Guest Column: The Silver Screen Beckons You, and Your Family Films, on Home Movie Day

Come Oct. 16, all over the world, would-be movie stars will have their day as their rapidly disintegrating 8mm and 16mm treasures are run through creaky old projectors one last time for the benefit of posterity.

Since 2002, Home Movie Day has been entertaining home movie buffs and the merely curious alike. The PFA in Berkeley has put out a special call for Albany submissions, because the city has been underrepresented in the event in the past.

Organizers encourage participants to submit films by Aug. 31 so they can be featured in a curated section at the beginning of the lengthy event. Participants can also bring movies on the date of the show. Any home movies are allowed, but this year's themes are travel and the Bay Area. The submission form can be downloaded here.

Last year's Home Movie Day was a festive event, with about 60 in attendance at the PFA. The theme was holidays and Kodachrome. The wonderful non-fading quality of Kodachrome vividly brought to life scenes of holidays past. A microphone was passed around as each person narrated his or her film.

The curated part of the show included a customized soundtrack. The non-curated part was more diverse, including a narrated black-and-white tour through Egypt in the 1950s. Throughout the show, prizes were awarded. Several free "transfer to video" certificates valued at $100 or more were handed out. I won several free passes to the PFA by correctly answering the year that Kodachrome was introduced (1935).

One purpose of Home Move Day is to remind the public that older acetate film stock, made prior to the 1960s, will disintegrate. To preserve them, it's important to transfer these films to a more stable medium such as DVD, starting at $60, or VHS, from $40, when done by commercial services. It's also possible to do quality transfers yourself if you have a TV camera (or webcam) and a variable speed projector.

How can you tell if you need to make the switch? Take out your reels and sniff the film. If you smell vinegar (acetic acid), disintegration is under way. Click here for more information about film preservation.

There is a catch to all this: Because technology evolves so rapidly, you may not have access to a working VHS player 10 years from now or a working DVD player 20 years from now. Aside from the stability of the film base, the film format itself is likely to remain the most accessible over the coming decades. Until the film itself is no longer playable, it should be retained along with the VHS and DVD copies.

My approach is to keep both formats and upload some home movie excerpts to my Youtube account to make them easily accessible to family members and provide extra backup at no cost, in case my copies get destroyed. Individual Youtube uploads are limited to 10 minutes each, but there is no limit to the number of uploads. Youtube uploads can be as private or as public as you wish.

With digital editing before uploading, an otherwise boring or repetitive movie can even be fun for strangers to view. If you decide to make your home movies available on Youtube, give us a link in the comments section below.

And come to home movie day on Oct. 16 and share your memories on the big screen.