1940's video "The Alchemist in Hollywood"

[Marco B]

Hi all,

Well, the honour goes to Justin Silber for first digging it up from the Internet Archive and posting about it in 2007 here on APUG... but since I missed that post and now stumbled upon it myself, and I think it deserves renewed attention, I thought I post about it here again.

The film very nicely complements the 1958 Kodak documentary on "How film is made", and could easily have been called "How film is processed", as it shows the chemical lab processing of (cinematic) film in the 1940's. In addition, it gives insight in the chemical processes involved, and even has a number of very nice "chemistry class" experiments showing the action of some of the components of developer and fixer. Really informative!

Since the film carried a Creative Commons "Public Domain" license, I have decided to add it to my website, and in addition converted it to a more handy Flash video format and merged the two parts the original video consisted of into one video for easier viewing.

Well, here it is:
http://www.boeringa.demon.nl/menu_technic_thealchemistinhollywood.htm

In addition, there is also the nice 1943 documentary about optical sound track recording Justin tracked down. I have also added it to my website, it's here:
http://www.boeringa.demon.nl/menu_technic_soundrecording1943.htm

And two other interesting things:

Myspace historic video "How film is made"

This is an ultrashort (only 36 sec) BW historic clip showing "How film is made". There has been talk about an even older Kodak "How film is made" documentary, possibly even from the 1920's. I wonder if this is a fragment of it, or better said a summary or compressed version of it, since it seems to be a more or less ultra-short but almost finished "advertisement" style clip. It might have been the inspiration for producing the bigger 1958 color version...

And lastly this much viewed modern Discovery Channel "How camera lenses are made" doc on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7_wL0ZZi6k

Enjoy!

Marco

 

[GrantR]

Thanks for reposting this Marco--I really love these old documentaries.

 

[Marco B]

Yes, I absolutely love them too. And the one about the alchemists is really instructive too in many ways.

 

[GrantR]

I especially like at ~18:40 how the scientist uses his mouth to pipette ether, or as the movie suggests: "By the use of special apparatus."

It's also pretty hilarious that you can hear the announcer turning the page of his script.

 

[Marco B]

I couldn't help noticing that too, and remember a recently viewed film where a doctor was addicted to ether Must have been a nice job back then being an "alchemist"

 

[glaiben]

Ecellent film - thank you for archiving this!!

 

[Marco B]

Ecellent film - thank you for archiving this!!

Well, it was already archived, that why it's called the "Internet Archive" , it's just a little bit more accessible now in the Flash video format and integrated on my site.

Marco