The Projectionist's House - January 2019

I'm not normally interested in houses but this one is definitely special. Nice report.

That’s pretty excellent, I suppose it’s best as many people do get to see this as poss before the bulldozers come!

You've captured that really well Mook.

A nice find. Probably the previous owner did cine film for locals, maybe there was a few reels lying around under that muck.

Hugh Jorgan said:

A nice find. Probably the previous owner did cine film for locals, maybe there was a few reels lying around under that muck.

Click to expand...

More than a few, there were hundreds of old reels up there!

That does look a wee bit ropey Mook, interesting though. Thanks

Oh gosh I had real flash backs with this one. OK story time..

I left school to work at Ashington Colliery in Northumberland. We had a whole day of safety lectures - it was far easier for the instructors to plonk us into a room with film projectors and let us watch (it was mostly eye injuries..). That done, they also unboxed more footage. These reels - hundreds of them, probably thousands plus old B&W photos - showed the mine and underground. The real thing and not staged. These were the Ashington Colliery Group of Mines films and bloody special. I was engrossed. We only got to see a few bits including some showing our instructors as they were as teenagers like we were.
Long story short the mine closed and was flattened. Those films and photos? I heard that they were thrown down a shaft just outside the building where we were shown them. Seems some were quite flammable and no-one wanted the hassle of storing them. Yup unique priceless documentation of mines which made what became the largest mining town in the world and thrown down a shaft. I sometimes weep when thinking about it..

What I'm saying is (I know - our lives could be different) if I was down there I'd be harassing the developer to get your hands on stuff. Heck (about to be ticked off here) I'd probably lose a few reels in my rucksack. We all know fine well that no-one will care about those reels of film but they will be unique and damned special. It appears that the ex=resident was part of a cine club. That tells me they'll have done their own footage and not just bought films to watch.
Forget the machinery (nice Land Rover BTW)and try to rescue some footage. It might be cr*p but hey at least you'll know.

* Spank me - I mentioned borrowing artifacts.

Some damned interesting stuff there. Why do we have nothing like that up here??

Sausage,

Old Nitrate film stock is highly dangerous and soon decays into an explosive mess - even when stored under good conditions. Transferring images onto safety film and then destroying the old unstable film is the only way to save the images. Transferred thousands of feet during my working days. If you want more on this 'find', follow the Braintree Cine Club link. Actually the equipment is typical of the era, when the monied amateur was trying to add sound to their home movies. Home movies never interested me; my working tool was the B&W Full Plate still image and this transferred over into my personal photographic preferences.

Yeah some would have been just that - the older burny stuff. Still annoys me that they wanted to bury the past as soon as possible with the collieries.
The actual bloke who shot the Ashington Combine images and film is who I'd describe as my hero in the photography world - literally, in more ways than one, in at the deep end. Some of his work survived with his last set of images being the development of a new mine - Longhirst Drift.