Me applying sound stripe to films: reimagined by Google Flow / Nano Banana
Tuesday 5 October 1976 – Back to work. Got stripe adhesive. TV Dick Emery.
Wednesday 6 October 1976 – CCF good. More striping. All OK.
Thursday 7 October 1976 – Photography good. Finished striping. All OK.
Friday 8 October 1976 – All OK. Sounded a film. TV T+J [Tom & Jerry], Sci-FI TV Film The End Of The Earth [When Worlds Collide] / The Good Life.
I had been waiting excitedly, and most probably without patience, for dad to get a supply of stripe adhesive. This was the stuff you needed to apply to the side of a roll of exposed film, via a hand driven gadget, along with a spool of thin magnetic tape, in order to add a sound track to a home cine film.
Young people today (50 years later) shooting sound video on their phones don’t know they’re born.
It looks as though I spent best part of three evenings applying stripe, with the help of the freshly-arrived adhesive, to the stock of family cine that had not previously had sound tracks applied to them.
I then experimented with one of the family cine films in the matter of adding some sound. I’m not 100% sure that it was this one, but my parent’s visit to Spain in 1960 was certainly in that batch that I striped up in that first batch of mine and the music I added when I “sounded a film” for the first time:
Saturday 9 October 1976 – Graham ‘noon. Sounded Basher Rasher. TV Two Ronnies.
Ah, the historic moment that our Basher Rasher soundtrack joined the moving images for which it had been recorded. Here’s the very soundtrack:
Sunday 10 October 1976 – Sounding & printing. TV Fawlty Towers, Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais
Monday 11 October 1976 – Hardish day. TV George & Mildred, I Claudius.
I Claudius was “appointment to view” stuff in our household. Strangely, fifty years later, having recently learned of Patrick Stewart’s demise, I ascertain that 11 October 1976 was the first broadcast of his first appearance as Sejanus in I Claudius (Episode 4) – click here to watch if/when available.
Tuesday 12 October 1976 – V.S.O. v good. TV Dick Emery.
Wednesday 13 October 1976 – Chapple. C.C.F. (on range) good. TV Carry on Cabbie, Benny Hill.
Thursday 14 October 1976 – [Water] Polo good. Photography great. Sounded Cruise TV Lebanon. N.U.T.S.
Here’s the filum I sounded that night. Again, the soundtrack on the digitised video is the same/similar music from memory.
Friday 15 October 1976 – All OK. TV T+J [Tom & Jerry], Sci Fi film (Dying Planet), The Good Life.
Saturday 16 October 1976 – Daddy Hasan Bereshit. Party went well.
Sunday 17 October 1976 – Shule morning. Celebrity Squares, What a Way to Go!
“Hasan Bereshit” is a synagogue honour for the festival of Simchat Torah – the celebration of the law. It marks the end of the cycle of reading the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) in (mostly) weekly readings in the synagogue, equivalent to lectionaries in the Christian Church. On Simchat Torah, one honoured congregant, Hasan Torah, reads the very last bit of Deuteronomy; then the other, Hasan Bereshit, reads the “In the beginning…” bit of Genesis. Uncle Manny would have been Hasan Torah the year dad was Hasan Bereshit.
I doubt if they took it too seriously. Bolingbroke Grove synagogue must have been desperate by 1976.
Monday 18 October 1976 – Hard, hard day. TV Dave Allen, I Claudius.
Tuesday 19 October 1976 – V.S.O. good. TV Dick Emery, Mastermind, Goodies + String.
Ah yes, the String episode of The Goodies. This will come back to haunt you, dear reader, if you persevere until the House Music Competition a bit later that academic year:
Wednesday 20 October 1976 – C.C.F. good. TV Carry on Cruising. Mum & dad went out. Andrew came for couple of hours.
Thursday 21 October 1976 – Swimming good. Photography. TV Kojak, N.V.T.S.
Friday 22 October 1976 – Went to Pirbright. Didn’t get home till 19:30. Was soaked to the skin. TV Good Life.
I suspect that the Pirbright soaking incident is the CCF training day when we signals corps folks were supposed to be providing communications for some army exercise or another. We struggled to make any of the equipment work and primarily succeeded in getting utterly soaked on a soaking wet day. We might have managed to pick up a signal from Radio Caroline – that was the thing we did best in the Signals hut back at base.
I have asked Google Flow / Nano Banana 2.1 to reimagine the scene for us, based on my orders.
