Family

Cave Video Archive

Posted 2013-12-27

I need your help!

The following videos were digitized from many reels of 8mm film taken mainly by my father, Ellis Cave Sr., though some were taken by my mother Camilla, and my grandfather Claud.

I also have many more reels taken by my grandfather of their world travels in the 1930's and 40's, as well as more films of Kathie's kids. Those are planned for a subsequent project.

The current videos are organized and sequenced roughly into four categories: my birthdays starting from number two in 1947, then Kathie's birthdays (my sister), then Chris' birthdays, (my brother), and finally the family Christmases. There is a total of nearly two and a half hours of film in the videos. As you will see, there are some films that are out of order, and some are not even a birthday or a Christmas. The current organization I deduced from notes on the reel boxes, which tend to be cryptic, leave out information, and are sometimes just wrong.

Because our family tended to have large birthday parties and Christmases back then, the films include shots of lots of neighbors & friends as well as most of our closer relatives. People I have spotted so far in the videos include my grandparents (Luthers & Caves), my parents, my mothers and dad's siblings (Fern (Cave) Swartz (Ellis's Sister) - including Ralph, Jack, Jill, & Nancy), Maxine (Luther) Miller (Camilla's sister) - including Nancy, Allan, & Doug, - neighbors like Judy Baker, Terry & Donnie Stevens, Tandy Steele, the Warshaws (Dona, Mark, Eric, Bill), the Eckles (Bill, Jeff, & Amy), and many, many more. See who you can recognize!

The reels of film were spliced together, digitized, and then split into 11 separate sections - a Title, nine 17.7 minute clips (I called them "reels"), and one 30-second remainder clip at the end. I have made no enhancements on the videos - what you see are the raw files digitized directly from the film.

Now that I am able to finally look at all the films (I haven't had a projector for years) it's clear that the films need to be reorganized. After reviewing them, I think it would be more useful to organize them all simply by date. For that, I will need some help from family and friends.

In addition to re-sequencing the clips in date order, I plan to edit out the blank leaders, enhance & color correct the faded parts, and perhaps even add titles and subtitles, identifying the events and the participants. I am starting this process now. My final goal will be to make one or more DVD's with the complete set of films on them, organized by date, titled, and perhaps even subtitled, to help identify people for future generations. I will make copies of these DVDs for anyone that wants one.

However, I'm not sure when some of the clips were taken, or even what the occasion was. I will need help from family and friends to help identify the events, as well as the participants. The best way to help identify and organize the films is to make notes as you watch the videos. Stop the video when you recognize the event or a person, and then make a note about what you saw and record the video time stamp where you saw it. If you only have a few comments, put your note in the YouTube comment section. Put the time stamp (Min:Sec) followed by your comment in the notes.

For Example:
Reel #1
00:00 - Skip's 2nd Birthday (Sept. 1947)
00:03 - Lynn Miller (I think)
00:28 - Skip & birthday Cake (2 candles)
00:34 - Jill & Nancy Swartz (I think)
etc.

If you want to really help organize and annotate the videos, I have placed a shared spreadsheet on Google Drive to track all the events and people in the films. Hopefully that spreadsheet will eventually become the full log of the events and people in the films, with everyone's input. I have authorized the permissions on this spreadsheet so anyone with the link can edit it. There is a separate tab (worksheet) in the spreadsheet for each film reel. The link to the spreadsheet is:

long URL:
https://docs.google.com/spread...U65Z1XvFidHppRkZCby1GLTROaT

Shortened URL:
http://tinyurl.com/CaveVid

If you see someone or something you recognize while watching, stop the video. Go to the spreadsheet and click on the appropriate tab (reel) worksheet out of the 10 reels. To insert a blank row in the spreadsheet, just click on the row number on the left of the sheet, which selects the row. Then right click on the mouse to show the context menu, and select the "insert row (above or below)" item. Make sure the row you insert is in the proper reel and time sequence. Then enter the time stamp and your your comments in the appropriate columns.

With everyone's help, This spreadsheet will eventually contain a list of all the events and many of the people in these films. When I get most of the clips and people identified, I will re-sequence and edit all the clips, and make the final DVDs.

Here are the links to each of the videos:

Title
Reel #1
Reel #2
Reel #3
Reel #4
Reel #5
Reel #6
Reel #7
Reel #8
Reel #9
Reel #10

Have fun watching the videos, and remembering those times!

December 27, 2013