Don't shoot the chauffuer

When we started researching "The Lost World of Mr Hardy" various people told us about these great old Hardy films from the 30s. Story was of how Hardy's boss 'L.R.' commandeered his chauffeur to help shoot the movies. L.R. was the star and his driver the cameraman. The story goes that the chauffeur couldn't operate the camera properly so everything is all a bit jerky and speeded up. During our edit we had a rough copy of the archive films and this seemed to the case.

However as soon as we got into our telecine suite to transfer the films to digital format, Gerry the telecineist soon sank that theory. There was nothing wrong with the films, just that they had been projected at the wrong speed for the last 50 or so years. Thinking about it, it kind of makes sense. Hardy's used to take their angling films around the country to game fairs and angling clubs. They would show the more modern 'talkies' like "To cane a trout" and "Angler's Catch" which were sound films as well as the pre-war black and white silent films. Thing is the talkies were shot at a different speed than the older films. 24 frames per second as opposed to 18. But when they projected the films together at events they would always be shown at one speed, the sound speed of 24fps otherwise they would sound odd.

Shooting the old films at the slower speed was a hangover from silent cinema days. Filmmakers at the time probably saw no reason to change from the 18fps they were used to filming at, especially as they were still making films without sound. It was only years later when the two formats were shown together that it mattered. Projecting them at a faster speed made them appear speeded up and jerky. However as Gerry the telecineist showed me, when played at the correct speed they are perfectly normal. They look great too. You will not believe the size of some of the salmon L.R. Hardy pulls out of the river Eden.