Today, we delve into the fascinating intersection of football and home movie technology, as we explore a unique historical tidbit presented by Timothy P. Brown. The focal point of our discourse revolves around a 1951 Bell and Howell home movie camera brochure, which elucidates techniques for capturing football games on film. This episode elucidates how early enthusiasts of home movies engaged in the meticulous art of filming and editing, akin to contemporary practices observed on platforms such as TikTok. We also reflect on the preservation challenges associated with these historical film artifacts, noting the difficulties many face in accessing and enjoying such footage today. Join us as we navigate the rich tapestry of football history and the enduring legacy of home movie culture.

This information comes from his original post titled: 1950s Bell & Howell Tips On Football Home Movies

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You know, there's nothing better than football on film.

Television, the movies, anything with football.

It's great to see it in action pictures.

But we have a story today from footballarchaeology.com's Timothy P.

Brown where you can take your own home movies into Bell and Howe movies.

Coming up in just a second.

Tim's gonna tell us all about it.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch.

A podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore.

Bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of Pigskind dispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And welcome to another evening with a visit from Timothy p.

Brown of footballarchaeology.com.

tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, Darren, this is gonna.

We're gonna get real during this.

During this podcast.

Real, real fast.

Right?

Yes, of course.

That's quite a title there, Tim.

What can you tell us about it?

Well, first of all, for all the young people who listen, a real is the actual movie little contraption, the round thing that the movie film wraps around.

So that's what a real is.

And that's where the joke, you know, kind of comes from.

So anyways, yeah, so this, you know, we talked last week about, you know, some of my tidbits just come from, you know, I stumble across something and when researching another.

But others that I've actually been doing a fair amount of them lately is things that I find I come across on ebay or some other site.

And, you know, I buy them thinking I think I can make a story out of this, but I'm never sure because, you know, I don't.

A lot of times, you know, it's like.

Like this.

Right?

And it's actually a really cool brochure, but it's one of those things like, you don't even think about anymore.

Right?

But at the time, you know, home movies were still fairly new, and, you know, I mean, motion pictures, you know, to go to.

To the local yator, you know, that started in, say, the 20s, right?

So anyways, you know, movie technology advanced and, you know, by the late 40s, early 50s, you could buy a movie camera and, you know, take your own movies.

And so one of the things that I really enjoyed about this was just in reading this brochure, so it's 16 page brochure.

Then I found a couple of other, like newspaper articles.

And, and then, you know, there were magazines at the time devoted to, you know, home movie hobbyists.

But one of the things that I just hadn't thought about was that back then, people who took home movies oftentimes would edit these movies and put together.

It was like they were doing a travelogue or a newsreel, right?

And it.

So it's not all that different from what people do on TikTok or something today.

You know, they're gonna grab.

They're going to film a bunch of stuff and put together a story that.

Of whatever they're telling a story about.

But back then, you know, you were doing it with movie film.

Right?

So.

And like, you know, back in my early days, I was a graduate assistant at a football program.

One of, one of my duties was to splice together like every, you know, films of every time we ran this play in the year, I, you know, cut the film apart and spliced it all together so they could watch every, you know, if you wanted to look at this play, every time we ran that play, boom, you know, it was available.

So I know how that splicing process worked and to just educate the, the listener or viewer.

You know, basically when you needed this little contraption that it kind of was similar to a stapler or something, but it, you'd cut the, the film on either side and it would leave the.

It was like a jigsaw puzzle piece, you know, where there was like the kind of the male side and the female side and you know, and then you, you had the special tape that would, you'd then put around it to keep the thing together anyways, so these home hobbyists were doing the same thing.

And so a lot of this brochure describes how to focus properly.

And you know, back then, you know, if you wanted to focus, you were doing it the old fashioned way.

There were no buttons to auto.

There was no autofocus.

There was no little button that zoomed in and out.

You focused by turning the dial right, or more often, you had to swap the lens.

Right.

If you were doing a close up, you had one lens, but if you're doing something across field, you had to swap the lens.

And so some of the cameras had a little pivoting like a Turnstile kind of thing where you could swap among the three lenses.

So anyways, so it provided advice, but like taking pictures of the scoreboard to show how the game was progressing.

Pennants show, you know, pictures of the crowd and concession stands, you know, whatever.

So it's just kind of funny that, you know, and.

And at the time, depending on the camera that you had, you.

You either got like two minutes of film or four minutes of film.

So, you know, like now, you know, it's sitting there with your camera.

It's just like, you know, you can film forever.

Right.

But so they were work.

They were more constrained, you know, before they had to swap out the film.

So anyways, just crazy stuff like that.

And yet, you know, so the other.

The other side of it.

So, you know, number one, it's just kind of funny that there were hobbyists who were all into editing these films.

But the other thing that's actually disappointing is, you know, in the tidbit, I compared it to the RPPC's real photo postcards.

And so if you have a photograph or an rppc, that grandma or great grandma or great, great grandma stuck in a photo album, if somebody finds that photo album in the attic and they pull it out, they need no other technology to look at that picture.

There it is.

You can see this picture.

And yeah, it's either.

It's either cool picture, it's ugly, you know, it's overexposed, whatever, there it is.

If it's still in, you know, in decent shape, in order to view it, you need a movie camera, right?

So, you know, I'm guessing a lot of people got, you know, have found films in the attic and tossed them away, you know, and I know you can send them into places and they'll, you know, they'll run them and give you a, you know, used to be a videotape, but, you know, now, you know, whatever, you know, some kind of electronic, you know, version of the same movie, but, you know, and, you know, here and there, you know, I did some searching.

There's a couple of places, like universities that have like, home movie collections and they digitize home movies.

But, you know, I'm guessing most of them have just been tossed, you know, just like the old, you know, the, you know, my great aunt and grandma used to go on these trips all over the place and they'd come back and show us their slideshow of, you know, the time they went to Norway or whatever, wherever it was.

And, you know, a lot of that stuff just got tossed, you know, because people don't have, you know, they just don't have the technology to.

To view them properly.

Right.

You know, I'm gonna do my public service work here.

Now, you.

You mentioned that you can send them in.

I.

I guess it was like the year before the COVID hit.

There's a.

Some people here, local in town.

I don't know if they still do it, but they had a place where you would just take it to their house.

My family, we had a bunch of slides, a bunch of movies, you know, 8 millimeter movies from 50s, 60s, early 70s.

And so I took them in because I'm sort of the family archivist.

But my dad's like, all right, we can never watch these things.

So one year for Christmas, I went.

I stole them all out of his house.

And he was kind of pissed because he, you know, figured out like a week after that, he's like, going, hey, where the hell is all those tapes?

I said, don't worry about it.

And so he was on to me a little bit.

But I got all digitized and we put them on, you know, jump drives, and I burned some in a DVD so he could watch because he would never figure out jump drive.

And we watched them, and it's the greatest thing that you can sit there and watch your.

I'm watching my grandparents when they're young people, and I'm watching myself as a baby, and my dad is a kid.

It's really neat to have that you have it forever now, so I highly recommend it.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, and I.

I know their services, you know, you can send them off to and they do them wherever they do them in the world.

But I'm just guessing a lot of people don't do what you did, so good for you that.

That you did.

I was nervous.

Do you have any of your high school football films?

No, I didn't play football in high school.

I thought you did.

Okay.

No, no, I was.

I was a little bit too small to do it.

I.

You know, I.

I graduated with a guy named Mark Stepnoski who ended up being the center for the Cowboys in the 90s.

You know, Troy Aikman, center.

And you started as a freshman.

I.

I was 130 pounds.

I would have got killed in this.

I.

I played soccer, but I played.

I played when I was a little younger.

I played middle school football, but, yeah, I didn't.

I.

I regret that.

I wish I would have, but I did not.

But how about you?

You have your.

Do you have your high school?

No, you know, I kind of in.

In the.

That's one of the things that, you know, I said in the.

In the.

And the tidbit was just like, you know, I mean, we would watch the film, you know, we had game film, and we'd watch it, you know, each week.

But then whatever happened to all that stuff?

I have no idea.

But, you know, I.

I don't have it.

And by, you know, VCRS and, you know, camcorders weren't on the market yet, you know, when I was in my ute.

So.

Whereas my younger brothers, they, you know, they've got some of that stuff, but, you know, it's just, you know, just kind of where you were, you know, age wise.

Yeah.

Now you.

They have it.

Well, at least they did.

How we.

How we were positioned and things like that was educational for officiating.

And they had this site that everybody was joining called Huddle.

H U D L.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And they had everybody's game film on or you could watch, you know, came from Arkansas if you wanted to, if you're a member of.

Was kind of neat.

So I think now they're preserved a lot better.

Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, for me, like, I'm a big fan of our ppc, so I'm glad that those were preserved.

Right.

I don't think I have ever seen a home movie of somebody playing football.

So, you know, maybe.

Maybe they.

Maybe there weren't that many of them.

But I'm get, you know, if I'm.

Yeah, I.

I was doing some research.

I was doing the Rose bowl series we did a couple years ago.

You helped me on, and I was trying to find some footage of the Rose bowl and there was a whole movie public domain on.

On Wikimedia Commons.

And so I'm going there, I'm like, oh, this is Rose bowl coverage.

But they're showing the pre.

They're showing like this.

Some of the stadium, like before the game there.

There's no game film showing people in the stands.

Nothing on the.

No game film at all.

But it was still kind of neat to watch, you know, some of the pageantry of.

That's kind of cool.

But.

Well, like I mentioned in the tidbit, too, like the zer.

Film of K.

Kennedy being assassinated, that was on a Bill and hall camera, you know.

Oh, okay.

Just a home movie hobbyist who happened to be filming as the president, you know, drove by, you know, so, you know, now that's obviously been preserved, but.

Right.

Yeah.

Been maybe overly preserved film.

So.

Yeah.

So anyways, I mean, it's just, you know, you know, the home movie hobbyists at the time were probably, you know, something on the.

They probably had to have a little bit of money and they were, you know, some kind of early adopter geek.

Right.

Because, you know, they were doing.

Dealing with a new tech, you know, a relatively new consumer technology.

So they probably had a cool TV set at home, too.

You know, they're probably into that kind of stuff.

So.

Yeah, I know my.

My dad got into it when he was in the service because he said there's so much downtime and they had all kinds of extra money and they were, you know, he was in Okinawa, so there's all kinds of great Japanese technology over there.

He's.

That's what he started doing.

He bought cameras and stuff and filmed guys on base, you know, throwing a Frisbee or whatever, and just starts goofing around with it.

So I guess probably a lot of servicemen probably did that.

The fill in some of the time voids they had.

Yeah.

Cameras and watches.

Most servicemen ended up with one or the other.

Right, right.

But, Tim, this is another instance where you come up with some great stories and share some great history and preserve it surrounding the game of football, but not maybe directly into the game of football.

Maybe some pop culture mixed in.

And you do this a lot with your tidbits and maybe you could share with the listeners where they can partake in some of your tidbits.

Yeah.

You know, footballarchaeology.com is my site.

It's our site, blog, newsletter.

It's on Substack.

So go there, subscribe and, you know, if you'd rather you can just find the site, bookmark it and go there, you know, kind of whenever, whenever you're interested.

And then I also, I'm also on Blue sky.

And so, you know, every time that I post something new, you can find it on bluesky.

But if you subscribe, you just get an email in your inbox each time I subscribe.

So that's kind of the easiest thing, if that's what you want.

All right, Tim, we definitely appreciate you doing this and preserving the history, and we enjoy having you on here each Tuesday.

And we'd love to talk to you again next Tuesday about some more great football history.

Very good.

Look forward to it.

That's all the football history we have today, folks.

Join us back tomorrow for more of your football history.

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