Cephalopodcast

The Prelinger Archives are a great source for royalty free videos. They have many vintage instructional films and ephemra.

Its goal remains to collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven’t been collected elsewhere. Included are films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions.

I recommend checking out two selections from the extensive archive. The first is the Hanford Science Forum, featuring “science student of the week” Doyle Burke, circa 1950s:

Television program (one of a series) sponsored by General Electric Company for telecasting to residents of the Richland, Washington area. This interview with Dr. Richard F. Foster, manager of the Aquatic Biology Division at the Hanford plutonium plant, presents his research that the plant’s radioactive effluents have no effect on aquatic life in the Columbia River.

You might also want to check out one of my personal favorites, Fish from Hell Part I and Part II. Some might argue that our attitudes towards the oceans have not changed much since then.

Essentially, this “film” is just murky stock footage of men on a fishing trawler. What transforms it into an epic tale of Man vs. The Sea is an amazing narration by somebody named Wilfred Lucas. Mr. Lucas pulls no punches; in this violent world, decent men kill every fish they meet. But that’s okay, because — as Mr. Lucas explains — fish are evil and deserve to die. A manta ray gets a harpoon in its skull because it’s a “devil fish,” and a “terror of the deep.” An octopus barely escapes with its life, even though it’s a “slimy, death-dealing monster” and a “black-hearted scoundrel.” Even porpoises are slandered, being derisively referred to as “clowns” and “good for lubricating oil.” As if this weren’t enough, a whole section of this film is devoted to a battle between a whale and a swordfish, which is the whale’s “greatest enemy” (something many ichthyologists would be interested to learn). As the camera cuts rapidly between stock shots of a leaping swordfish and completely different footage of a sleeping whale, Mr. Lucas tells us that “no one has ever been lucky enough to photograph a scene like this before.” Truly a triumph of style over content; great fun to watch. Look for the cameo by Wumpy the parrot.

• Prelinger: Day at the River: A Film Lesson in Nature Study, A (1928)
• Prelinger: Pennsylvania Fish Commission (ca. 1953)
• Something more contemporaty too: An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century (4)
• See also, BoingBoing: Trailers from Hell: directors muse on schlocky movie faves
• And this one from Digg: Something is Fishy in Hollywood. Classic movie posters with a fishy, photoshopped twist.

Tags: History

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Animals, Aquatics, Science News, Technology, Video, Weird, ocean. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.