Forgotten Silver Page #2
- Year:
- 1995
- 53 min
- 132 Views
Until now.
Colin McKenzie collection
was an astounding cinematic record.
Seen here, publicly, for the first time
is a piece of film currently being examined
by the Smithsonian Institute.
A fragment of cinema that will
forever rewrite aviation history.
Minutes before takeoff, Colin positioned
And waited.
Colin McKenzie's remarkable film contained
yet another astonishing revelation.
The man on the left has
a newspaper in his pocket.
Digital enhancement
allows us to look closer.
The Wright brothers historic flight at Kitty
Hawk was not until December 17, 1903.
Richard Pearse, a farmer from New Zealand,
had beaten the Wright brothers
into the air by nine months.
But the thing that I find really funny is,
if you examine the footage,
He's flying straight at Colin McKenzie,
who's filming it, and he
has to swerve to avoid Colin and he
crashes into the hedge.
And if Colin had not been there,
he probably would have flown a lot further
and we would've all heard about it.
His father confiscated the film.
Forbade in his dual way
the boy ever to have anything to do with
this new-fangled filmmaking ever again.
Aged only 15, Colin McKenzie
ran away from home.
New Zealand was growing
into a prosperous dominion.
Even the poorest members of society
had some leisure time.
And most of them chose
to spend it at the pictures.
Opportunities were plentiful for
enthusiastic young men like Colin.
to form the McKenzie Brothers
Picture Company.
Filming parades and weddings, the
brothers rapidly amassed a small fortune.
But Colin's dreams were more ambitious.
At 84 minutes, "The Warrior Season"
must now be acknowledged as the world's
first feature-length film.
But even more remarkably, it introduced
a revolutionary technical innovation.
By 1908, after three years of development,
Colin McKenzie had perfected a way to
record synchronized sound with pictures.
Conventional film history tells us
that Al Jolson sang in 1927
and in "Old Arizona" you could
here the sound of bacon frying.
Well, that's the late '20s. Here in 1908,
Colin McKenzie had figured out a way in
making this epic, battle-torn film
to have gun fire, to
have horses' hoof beats.
He recorded it all and it all came through.
And, most of all, he had dialogue.
He just forgot one thing:
All of his subjects talking were Chinese.
And while he figured out a way to record
It was his fatal flaw.
Audiences just walked out in droves.
They couldn't understand a word.
They were amused by the novelty
for a few minutes of hearing sound,
but then when they couldn't figure out what
anybody was saying, they just lost interest.
Disillusioned and financially crippled,
Colin abandoned his recording
experiments forever.
sound to pictures,
becoming obsessed with
the images themselves.
In late March 1911,
Colin succeeded in creating
distinct wavelengths of light.
Producing an effect very like color.
There was only one problem:
The key ingredient was photinia aquefolium, a
berry found only in the islands of Tahiti.
no time in packing their bags.
What Colin and Brooke achieved in Tahiti
was actually quite an extraordinary
feat of chemical engineering.
They take the berries, they boil them up,
they go through this complicated process
in a home-built laboratory
under the palm trees.
It takes him four and a half months
to produce 22 seconds of film.
Full of anticipation, Colin immediately
embarked on a test.
In this astonishing footage,
Colin trains his lens on a
colorful tropical scene.
But his carefully-composed
image is soon disrupted.
He attempts to reframe, without success.
The precious film rolls through
his camera and runs out.
Confident their technical breakthrough
the brothers raced back to New Zealand.
They quickly setup a screening for
potential investors.
But the reaction was to prove
deeply disappointing.
On June 9, 1912, they appeared before
Justice McRobey in the Dunedin High Court.
Colin and Brooke were charged with
exhibiting a lewd document.
An all male jury deliberated for 37 hours.
Requesting repeat screenings of the film
before delivering a guilty verdict.
Colin and Brooke were jailed for 6 months.
With hard labor.
Upon their release, the brothers returned
home, to their mother, in disgrace.
What seems to have happened
then is really a transition in Colin.
Up until this point in his career he had been
interested in the technicalities of filmmaking.
He'd experimented with building cameras,
with sound, with color.
And now, really for the
first time, I think.
the artistic uses of film.
He wanted to produce, on film, something
that was going to have a message for people.
And he turned to the source
of all great messages.
Colin became fascinated by one
Bible story in particular.
Soon he announced his intention to
make a 20 minute film
based on the tale of
Salome and John the Baptist.
Colin's adaptation was
loose and imaginative.
Colin himself took the role of the Baptist.
Brooke was chosen to play Narraboth,
Herod's handsome captain of guards.
Colin's biggest problem was finding
had been warned off
by their fathers, outraged by the
scandal he'd been involved in.
And the girls who did show up
were certainly not suitable.
And then.
He saw Maybelle.
She took his breath away.
Even before he realized what was happening,
Colin was in love.
He told no one of his feelings.
Maybelle proved to be an excellent actress.
Brooke was electric.
They lit up the screen.
Besotted with Maybelle, Colin moved his
camera nearer and nearer to her.
In the process, he invented the close-up.
But no matter how close he got,
Colin failed to see what had developed
right under his nose.
Brooke and Maybelle had
genuinely fallen in love.
Concealing his bitterness, Colin toasted
the happy couple and wished them well.
But a few days later, on the pretext of
exhaustion,
he suspended filming.
The adjournment was to last
longer than anyone expected.
led to a huge outpouring
colonies of the British empire.
You men rushed to enlist, eager to do their
bit for King and country.
Amongst them was Brooke McKenzie.
He and Maybelle had been married
only three weeks when he joined up.
Colin tried to enlist too, but he
had flat feet and was classified unfit.
He farewelled his brother
with a heavy heart.
Brooke McKenzie was part of the first
New Zealand expeditionary force
that landed at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.
He came armed not only with a rifle,
but a lightweight camera, built by Colin.
Here, seen for the very first time,
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"Forgotten Silver" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 18 Nov. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/forgotten_silver_8449>.
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