Quoting from PS News Edition Number 540. Updated Tuesday 28 February 2017. http://www.psnews.com.au/aps/540/news/archive-skills-bring-film-to-life?utm_source=aps540&utm_medium=email&utm_content=news1&utm_campaign=newsletter_aps
Archive skills bring film to life
The ingenuity and skills of staff at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) in Canberra have resurrected a rare “Kinora” film of two famous cricketers in 1901.
The staff were required to build a special device to be able to view the rare footage of K.S. Ranjitsinhji and C.B. Fry, and then digitise and publish it.
According to the NFSA, this involved photographing all 465 frames in the reel to create a 19-second film showing the cricketers (who played for Sussex and England in the early 1900s) in action for the first time in more than 100 years.
Rare cricketing footage resurrected.
It said the footage was taken in Hove, England, and the reel was recently donated to the NFSA by cricket historian Glenn Gibson.
It said Kinora was the world’s first home movie entertainment system and followed the same principle as a flip book: a reel with a series of photographic images was placed in a player and, by turning the crank handle, the images were displayed one after another, creating the illusion of movement.
It said that as the image was not projected; viewing was limited to one person or a small group.
Curator at NFSA, Jeff Wray said the Archive did not have any Kinora players, which were now very rare.
“Our conservation team suggested adapting a film winder to replicate the original Kinora mechanism, and a metal ruler to hold the images so they could flick through the reel without damaging them,” Mr Wray said.
“Our custom-made machine allowed the reel to be viewed, and held the images in place to be photographed, one by one.”
He said the custom-made device would be used to digitise the six remaining Kinora reels in the NFSA collection, which dealt with various subjects, such as a woman dancing, the launching of a lifeboat and a man reacting while reading a letter.
The 2-minutes of silent footage that resulted from the NFSA’s ingenuity can be accessed at this PS News link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8rtdLeKico
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