BaMMOT ON FILM
Getting into my loft needs a number of things: guile, agility, a crash hat, ladders and a big stick. The problem that I have is when I get into the loft I hope not to see the bogeyman that lives there. I have never seen or heard him but I know he lives there. Having switched the loft light on the bogeyman runs away as usual, a search is then started. My search is for a Super 8 film of the site that I took between 1978 and 1981(?). I know it is in the loft and with the few remaining brain cells that I have in my memory, I know that "Site Film 6" (for it is called that) of the site has gone on the missing list, because all the other films that I have of the site have been converted to VHS video, and that "Site Film 6" has to be in the loft. Of course it may have slipped into the space-time continuum, but that is another story.
In the loft I walk around like someone trying not to step on something nasty. The search is not methodical, and is more like a bull in a china shop, but I do find the film, or rather films, as I came across a film marked "site film left out". For one reason or other this film has never been seen in public; it certainly has not been seen by me for some twenty years. Later, using an old hand cranked editor (he sends his thanks by the way), I see that the film is of BaMMOT collecting the Morris Imperial, sometime in the 1980s. In the film it is persisting down with rain and everyone on the film has the look of a drowned rat and the Matador used to tow the bus up the steep incline, cannot cope with the load of the bus so that we have to pulled up the lane with a Massey Ferguson excavator. Thus you see the towing vehicle being towed up the incline. Also on the film is one of moments I am very pleased to have got on film; it is when we get back from the Weymouth Bus Rally to find that the first few pieces of steelwork have gone up. This marked the start of the erection of the first building on site. I always think that this is one of those moments in BaMMOT’s history when the stumbling steps became a giant leap.
It comes as no surprise to me that the film exists at all because only the other day I was sitting watching a video of the site that I had taken and yet have no memory of taking the film and yet I can hear my voice on the film, and I can see people like Peter Murphy, and Lewis Giddings and others telling me what I can do with my camera, and they were really nasty to me (small tear forms in left eye, wipes snotty nose on sleeve, takes hanky out of pocket and blows nose).
It has to be said that when I view the films that I took of the site, that BaMMOT has come a long way since I first started filming in about 1978. For those who have not seen the films, one of the first things you see is, well, nothing really; no buildings, one or two vehicles in a huddle in one corner of the site there is a caravan, the CKO towing lorry, the Hawley’s electric bread van, and a D7 towing vehicle that we are stripping for spares. Later in the films we see the concrete foundations of the present buildings. In those now long lost forgotten days the early films were silent and I only had two minutes of film to shoot; if anything happened while I was changing the film over it was lost for ever. The film came in a cassette and you shot the film then put the cassette into a yellow package. You then posted the package to Kodak and about a week later if you were lucky you got the package back with the film developed. I think in all the years that I used Super 8 film they only lost one film. I still have one of the packages.
Of course the real fun would start with splicing the film. For this I would try to join two small pieces of Super 8 film with an even smaller piece of Sellotape, then running the film and finding that one of the films I had joined runs backwards, at the same time as getting small pieces of Sellotape from certain orifices. Oh, what joy! Mind you, things have not really changed; these days I sit squinting in front of a computer wondering if I can cut a scene, or if I should leave it in. I was asked the other day who the films were aimed at and who would enjoy them. I can only reply using the words of Harvey Andrews, a respected Birmingham singest about his songs, "Some will love them, others will hate them but I just hope that some will rate them."
In latter years I did get around to sound Super 8 film, but the tiresome job of joining the film was the same, and then came video (big fanfare here). With video there was no sending film away in the hope that you got it back, but the downside was that I could not edit the film I shot. This might explain the fact that it has taken me nearly fourteen years to edit the film. Honestly, it has only been this year that I have shown the stuff I videoed between 1991 and 1996, but as yet I have not shown the edited version. At this rate the stuff I am videoing on site today should be ready for 2018! The other downside is that the “Video 8” format I bought in the 1990s was soon obsolete, but fear not brave reader, I have now gone digital. This involved the use of a rubber glove and a pair of tweezers and the use of my credit card; that is what the man at the shop told me.
One of the problems with re-editing film is that it does tend to raise more questions than it answers. Things like "Who is that bloke? Why are we doing that? What year did we do that?" and "Did we really scrap that bus?" Many of the questions have now been answered between Peter Murphy, the font of all site knowledge, and Andrew Gardner, who is just a font, so that when I edit the old films I can add information to it. The stuff that I shot in the 1990s is more of a problem in that it went into a box but sadly I did not put a date on the film when it was shot, so that in the box all the videos got "muxed up". The videos were then converted to VHS only to come back even more "muxed up". For me to "unmux" the film would take just too long but there is a basic thread in the film and that is "a nice bunch of loonies preserving buses". One of the other problems in editing the films is that when you look at the film and see the people on the film and then see the same people in the flesh some years later, so to speak, they have changed a more than a little. To see young fresh-faced people on the film, but to see them in the flesh and a lot older comes as a shock!
Because I did not get the Super 8 film camera till some time in 1978 I was unable to film the site before this date, but I did have my trusted stills camera, so that using the stills of the site in the very early days, this a time before we have put the fence up and when the John Deere was clearing the site, and before a vehicle was on site, I can now show what the site looked like Using the software on my computer, the photos of the site and the films of the site, hopefully the films show a history of BaMMOT that will be enjoyed in the future. I also would like to take this opportunity to give my heartfelt thanks to all the people that have appeared in the site films in the past and present day. If I wore a hat I would take it off to you all.
Robert Deloyde
Postscript:-
I am starting to record digital videos of anyone connected with the bus industry, like bus drivers and conductors, etc., etc., from any operator. This is separate from the day-to-day video recording of the Museum site. The aim is to get stories, memories and the like on video, which will then pass into BaMMOT’s Archive for future generations. If it is not done now it will be too late.
If anyone is interested in taking part, or can recommend someone who might wish to be interviewed, I can be contacted through the Museum.
I already have a shortlist of people to get on film and hope to start in mid-June. Because we can never remember everything it will probably require more than one recording session. If it all goes pear-shaped, then the bloke to blame is Dave Taylor as it was his idea in the first place!
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