Sunday, April 17, 2011

Digitizing Hi8mm tapes from high school

Last year, I digitized a bunch of old VHS tapes and projects from high school - student council election videos, video yearbooks and so on. That was super fun and great to see all that old work and projects.

This weekend I hooked up an old 8mm tape player that I borrowed from someone at work (thanks, Joey, you're a champ) and I've been digitizing all the raw footage. There are some pretty amazingly bad "B-roll" moments here... wow. :)

Despite all the amazingly awkward teenage moments, it's funny to see this sort of  "slice of life" from waaaaaay back in Grade 9 and 10 (this is nearing 14-15 years ago... whoa). What's pretty hilarious and strange is how many people are surprised about someone carrying a camera around, some people are naturally really keen to be on tape but the majority of people are either camera-shy or just really surprised to see a camera. Hilarious to think about being uncomfortable being "on the record" given how now most people have a pretty functional video camera in their pocket (iPhone). Filming a "slice of life" has become an entire industry (reality TV) and recording just what you see and experience and posting to YouTube is so commonplace. It's really amazing to see this footage now and realize how it's really another world, things have changed so much technology-wise, and of course we've all matured since high school, but it feels like there is an element of social change and further acceptance of film technology in our casual day-to-day experience. Interesting.

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