Home movies
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 advent of camcorders that could record an hour or two of video on one relatively inexpensive videocassette, 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 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 America's Funniest Home Videos, in Great Britain You've Been Framed! and Internet online video-sharing sites such as YouTube. The popularity of the Internet, and wider availability of high-speed connections has provided new ways of sharing home movies, such as video weblogs (vlogs), and video podcasts.
History
The development of home movie-making has depended critically on availability of equipment and media formats (film stock, video tape, etc.) at prices affordable to consumers.
Development of film formats suitable for amateur hobbyists began early in the history of cinematography. For example, the 17.5 mm "Birtac"[1] format was patented by Birt Acres in 1898. This format split the standard 35 mm film into two strips half as wide and was able to be loaded into the camera in daylight. Since the frames were also half the height of 35 mm frames, the Birtac format used only 25% of the amount of film stock used by 35 mm. Since the camera doubled as a printer and projector, equipment costs were also reduced.
Safety film and the 16 mm film format
Another breakthrough in making film practical for home users was the introduction of safety film in the 1920s. Earlier "nitrate film" required special handling and storage, even after it was exposed and developed, since it is extremely flammable and has even been known to spontaneously catch fire as it gets older.
Many competing film formats were introduced in the early decades until 16 mm safety film was introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1923[2] and became a standard in the non-professional market. Although 16 mm had the advantage of users not being tied to one equipment manufacturer and there were obvious cost advantages compared to standard 35 mm, it was never able to eliminate smaller formats and it eventually was relegated to professional users, particularly in the education market.
8 mm film format and color
In 1932, Kodak introduced another new format, 8 mm, now called "Standard 8" or "Regular 8", which put four frames into 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 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 the expense of separate negatives and positive prints.
Super 8 and Single-8 film formats
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 the camera.[3] 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.
Home video-making
The introduction of the Beta VCR in 1975 and VHS in 1976 heralded 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 the playback equipment in their homes.
Omnipresence and controversy
Portability and small size of digital home movie equipment, such as camera phones and PDAs with video capabilities, 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 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 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 the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination. At first, only black-and-white enlargements of individual film frames were published, and the most gruesome frame was withheld. The public did not actually see the images in motion for many years. The first showing on network television occurred in 1975.
See also
- Amateur film
- Cinematography
- Event videography
- Underwater videography
- Videography
- Video production
- Wedding videography
Notes
External links
- Home Movies and Have Camera - Will Travel Exhibit at the Texas Archive of the Moving Image.
- Center for Home Movies
- Northeast Historic Film Collections containing home movies
- Home Movie Clips and Streaming Home Movies
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