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MY 28MM STORY
This is a classic illustration of how the fascinating hobby of amateur cine drags one off into all sorts of strange byways.
Like many others I have spoken to since, I had a bit of 28mm in my youth and sold it on marriage as not really offering a collecting future. It was only 30 or so years later that I had the chance to become a moderate collector in one fell swoop by acquiring a KOK and a number of films. Their condition was such that I could see at once that, even if I had had one of the very rare 28mm cement splicers, I could never make all these films projectable without big losses of footage and much work.
I therefore had a tape splicer
made, adapting a 35mm splicer. The cost still makes me wince, but it has been
worth its weight in gold, enabling
me to repair rather than cut out and greatly
simplifying the whole process. I also adapted a pair of 35mm rewind arms to take
28mm.
I must record special thanks to Grahame Newnham. He acquired Alan Lott's 28mm, among which, I learned, was some leader. With great generosity, Grahame actually let me have some of this super-rare stuff, without which it would have been impossible to provide proper leader for all the films in order to prevent yet more damage and loss of title frames. (This does not, however, mean I have forgiven him for getting the films and in particular the Victor projector). I have eked it out with 35mm film sliced down to 28mm (I call it fake leader) for the head end which never has to go thru the projector. I then had a huge stroke of luck when, through the good offices of Noel Pratt, I acquired a rare Premier Pathescope 28mm projector.
This has an intermittent sprocket rather than that rather nasty KOK ratchet claw, and 1200 ft spool capacity. The intermittent is much more tolerant of damage I think, as it pulls on more than one sprocket hole (on one side anyway).
Premier Pathescope
I quickly came up against into the perennial question of film identification through the fog of Pathé’s habit of changing titles and the fact that some films were missing their titles anyway through the attrition of time. I started small, with the acquisition of a British list of 28mm films dating from around the end of WWI (Thanks to Brian Giles). An immediate problem was that it was in such small print that, having been thru several stages of copying and re-copying, it was hard to read. It was organised numerically and finding any particular film was laborious. It was also irritating that there was no information beyond the titles of films.
I therefore decided to create a simple database, so that I could order the films alphabetically and produce a readable copy. This I circulated to known 28mm enthusiasts, asking for information on any titles held by individuals or institutions so the existence of a film could be noted in the index.
Then I discovered the existence of a huge American 28mm catalogue, complete with brief synopses of the films, which included nearly all of those issued in the UK. This actually got me riled up, because I had never heard of it before despite my interest in 28mm. (I missed Alan Lott’s piece in ACE while producing a family in Yorkshire). I felt very strongly that more should be done to make this sort of information readily available rather than squirreled away and known to only a few. I got a copy (thanks to Dave Wyatt) but hit a snag. The photocopy was even poorer than the UK list, a few bits being completely illegible. So I gritted my teeth and decided to transfer it to computer. This was partly a post-chemotherapy convalescence project, or it might not have got done.
I started with Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This is basically copying a document into the computer in editable form via a scanner and clever software. Unfortunately, the software was not clever enough to overcome the poor copy quality. I had done enough typing in to know that with my two-finger typing it would take forever. So I dictated it instead. Actually, the voice recognition software was not half bad, tho’ of course it struggled with names and odd film-related words.
But it was very much a labour of love, consuming enormous amounts of time.
The result was the 28mm Film Catalogue, reproducing the text of the American Catalogue and providing an alphabetical index covering both US and UK titles.
As part of my researches into 28mm, I contacted Ron Grant who runs a film museum in London. Coincidentally, he was expecting a visit from a German Researcher, Anke Mebold, who had been studying 28mm in North America. She turned out to have copies of not only the American Pathescope Catalogue I had reproduced (which was the 2nd edition), but of the 1st and 3rd editions and also of catalogues issued by the American United Projector and Film Company (which I refer to as Victor since it was his machines they used and promoted). Naturally, I gave her a copy of my catalogue in exchange for copies of all these goodies, then started the task of preparing an index covering all three editions of the Pathescope Catalogue plus the Victor films and those issued in the UK, all cross-referenced. My plan is to produce a set of documents which would provide buyers of the first one with all the additional information I had gleaned, without duplication except for the index. Along the way, I also acquired a copy of a French listing of 28mm titles (Thanks to Brian Giles). This too I databased, tho’ I have not yet matched all of the French titles with English titles.
Then the task was to identify the original 35mm film from which the 28mm print derives. Henri Bousquet has published a superb multi-volume catalogue of all the Pathé releases from 1895 to 1927, giving the original length, so I am adding to the master index the title, year of release and length of films which I can reasonably match with 28mm films. This involves a lot of trawling and cross checking descriptions of films, in English for 28mm but in French for Bousquet’s work. This too would be interminable but for the help of my wife Angie, who searches the database then types in the French information, while I switch between French and English catalogues.
Alongside this, other things were happening. Peter Spooner had previously filmed from the screen some 17.5 films (I was just the projectionist), and was keen to do some 28mm. So we set to and recorded about 90 minutes of film, reproduced as The 28mm DVD (see Catalogue pic above), to which Peter added some music and a brief commentary. At the age of 80+, Peter is wrestling with the complexities of recording to DVD and re-editing on the computer.
The other thing that happened was an email from Tony Saffrey, who had been contacted by an Australian lady who was selling a KOK and some 50 reels of 28mm on behalf of an older friend who was retrenching. I therefore flirted shamelessly with her on the phone and by internet to buy most of the films. I have yet to pay off the debt I ran up. It did help that I have a brother in Oz who organised things for me and happened to owe me some money so I didn’t have to wrestle with sending money across.
When the films arrived there were as one might expect many problems. About a
third of the spools were heavily rusted and dropping dust onto the film, so the
first priority was to transfer them to cores and try to sort out the spools. I
have previously made a few 28mm spools from 16mm 400 ft spools with new cores,
but I still have about 20 originals to
refurbish. It involves an awful lot of
work. I am having to keep some on cores pending spools, so I have made a
possibly unique thing, a 28mm split spool. I also made a second rewinder (since
sold on) so I could do the dirty work in the garage and the more detailed
checking elsewhere.
As you see, this exercise has involved a number of people and all sorts of non-film activities. I am now pondering the famously huge Canadian catalogue to add to my existing listings. Further DVD’s, drawing on the Australian films, have been recorded, including two early six-reel features and many more shorts.
Quite apart from the film side, I have done quite a lot of work with projectors. My first KOK had been modified and was also suffering from the paint flaking that afflicts so many Pathé machines, (see "before" picture, below) usually because of exposure to damp. All in all it looked scruffy.
I stripped it down quite substantially, and carefully re-sprayed parts of the machine, tho’ there was little I could do about the fading transfers. I gave particular attention to the generator/dynamo, which made a sort of grinding noise on rotation. I stripped it right down to look at the bearings, which I suspected as the source of the noise. To my considerable surprise, exact replacement bearings were readily available. It was a major job to get the old ones off – in the end I had to grind them off, totally destroying them in the process and taking great pains not to damage the windings and commutator. Getting the new ones on was hard – I had to hit with a mallet far harder than I really wanted.
Then it was re-spraying and re-assembly (see "after" picture, left). On test (feeding DC in to use it as a motor), I was relieved to find it still ran. I could get no joy out of it for light, however. Even a 6v 10w QI lamp showed not a glimmer. I suspect the permanent magnets have weakened. I did consider having them re-magnetised, but was discouraged by the huge cost I was quoted. I used one of those modern lighting transformers in the end.
I decide I could not justify (or afford to keep!) two KOKs, so I sold that one. My other, a non-dynamo machine with a large lamphouse and a much smaller crank handle, is in much better condition.
Apart from the cover. This had rusted badly and the splendid transfers on the outside were almost invisible, so I reluctantly sanded down and re-sprayed. Although I had the fittings on the cover, and one of the bolts that secure it to the base, I did not have the second bolt or the fitments for the base. These are sheet metal folded in a complicated way, and I spent hours making rough replacements. All the originals were rusted, and quite pitted, so there is a limit to what can be achieved by way of quality of finish. There is, however, a vindication of that most important dictum:
NEVER THROW ANYTHING AWAY!
I cannot emphasise this too strongly. If you must take bits off projectors or do even worse things, at least keep the old parts. I found in the bottom of one of my "bits" boxes, a KOK sliding bolt, that I must have had since about 1970. The knob was broken off (and the one on the other bolt came off in my hand), but that was not too hard to re-manufacture.
Along the way, I also did some work on a KOK for a friend. Some fiend had removed the original lamphouse and replaced it with an amazing abortion of bent tin and thick plywood, with gaps you could get your finger thru. Very horrid. I made up a new lamphouse, using dimensions from my mains KOK. I then discovered that the arm that supports the top guide roller was upright, suitable for small lamphouses such as had obviously been fitted to this KOK. On my large lamphouse machine, this arm is swept right back. I therefore had to make a new arm to allow me to fit the new lamphouse.
As an interesting detail (going into darkest nerdistan here), the power supply is a Eumig P8, with the motor brushes removed and the lamp output re-directed to the power out socket on the back. Why take out the tranny and make a box for it when it is already in a perfectly good case? The other thing I did was to redirect some of the lamp feed to a small (40mm) 12v DC computer fan fitted to the back of the lamphouse to provide just a little cooling. A small bridge rectifier and capacitor was used to convert to DC. A 12v 50w QI lamp managed a full 400ft reel without the lamphouse overheating.
I have formed very definite views on 28mm spools. I do not like the small (1.25") cores. The film curls very badly and is easily torn on its way thru the projector, thereby creating the common 28mm problem of no leader/no end/no titles. If a spool has rusted more than a small amount, I remove the core and replace with an aluminium core of 1" diameter, with the protrusions to engage the pins on the spool arms. The spool cheeks are screwed to this new core. Over the aluminium core is fitted a 35mm 2" plastic core, cut down to about 30mm width, or a pair of 16mm cores which don’t then need cutting. The aluminium core has a pin to engage the slot in the plastic core. I tried a solid aluminium core: too heavy.
Here are some more 28mm projector pix.
This picture was naturally irresistible, showing all three of the most important 28mm machines in one place. The Victor, alas, was not mine.
Two views of the Victor Premier
Ian Green found these pix on American ebay, a Victor Home Cinema. A very rare creature, Victor's last attempt to shore up a flagging 28mm market with a cheap machine. It still has an intermittent sprocket, tho'.
