Yawn.
Daily Telegraph
by Martin Evans:
A new website dubbed the silver surfers' YouTube is offering people the chance to put their home movies online.
Reelintime.com, backed by the leading director Sir Alan Parker, allows users to convert their old cine film and VHS tapes to a digital format and upload them to a website.
The films will be placed in an online archive, organised by date, location and theme.
They will be available for anyone to view in a similar way to YouTube. The team behind the website believes it will help to plot a fascinating cultural and social map of Britain in the pre-digital age.
They are also hoping that priceless footage of historic events in the nation's past will be unearthed.
The project has won the endorsement of Sir Alan, the director of films such as THE COMMITMENTS and FAME, who said it promised to shine a light on a fascinating period of Britain's social history.
He said: "There is an element of clumsiness and vulnerability about home movies which lends to a raw honesty. People reveal so much more about themselves than they do in photographs, which are usually posed and therefore a little false. Film tends to strip away the pretence and portray people in their natural state."
Sir Alan also believes it could prove useful to the film industry as a reference tool.
"If the archive takes off it could be invaluable to film makers and researchers," he said. "For instance if l am doing a movie set in the 1950s about a particular community and I want to get an accurate picture of clothes, hairstyles, make-up from that period, what better way than to look at footage from home movies?"
Georgie Roberts, one of those behind the venture, said: "Reelintime.com allows people to revisit all their old movie clips which may have been lying around in attics and cupboards for decades.
"For a small fee we will convert any old movie format to digital and will then put them up on the website."
It is hoped the service and website will eventually be launched internationally.
Will it be a free service though?