I spent the bulk of Friday transferring a 7-inch reel of old Super 8 home movies into the digital realm. A decade or so ago, I spent a small fortune to have it and others turned into HD files and came away less than impressed by the washed-out result, which I chalked up to the films being stored in less than ideal conditions for 50+ years. But the excellent restoration of The Adventures of Terrific Man implanted the notion that, perhaps, I should re-do the films myself using the DIY equipment Terrific auteur Todd did. So I invested in a “used but good” projector-scanner from Amazon and digitized a few “long lost” 3-inch reels from the late ‘70s that I came across while packing for our 2018 move. The result looked promising.
Unfortunately, I faced an unanticipated hurdle: I had no idea where the other film reels were. When we moved south, we placed a hundred-plus unopened boxes in our apartment’s third bedroom, aka our makeshift storage unit, and dozens more into the second bedroom’s walk-in closet. Digging through them was not in the cards. When we moved into our current home earlier this year, however, we began to go through those boxes. Diane found the missing reels last week.
Anyway, the process itself is quite simple: thread the film as you would any projector, plug in an SD card, and click “OK.” Old film being old film, though, means that things don’t always work as they should. Some portions, especially surrounding old splices, stick or stop, while others—fed by too much slack—slip, leading to unwanted slow-motion and sped-up sequences. You can’t just leave it and go do something else.
That’s a long lede into this: While watching the footage from long ago, I strapped on headphones and—as I often do—listened to a succession of new and recent releases, plus a few old favorites. I also cogitated on the state of this blog. In some respects, The Old Grey Cat is doing well; it averages 172 views and 112 visitors each day, which is about a third more than last year. In other respects, though, it’s been a disappointment, with the least number of posts since 2015. At year’s start, too, I planned to veer away from the constant review-review-review hamster wheel more often than I have.
Midway through Friday, however, I stumbled upon the recent Bell the Cat video of Lillian Leadbetter performing a hypnotic rendition of “Leo Moon,” one of the standout tracks from her recent State of Romance album. The line that leapt out at me: “I dream in lifetimes.” We—or, at least, I—concentrate so much on the daily grind that we sometimes forget that each day is essentially one frame in a seven-inch reel of spliced-together film, and that reel is but one of dozens upon dozens. There may be plenty to do and color-correct, to continue with the restoration metaphor, but there’s no rush. It will get done.
The Old Grey Cat 
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