Mining for MOVIES: Youtube GOLD

One night bored with Trump trash on CNN, I googled a movie I love: 'The 39 Steps', and '1939', 'movie', 'youtube'. A whole bunch of little boxes with a scene from the movie, the title, and the lengths popped up on the screen. Some were short previews, others were the whole movie. I clicked one. Pay-dirt.  And a sidebar of other choices. I watched this early Hitchcock movie with a glass of wine. And thought, WOW, I can see this again and again... After that, I found a whole slew of my favorite Hitchcock's, including 'Rear Window'.  When it got up to a triple-feature day, I thought it was time for rehab.

Searching for "Alfred Hitchkock"

Netflix and other sites have huge film choices, so I joined. Everyone told me I could find anything I wanted. Wrong. Most of my searches came back with 'alternatives'. I finally discovered that these film sites don't have licensing agreements with every country.That was my problem. I went back to youtube.  I don't always find what I want. Sometimes I try over and over to get a movie. And suddenly it turns up on the sidebar. But it's fun to search. Sometimes you stumble on a winner. Camilla (the shark) says if you want to work in media you have to watch all sorts of movies, documentaries, videos. Amazing to see the technical progress made between 1930 and 1935. I showed Erkki one scene from an English movie: 'Storm in a Teacup' (1937, Vivienne Leigh, Rex Harrison):  a horde of about 500 different breeds of adorable dogs invade a posh dinner party. They create incredible playful chaos for several minutes.  The human actors are helpless victims are helpless. I wondered how they could stay in character. And how the crew pulled it off. I love this scene. Even Erkki, who can do all sorts of computer manipulation, was impressed.

Now we're working on a new project: we plan to use film clips that are in the public domain. I found out a lot of new-ish movies available because they failed to renew copyrights.  When hen I search by genre, I get a list from A to Z. For most tech-savvy users this must sound like first grade ABCs. Or even kindergarten.  But for me who bangs away on my mac and gets into a mess, it's practically a bloody miracle.  By a lucky stroke, I learned how to find film (some classics) from the Golden Age (mid-thirties – mid-fifties).  And make new videos out of old movies. EUREKA!

Source: Youtube

Next week: ROBOT WARS; San Francisco Strikes Back