Animation Artifacts 21 May 2007 08:12 am
8mm Popeye
– Of course we all are waiting for the Popeye dvd’s to hit the market. This promises to be the ulltimate collection for many of the Paramount shorts. However, Popeye’s been on the home entertainment market for quite some time.
Back in the old days – before Blu Ray, before dvd, before vhs – there was 8mm. No, I’m not even talking about Super 8mm; I mean 8mm. This was the home movie for the masses.
I owned a couple of cameras and projectors by the time I was 16. I bought all of them myself with my own money earned from part time jobs. You could buy used models downtown (an hour subway ride for me) at a camera store called Peerless-Willoughby.
(A variant of this store still exists called Willoughby.) Within the store, they had an enormous department of 8mm and 16mm films to buy or rent. I spent a lot of time thumbing through those 8mm films and bought a few. I had rigged my projector to screen the films frame by frame so I could study some of the animation.
When Super 8mm came in, sound was added (although it had to be dubbed after the film was shot.) 8mm was threatened and they came up with a couple of schemes to add sound. My friend, Stephen MacQuignon, shares this Popeye cartoon. This is one such scheme a small distributor tried. Oddly, it’s not too different from the first sound films back in 1928. You play the soundtrack off a record. Appropriately, the cartoon with this record is one of the King Features shorts which was dependent on dialogue.
Things change but not always in great leaps.
The 8mm reel came in the attached box pasted to the front of the record package.
This is the back of the package so you can see other titles that were
available from “Americom” including a number of the King Features shorts.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a projector anymore, and I’m having trouble
getting the record transferred to dvd. I will though.
on 28 May 2007 at 10:16 am 1.B. Baker said …
The CinemaScope SNOW WHITE AND THE THREE STOOGES must have looked pretty modest in 8mm.