Super 8 Stories Extra Footage: My Fair Lady








13min 01sec




Super 8



Doubleband Films


Doubleband Films, Stanley Matchett

Rights Holder

Stanley Matchett



Sections of this footage were included in the Super 8 Story, 'The Lammas Fair'. The intertitles were designed by the arist Rowel Friers.



Now a recipient of the MBE for his work in newspaper photography, Stanley Matchett was a civil engineer at the time he began to take an interest in movie making saying that the “home movies experience helped me break into professional photo journalism”. He had originally been motivated to take up movie making by “a love of the cinema. Watching how the pros made images fascinated me and I wanted to have a go myself”. Armed with a Bolex Standard 8 camera Stanley became a member of the busy YMCA Photographic Society in Belfast. Recalling the days of showing movies at home Stanley says, “A home movie show was a must every Christmas. The fact that there was no soundtrack did not seem to matter at all”. It is a tradition he sometimes repeats today but adds: “I must say, setting up the screen and projector stand can be a chore – it never was in the old days!” Nowadays Stanley has a record of his old movies on modern formats and continues to record using video cameras. “Most of the films are now transferred to VHS format, although the family still prefer the large screen. Oddly enough I do not own a video camcorder. However, I often borrow my daughter’s Panasonic which is an amazing little camera”. Stanley has a great fondness for the movies he filmed and speaks with enthusiasm for the whole process of movie making. “’The moment lives on because someone took a picture’ was an old Kodak slogan. Personal movie films go one step better by adding movement. Watching a relative on screen is much more personal than looking at a still picture. Now video cameras can add sound and the memory comes to life. It’s strange for a still photographer to say this but there is no better way of capturing a moment or an occasion than on movie – a still picture is fine, but with the addition of movement and sound there is no contest!”



