Super 8

I just love this title shot. YouTube picked it for me, their AI that scans your recently uploaded video for the likely best still.

In a pandemic induced sharing mood I put the rest of my Super 8 footage online (with a Margaret Explosion soundtrack) and sent a link to our former Bloomington friends, none of whom are in Bloomington anymore. We went to school there. I dropped out but hung around. This is my favorite Bloomington footage, my friends in the trailer, the kids who lived across the street and the locals on the street downtown. One of the kids playing on the hill in the beginning of the movie flashed the peace sign at me and then while downtown with Brad Fox one of the little girls there give us the peace sign. Sarcastically, of course. This was 1970 or so.

The movie, Breaking Away, depicted the tension between the college kids and the locals, called “Cutters” in the film because of all the stone quarries around town. When we were there they were referred to as “Stonies” and it was as derogatory as it sounds. For me, the real creeps were the college kids. Like the three guys in the blue windbreakers with yellow Greek letters on them who jumped out of a car and beat the shit out of me because my hair was too long.

I bought the movie camera through my father who picked it up a the Kodak store in Kodak Park on Lake Avenue. It shot film without sound in a 4 by 3 format. When I dropped the clips into iMovie the top and bottom gets cropped off so it fits the 16 by 9 format. I nave no idea what I’m missing because it still looks great.

Here is the rest of my Super 8 footage in these video clips.

1 Comment