Saturday, February 16, 2008

Another Polaroid in Filmmaking

You need to check out the film "Fragments" by Kevin Curtis, in which a Polaroid features prominently. (Click on the headline above and wait a moment). The ending is sort of obvious. But this British Academy Film Awards site (discovered via StumbleUpon) invited aspiring film makers to submit a 60 second short film around a theme of "unite". The regional winners rubbed shoulders with some of the world's most famous actors, screenwriters and directors at a ceremony on February 10th.

A number of the films are funny and well put together. Enjoy!

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Project StoryKeeper Wants 100,000 of You

John Callahan as goalie in Syracuse, N.Y in 1920's

Know how precious the sound of your mother's voice is? Or your father's? Or how how one person in a family can tell a story in a special way that you want to hear over and over again?

Project StoryKeeper is seeking an army of 100,000 volunteers to collect the audio biographies of elderly Americans before those voices are silent. The mission of Project StoryKeeper is to preserve an American heritage found in the life stories of all Americans. The volunteers, who will be trained in interviewing techniques will concentrate their interviewing in elder facilities. The stories will then be posted on the internet for family and friends to enjoy, preserve and add to for generations to come.

The founder of the Project StoryKeeper experienced first hand how the loss of family members was also a loss of their personal part of family history. The volunteers will be trained to use a special "audio biography kit" to "capture who these people are, the voice, the wit, the personality ... so anyone can get to know them as a person."

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Let's Shed a Tear for Polaroid Film



Another passing of era was just announced! Polaroid is ceasing production of its instant film, which will become unavailable sometime after 2009. So much of our family histories were recorded on Polaroid film. We discovered the joys of “instant” pictures.

I was a teenager when the Swinger Land camera made its appearance in the market. You might remember those sometimes fuzzy black and white pictures and the gooey, chemical stick that needed to be rubbed on the image to keep it stable. But, oh, it was instant…or at least as instant as any product available for a teenager to use. And the Swinger by the community pool added to the fun because EVERYBODY wanted to be in the picture.

During a television interview in 2007, Oprah Winfrey remarked that her Swinger camera, a gift from a fan, was the first thing she would want to save in a fire. As a teenager, she could not afford one and so, that inability to own one became part of her personal history. As one of the richest women in the United States, Oprah could afford just about any object she wished. But that Swinger camera was so much a part of her past that the fan’s gift filled a hole in her personal history.

Harry McCracken recently held a nostalgic “wake” of sorts for Polaroid, complete with You Tube videos. Remember the James Garner and Mariette Hartley partnership (when viewers wondered if they were married), Hugh Laurie of “House” and the Muppets as spokesmen and the advertising jingle for the Swinger? You shouldn’t miss all the videos at http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/006464.html

The blog posting doesn’t mention how aspiring “artists” discovered Polaroid could be a canvas when we learned how to move the emulsion around before the image set. All of sudden, a face could appear distorted or a head could sprout horns. It was all part of the fun of Polaroid.
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But family history was recorded for posterity on Polaroid film.

When my child was born, my husband and I didn’t have a camera with us to record his first few hours, but the hospital did. It was a Polaroid. Over time that image has begun to fade so it has now been digitized and archived to stop the passage of time. Without Polaroid, that instant in our family's history would not have been recorded.

The thrill of watching an image appear as the photograph developed will soon be lost. Somehow the convenience of digital cameras doesn’t replace the emotion that was part of Polaroid.