The BOATMAN - filmed 1973 - Gloucester Docks

Gloucester 1973.
Tony Jones with Motor boat "COMET" and Butty "ASH", moored on Baker's Quay. COMET had been swept out and planks were in place for passenger seating.
ASH and another butty held loads of Midlands coal, and Ian Kemp can be seen bagging up.
Tony had just started to run pleasure trips on COMET, at a time when there was no leisure development around the docks apart from private vessels moored in the Victoria basin and the Barge arm.
Kodak had just introduced direct sound recording to Super 8mm film, and this was recorded on a Bealieu direct sound cine camera. Those first Super 8 sound film cartridges only had one edge of the film striped.
Apart from a very long microphone extension lead, and knowing that the one second displacement between sound recording head and film gate would give problems when editing, with John Kerry filming, we knew that the visuals would be fine. However, we were on a learning curve. Unless we ensured there was a minimum of one second recording before and after recorded speech or sound effects, there would be losses when attempting to edit the film, because we had no means at that time of "laying off" the audio and replacing it after edit.
Audiences of the day seemed to find it strange to listen to "live" speech, especially in a documentary style amateur film. Amusingly Tony had the cabin stove burning, and it became very smoky just as one of the shots was being filmed. The film was never entered into any competitions because of the audience reaction, but I am so glad that we attempted it, and that it still survives.
Look out for the timber yards and the grain silo.
I have replaced the original titles to be in a style of a well known TV drama of the day, the style of which we had originally copied, and I have replaced them with inserted black and white titles. There has been a lot of work using software to improve the audio quality from that tiny 47 year old magnetic stripe.
We had great fun that Saturday, and the Fish & Chips near Spa lights were excellent.

[@markobrien1793]

Wow! so great to see Tony as a young 'un, still has that great enthusiasm that he shares with us on the cut!