Another from the Grisetti vault

[Steve Grisetti]

Back in high school, when I should have been dating and doing homework, I obsessively churned out Super 8 action movies with my friends. This was my magnum opus. The original cut ran nearly an hour, and it was excruciating!

Here's the story in 8 action-packed minutes.

[ed]

Who knew small town Ohio was such a hot spot of crime and death

Love the old cars, hair styles, and clothes. Brings it back! I'm assuming you had to edit this by hand by spicing and taping the film. It's pretty seamless in the cuts. I'd be interested to hear about the process, and how long it took.

Do you still have that camera? Might be fun to shoot some footage with it, have it digitized, and include it in this year's Grisetti Year in Review Opus.

[Steve Grisetti]

8mm film was a bear to work with! It's about as wide as a pencil, and when you spliced it you had to make sure the sprocket holes were lined up perfectly or it would jam in the projector.

We'd shoot the movie and then record the dialog, music and sound effects to a cassette tape which we'd play while projecting the movie. I still have some of the original audio we recorded, but it does not improve the experience. Not to the mention the fact that whenever the film jammed in the projector it threw the whole thing out of sync! Trust me, this is the best way to see it.

I've got a couple of more movies I'm going to handle similarly. Fortunately I telecined most of it before the film started falling apart. Though as you can see, that film has gotten pretty scratched up and worn over the past half century.

[momoffduty]

Oh the hair, the cars, the clothes brings back memories. This must have taken a lot of work back then to edit.

[Dave McElderry]

What a great thing to have these from "the old days". I remember seeing another one that you posted some time ago. If I knew it, I had forgotten that you had a number of them. There were a lot worse ways to spend your time as a youth. I can attest.

[sidd finch]

Steve I liked it. I think the narration really helped out too. And talk about some sweet cars. That red GTO was really nice, So was the AMC Javelin and the blue Nova. I even noticed that there was an AMC Gremlin in there too. That blue car you were driving was that a GTO or a Pontiac LeMans? I love all those old cars. I think the 60's and 70's has some of the best cars out there.

It is so cool that you have this stuff to keep as memories. My Grandfather was into movies too and I got a hold of some of the reels he made when I was just a kid and it is really cool to see them.

Sidd

[Steve Grisetti]

I had a friend who was a GTO nut. He had a couple of nice ones. Unfortunately, halfway through my movie, he blew the engine on one and I had to reshoot the rest of the movie hiding the fact that he was driving a different car.

[Steve Grisetti]

And here's a synopsis from another of my old "classics".

[ed]

I guess romantic comedies were not your genre back then Steve. You could have used that to cast girls in your high school.

[sidd finch]

I guess romantic comedies were not your genre back then Steve.

Ed that was a romantic comedy....

Sidd

[GerryB]

1 hour of movie!!
Very good.
How many hours did you shoot to cut it down to 1 hour?
How many hours did you spend planning the locations?
How many hours did you spend editing?
How long did you spend planning the story?
How many hours did you spend writing and recording the narration?

How many beers were consumed in the processes?

Did any animals get hurt in the making of the movie?

Did somebody mention girls?

That was a major opus.

[Steve Grisetti]

When I was in high school, I didn't date, do drugs or do homework. I made these movies. My goal was to making them longer and longer -- though I should have focused on keeping them shorter and tighter.

Super 8 was expensive for a kid on a grill cook's budget, so I used virtually everything I shot. And editing was hard, so I'd try to "cut it in the camera". I'd shoot everything in a scene in the order it would appear in a movie.

It is so much easier to shoot, edit and add music and effects now! Whenever I recut these old movies, I wonder what kind of stuff we'd have done with access to today's technology. Maybe I'd have become a YouTube channel!

[sidd finch]

I am surprised no one noticed the guns and gunfire and called the cops. But more great video from the past

Sidd

[Dave McElderry]

I am surprised no one noticed the guns and gunfire and called the cops.

I was thinking the same thing.

[Steve Grisetti]

A member of our cast owned a .38 and .22 pistol and we used them with real blanks whenever we could. Ironically the one time someone called the police was when we were waving around toy guns (which at that time looked just like real guns).

We also drove like maniacs to shoot some of those chase scene bits.

Ah, the good old days.