Fun stuff

I've been doing fun media stuff all my life. Here are some tidbits.

Exhibit 1
Here I am 8 years old, describing to my teacher what I got for Christmas. I am still wishing for a film projector and films!

I never got the projector, but I bought one myself a few years later.
Exhibit 2
Yep - interested in tv at a very early age...
Exhibit 3
Here's mum working in a TV studio in the early 60's. When I was around ten, she lent me a highly technical book on motion picture making.

From the book I did a summary of different widescreen methods (below).

I also started buying and reading books about films and filmmaking, and because most of them were in English, that language soon became second nature for me.

I got really hooked on the technical aspects of movie making after seeing a 70mm print of the original Star Wars in the big Savoy cinema in Helsinki. See my article published in "in70mm.com".

 
Exhibit 4
This is a Noris 6000 M Super 8 film camera I bought when I was around 13 years old.

Today when we are accustomed to digital videotape camcorders it's hard to believe that back in those days you only had three minutes of very expensive film in each cassette, and without sound!
That really meant a lot of rehearsing before you shot a single frame.

And because editing the film involved physically splicing it, you tried to avoid it at all cost, and instead film everything in sequence, and doing all edits "in-camera".
Exhibit 5

Here's my first film ever, "The Invisible Man". I didn't yet have my own 8 mm camera, but my school had one, and I made the film in one hour during a break. It premiered to great success in the school auditorium.

Unfortunately, the original film was eaten in the 1980's by my dog. Luckily enough, I had earlier filmed it off my silver screen with one of the first VHS camera/recorders, and later added sound and music by dubbing it to my Betamax. The VHS tape got lost somewhere, so the Betamax tape was for a long time the only surviving copy.
Then my Betamax VCR developed a fault and could not be repaired anymore, but luckily the folks at the ReelOne dubbing facility in Helsinki had clobbered together a working Betamax from some scrap parts, and we could transfer "The Invisible Man" to digital tape.

Originally it had a soundtrack lifted from a James Bond record - the music track you will hear is one of the copyright cleared tracks of YouTube.
Exhibit 6

Here's one of my brothers filming me when we did a 20 minute secret agent movie, "Coldfinger", in Super 8. The camera is an Agfa on loan. The camera permitted cross-fades, stop motion animation and 50 frames per second slow motion cinematography. Cross-fades were used in the opening titles, and animation in the ending titles. Slow motion cinematography was used as a special effect when blowing things up.
In this rare picture we are lining up a dolly-shot, by strapping the tripod to an old loudspeaker with wheels. You can see the shot in the trailer of the highlights I've edited together.

When the film premiered to a gala audience of all who participated in the project, the music score – lifted from a certain famous secret agent movie series – was played from an open reel tape, while individual special audio effects were loaded from cassette tape during the showing.
The trailer has a new soundtrack I made myself.
I did this picture for the cover of the "Ultimate Special Edition" DVD I did a couple of years back as a Christmas present for all involved.
All my bigger Super 8 projects were carefully storyboarded. These are the opening shots for my secret agent movie.
 
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