These articles are written especially for Ewell and Stoneleigh Connection, a free monthly magazine circulated to homes and businesses in the area.
Video Camera
Good
live stuff. Expedition films capturing history being made. Home
movies recording family occasions and antics. All watched, filmed,
through the eye of a camera: a Newman-Sinclair kinematograph, an Agfa
8mm, a Panasonic VHS Recorder, etc., and then projected onto another,
usually larger, screen. Sometimes edited, sometimes pure and
unadulterated. Images flickering or steady, silent or layered with
sound, recorded sound. And perhaps, too, with an element of added
trickery: people suddenly disappearing as if they'd been teleported,
plucked from the scene by invisible god-like fingers … then
re-inserted.
Black
and white, or colour with a grainy or true quality. Panda slippers,
an enduring memory; a picture imprinted indelibly on the mind and
somewhere on video: standing in the hallway, my dad filming over the
banisters as we tried to create a spoof version of a well-known (at
the time) Concorde advertisement. The same line fed about a trip to
Lapland and the same line in return given by me: 'You're winding me
up. I don't believe in Concorde.' And then as haughtily as an under
ten can walking away. Cut, go again. Laughter; cut. Take 7.
A
future embarrassing moment, among others. 'He's filming, the red
light's on'; my dad covered it with tape, but camera-work then was
also shoulder-work which was a bit of a giveaway. Faces were hidden,
backs turned; persons swiftly exited the room, only the dog stayed.
Yes; hours of continuous entertainment.
