rick Prelinger is an American archivist , writer, and filmmaker. A professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz , Prelinger

261-644: The MFA design program at New York's School of Visual Arts and lectures widely on American cultural and social history and on issues of cultural and intellectual property access. He sat (2001–2004) on the National Film Preservation Board as representative of the Association of Moving Image Archivists , was Board President of the San Francisco Cinematheque (2002–2007), and is a board member of

290-612: The National Film Preservation Foundation . Home movie A home movie is a short amateur film or video typically made just to preserve a visual record of family activities, a vacation, or a special event, and intended for viewing at home by family and friends. Originally, home movies were made on photographic film in formats that usually limited the movie-maker to about three minutes per roll of costly camera film. The vast majority of amateur film formats lacked audio, shooting silent film . The 1970s saw

319-542: The Our Secret Century series and Call It Home: The House That Private Enterprise Built, a laserdisc on the history of suburbia and suburban planning (co-produced with architect Keller Easterling). For Prelinger, "archives are a primary weapon against amnesia." Prelinger worked at The Comedy Channel from its startup in 1989 until it merged with the comedy network HA! to become Comedy Central . He then worked at Home Box Office until 1995. Prelinger has taught in

SECTION 10

#1732848618200

348-463: The middle class . In the mid-1960s, Super 8's ease of use led to home movies being even more popular. The 17.5 mm "Birtac" format was patented by Birt Acres in 1898. This format split the standard 35 mm film into two strips half as wide and could be loaded into the camera in daylight. Since the film frames were also half the height of 35 mm frames, the Birtac format used only 25% of

377-504: The Archives holds about 8,000 films in videotape and digital form, approximately 14,000 home movies, and 1,000 industrial and sponsored films acquired since 2002. Compared to many other moving-image archives, Prelinger Archives provides a relatively high level of public access to its collections. Over 8,500 public domain films are available for download and unrestricted reuse on the Internet at

406-580: The Prelinger Archives is to "collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere". By 2001, it had acquired 60,000 completed films of varying lengths and over 30,000 cans of unedited film. In 2002, the Library of Congress acquired the physical films held in the Archives as of that date. The Archives made two subsequent donations to Library of Congress totalling some 65,000 cans of film, primarily industrial and educational titles. As of spring 2015,

435-707: The United States, You've Been Framed! (1990 debut) in Britain, Video Gag (1990 debut) in France, and online video sharing sites such as YouTube (founded 2005), that of users who want to share their home movies as user-generated content . The popularity of the Internet , and wider availability of high-speed connections has provided new ways of sharing home movies, such as video blogs (vlogs) and video podcasts . The development of home movie-making has depended critically on

464-427: The advantage that users were not tied to one equipment manufacturer, and there were obvious cost advantages compared to standard 35 mm, the advent of an even smaller and cheaper format ultimately relegated 16 mm to professional users, particularly in the educational market. In 1932, Kodak introduced another new format, 8 mm , now called " Standard 8 " or "Regular 8", which put four frames into

493-404: The advent of consumer camcorders that could record an hour or two of video on one relatively inexpensive videocassette which also had audio and did not need to be developed the way film did. This was followed by digital video cameras that recorded to flash memory , and most recently smartphones with video recording capability, made the creation of home movies easier and much more affordable to

522-473: The amount of film stock used by 35 mm. The camera doubled as a printer and projector, so equipment costs were also reduced. In 1922, the French firm Pathé Frères introduced a new film format 9.5 mm wide which put the sprocket holes between the frames instead of along the sides of the film, allowing the images to occupy nearly the entire width. The resulting frames were nearly as large and clear as with

551-409: The area occupied by one standard 16 mm frame. The film usually came in 16 mm wide "Double 8" form, which ran through the camera in two passes (one in each direction) and was slit in half after processing. The "Straight 8" variant came already cut to 8 mm width. In either case, the amount of film stock used per frame was again reduced by 75%. This finally brought home movies within

580-431: The availability of equipment and media formats ( film stock , video tape , etc.) at prices affordable to consumers. The introduction of film formats suitable for amateur hobbyists began early in the history of cinematography . Amateur film equipment became standardized in the 1920s and 30s with the 9.5 mm, 16 mm, and 8 mm formats. By the late 1950s, home movies became cheaper to make, becoming available to

609-512: The average person. The technological boundaries between home-movie-making and professional movie-making are becoming increasingly blurred as prosumer equipment often offers features previously only available on professional equipment. In recent years, clips from home movies have been available to wider audiences through television series such as Kato-chan Ken-chan Gokigen TV (1986 debut) in Japan, America's Funniest Home Videos (1989 debut) in

SECTION 20

#1732848618200

638-452: The camera. High-end Super 8 also could be purchased with a magnetic audio track, allowing for synchronized sound home movies. Single-8 , a competing product from Fujifilm , was also introduced in 1965. It used the same new format as Super 8 but on a thinner polyester base and in a different type of camera cartridge. The introduction of the Beta VCR in 1975 and VHS in 1976 heralded

667-424: The expense of separate negatives and positive prints. The original 8 mm format was largely superseded within a few years of Kodak's 1965 introduction of Super 8 film. The Super 8 format used the same film width as standard 8 mm, but the perforations were smaller, making room for larger frames that yielded a clearer image. In addition, Super 8 film came in cartridges for easier loading into

696-450: The incident were captured on the camera phone of another audience member and broadcast widely. Home movies have played important roles in controversial criminal investigations. The prime example is the Zapruder film of the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy , accidentally captured on Kodachrome film with an 8 mm home movie camera. The film became crucial evidence for

725-414: The playback equipment in their homes. Portability and small size of digital home movie equipment, such as smartphones, has led to the banning of such devices from various places, due to privacy and security concerns. Pornographic movies of celebrities have been rumoured to exist for many years, but the ease of creating home movies on video has resulted in several celebrity sex tapes becoming available to

754-420: The public, often without the permission of participants. The honeymoon video of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee from 1998 was the first highly publicized example. Portability of digital equipment helps fuel other controversies as well, such as the incident on November 17, 2006, in which comedian Michael Richards got into a racist war of words with an audience member during his comedy club act. Large parts of

783-415: The reach of the average family. The smaller format also made possible smaller and more portable cameras and projectors. The introduction of Kodachrome color reversal film for 16 mm in 1935, and for 8 mm in 1936, facilitated home color cinematography. The availability of reversal film, both black-and-white and Kodachrome, was very important to the economics of home movie-making because it avoided

812-543: The slightly later 16 mm format , which devoted much of its width to the stabilizing perforations. Used both for making home movies and for showing shortened "cinema-at-home" versions of professionally made feature films, it enjoyed popularity for several decades in Europe, including the UK, but was virtually unknown in the US. Of importance in making motion picture film practical for home use

841-423: Was the manufacturing option of safety film in the 1920s. The nitrate film used by professionals required caution in handling and projection because it is highly flammable. Nitrate film badly stored has been known to spontaneously combust . The 16 mm format, which used only safety film, was introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1923 and became a standard in the non-professional market. Although 16 mm had

#199800