1953 Kiddy Kaper Parade Home Movie

About a year or so ago, my half-brother Dan McCormick (I really don't like referring to him as half brother so he will just be brother Dan as well as half brother Glen Shipley will just be Glen) and I began the process of digitizing all the old 8mm home movies taken by Parents Glen Shipley and Bernice Hornbeck McCormick Shipley back in the days of yore!!!! (Yore was even very young at that time.)

A little history might be of interest at this point. These movie reels were in a box kept in Neeces closet here at the old Willow Street homestead. During the 70's and 80's we would occasionally pull them out along with the movie projector and screen that Mom had and would watch these little snippets of family lore. in 1977 I even managed to make a cassette tape recording of Neece narrating one of the earliest home movies. The intent was to have each home movie narrated so that we could watch and listen but that entire project never materialized. I transferred the 8mm to video cassette format in the 90's and just recently threw away the device used for that purpose. Of course video format went the way of the 8mm with the advent of the electronic revolution. The original film itself was decaying, so we decided something needed to be done.

I sent all the film to Dan and he contracted with a professional digitizing company to do the work. The bottom line is that Dan and I and Glen now have external hard drives (there is digitized phrase for you) containing all the raw film footage converted to digital output. The wonderful part of this whole thing is we (well Dan so far) can edit and add and do all kinds of fun stuff with the film. I haven't even figured out how to plug the hard drive into my existing computer yet, so it is just sitting here on my desk awaiting the TLC of my genius computer kids and their spouses when they arrive for Family Reunion in July. In the meantime, here is a wonderful remembrance of the 1953 Kiddy Kaper Parade complete with a one and half year old 'dufus' me and my two brothers as pirates of the Caribbean before Johnny Depp was even around. Brother Dan just posted this on his facebook page and also on youtube. Way to go brother Dan. This is really cool stuff. More is to come as he is going to dub Neeces narration from the cassette tape onto the digitized version of the film reel she narrated. Enjoy.