14 July 2009
Retro road trips
Posted by admin under: Audio; Photography; Video .
A rural boy at heart, living close to a big city does have some advantages and I have been fortunate to meet some great people in Bristol, including the rather unusually named group, weFCPug.
Final Cut Pro is video editing software, and, like most things created by Apple, it has a cult following. The only user group in the UK is West of England Final Cut Pro user group (weFCPug), based at the home of the BBC Natural History unit in Bristol.
weFCPug has been in existence for approaching 5 years, under the careful leadership of Richard Atherton and Phil Ashby. The group contains a fascinating range of people from diverse backgrounds including editors, producers, and videographers, all using and sharing an interest in FCP.
One of the members that I came across early on was Elliott Bristow, a warm and slightly shy personality with a fascinating web site, retroroadtrips.com Typical of his modesty, Elliott never mentioned his past, but I happened to click on the web link in his email signature one day and was totally captivated by what I found:
Old 55 to Mountains
Between 1968 and 1982, Elliott Bristow covered over 500, 000 miles around the US, initially while touring the innovative “Groove Tube’ for its creators. As he travelled, he kept a film diary of his trips, captured on consumer Super8 movie cameras.
Girls in the back of Pick-up
The footage, much of it captured as clips of just a few seconds, on the street, from moving vehicles, and from the roof of his station wagon, provides an evocative record of America as it was.
Roadside Chapel
Elliott describes his initial reason for shooting the material “It was more on the lines of feeling that in America I had come out of a movie theatre, only to find the film was still going on outside in the street.” “I bought a second hand movie camera for $120 to allow me to record this fantastic range of movie lots – to participate through filming the film.”
Acme Hotel and Greyhound
Inspired by Kerouac’s classic book ‘On the Road,’ much of the footage documents his life on the road, with passing cars, snowbound trucks and many characters. A few of the clips are shaky, many have a wonderful atmosphere and all have the nostalgic look that only Kodachrome can give, adding a dimension of its own, with saturation, grain and the slightly surreal colour typical of the stock.
Sandy in the pool
Four of the movie shorts can be previewed on the retroroadtrips.com site and despite my own lack of affection for the American dream, I was hooked from the first seconds. The combination of great composition and a beautifully matched soundtrack held me spellbound.
Elliott on the roof his station wagon
It came as little surprise to find out that some of the material was featured by the UK’s left-field Channel 4 as a series called ‘Road Dreams’, first broadcast in 1989. Hopefully they will be shown again. In the meantime, the site and the clips themselves are well worth a few minutes of anybody’s time
Elliott’s own description of the creation of the material can be found HERE.
Aidan O’Rourke’s writing about Elliott is HERE