Recovering Catalina's film heritage one frame at a time.
Frame By Frame
Frame By Frame
Over the past few decades, time, the elements and a number of unfortunate events have conspired to deprive Catalina Island of much of its film heritage.
Storage vault fires, disposal of film stock and the more customary enemies of film such as moisture and sun-damage have resulted in the permanent loss of thousands of feet of moving images of old Catalina.
However, hidden away in government warehouses, studio vaults, private collections and—in the case of home movies—attics and even sock drawers, are perhaps thousands or tens of thousands of more feet of film that have escaped destruction and the ravages of time.
Unfortunately, these survivors face the same agents of destruction that have already claimed so much of our film heritage. Without any attempt to discover and retrieve this "missing" footage for digital transfer, it will be lost forever as well.
WHAT WE ARE DOING
Frame By Frame is a program designed to locate, recover, restore (if necessary) and transfer to digital storage media this missing footage before time runs out.
By searching private industry and government film archive websites, as well as sites such as Ebay, YouTube, and AOL Video, we attempt to find these "lost" films wherever they may be.
CURRENT PROJECTS The following two motion picture products are currently being held at the National Archives . I have received a quote from the required outside vendor for $729.10 for both of these items to be transferred from 35mm film to HDV mini-DV cassette. TRIP TO SANTA CATALINA ISLAND WITH FORD MOTOR CO., ca. 1917 This is a travellogue produced ca. 1917 by Ford Motor Company. It is a 10-minutes long. CATALINA ISLAND, 1939? This is a series of three reels of 35mm film produced by the U.S. Maritime Commission during World War II. Although the year of 1939 is incorrect (the USMC did not have a training center on Catalina until 1942), this has the promise of being a very important piece of Catalina history. These three reels total about 25 minutes running time and were reportedly filmed entirely on Catalina Island. FUTURE USE After receiving the digital copies of all items in the Frame By Frame program, appropriate clips will be used in Channel Catalina projects and digital copies of the items in their entirety will be donated to the Catalina Island Museum.
