!HERITAGE!

Film, it seems, is a threatened medium. Like most of the things we use it relies on industry to keep producing the basic materials, which they have done in film for over a century to a fabulously high and ever improving standard.

Unfortunately for those of us who love this format commercial and practical interests have moved on and the corporations that gave us incredible films, cameras and postproduction equipment and services are no longer finding it easy to make ends meet and many can no longer continue production.

Film probably won't disappear completely for a really long time, but it is going through a transition from industrial, mass production into some kind of niche, cottage industry scale. It will continue to be supported by those who still need/want to use film - archives, institutions, picky directors and DOPs, and those for whom economics and practicalities aren't neccessarily their first concern - amatuers and artists.

Thus Film Bee have become the keepers of some photo-chemical media Heritage! Our lab is like a steam engine restored and kept by amateurs bringing pleasure and learning to those curious enough to step onto the footplate of film.

With this in mind we are applying to the Heritage Lottery Fund to get a grant so that we can step up and make all our machines run nicely and teach the world about how media used to be made. On these pages we'll talk about some of the machines and processes we want to restore and preserve. We still have a lot of research and work to be done in this department, it's an ongoing project. If you want to help please get in touch.

Bell and Howell, model 607 J continuous printer

This was the standard Printer for motion picture films until grading was automated and programmable with the introduction of the model C. This is a restoation project for us. We've cleaned it and stripped it for rewiring, the lamphouse needs a lot of attention and we need to have a new pressure roller made. After that it will be working and we will need to decide whether to restore the system which detects splices and gives instruction to the operator about the light value of the next scene. some of those parts are missing so we'll need to track some down or re-manufacture those. Luckily there are already experts out there like Brian R Pritchard to call on for help.