As the title indicates, MEMC was formed in the days when making amateur movies meant a small movie camera with a wind up spring motor to drive the film through the machine! The film was black and white, or Kodachrome, and it came in 25 foot reels made from professional 16 millimetre film with extra sprocket holes punched on each side. When 25 feet had been used up, one went into darkish corner (if you could find one!) opened the camera, and reversed the film so it would run in the other direction back to the beginning. Of course this meant that the outer layer of film was light struck - the opacity of the top layer protected the rest of the film!

Then it was sent to Kodak or a processing laboratory, who developed the film on 16 mm equipment,cut off the blackened film end and split it in half down the middle, wound it onto a 50 ft reel, and there you were! Film was expensive - no reuse like magnetic tape - so you made every second count. Editing required scissors and glue to rejoin the cut film in the right order! Sound on film came much, much later, after a dedicated 8 mm film in 50 ft cassettes appeared, called 'Super 8'.

Our club has a tradition which arose out of those days, when members made all sorts of gear, helped each other, made group films for fun, and had fun doing it.

With digital gear now available, much of the fun of those early days has been lost, but replaced by the ability to make near TV quality moving images and sound.

Learning the technology of filming has been replaced by a need to learn the 'craft' of making movies. No amount of money spent on equipment can replace the development and telling of a good story by a good videomaker. And we travel so much nowadays - but it takes a very experienced traveller/cameraman to to make a watchable video story of a trip without boring his or her mates!

So MEMC has been reborn into the digital age as Melbourne Movie Makers Club, but combining old movie skills with modern equipment.

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