This film is part of Free

Camping Holiday at Sennen

Steady now as handheld captures camping holiday

Home movie 1968 1 mins Silent

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Overview

A couple capture their annual August holiday, airing the sleeping-bags, cleaning teeth and packing up in a field near Sennen, Cornwall. This film has the feeling of end, end of camping, end of a holiday, end of the film roll in the camera. The home movie maker would film all holidays providing a staple diet of projections through the winter months but the end of a summer holiday would coincide with the necessity to finish the film reel so it could be sent off for development.

Cameras were becoming lighter and easier to carry and although this is shot on what became to be considered as the semi-professional format of 16mm, it became easier to take a camera on holiday or camping for example. There would be no complete guarantee of how a film may turn out lighting-wise or sequence-wise, there was no luxury of the professional filmmaker's evening dailies where all the day's rushes could be checked and recaptured if necessary, holiday filmmaking is a one-take wonder and down to the real-time eye of the home movie maker.