Dreamations Video Production
Old Movies, Tapes, Music can be brought back to life
By Chris Bush
The News Bulletin
Apr 21 2007
History repeats itself, especially when it comes to advancing technology.
Forty years ago people converted old 78 RPM records to reel-to-reel tape.
Twenty years ago they swapped 16-mm and 8-mm home movie film onto videotape and LP records onto cassettes. As compacts discs gained popularity,
Consumers are again faced with converting old formats onto new ones like DVD, hard drives and flash memory storage formats that take up less space and offer more features and capability.
Allen and Lori Felker preserve old memories professionally with their new company Dreamations Video Productions, which they operate from their home on Somerset Drive in Nanaimo.
“We do pictures, slide scanning – a little bit of everything – and put it to video,” said Allen.
“Anyone can put their pictures in a flatbed scanner and throw them on a slide show. We do more than that. We actually can animate the photo itself, which adds to the actual viewing out of it.”
Felker was a former mobile music D.J. His grandfather was an Alberta farmer and musician. The family had photo albums filled with memories and lots of reel to reel audio tapes with his grandfather’s recordings of the five-piece band he played in – often with famous performers like country music singer Wilf Carter – and reels of home movies.
In 2002, his grandmother handed him the box filled with this memorabilia and told him to do something with it.
“I worked with some pretty basic software and produced my first video CD,” he said.
“It turned out rather well. We drove to Alberta and surprised everyone over the Christmas holidays with this video CD…We played it and my grandfather passed away three months after that. I was really happy to have produced it and got it done in time for him to see it.”
The Felker’s studio and equipment has expanded along with their business and he is now gearing up to do frame by frame film to digital conversions.
“The plan is by the end of October to be in possession of the equipment to do it,” he said.
“It needs a dedicated room because it’s going to run a lot longer and you can’t walk away from that old film. It breaks. It tears and it’s going to get eaten in the machine. It’s time consuming and it needs someone to sit there and watch it go through.”
Lori, who is an artist, handles most of the slide scanning and photo retouching.
Those interested can learn more about Dreamations at the company’s website, www.dreamations.ca, which features filming tips, an educational section discussing various video formats and list of services offered.
The sample below is a choice to have pictures as a straight slide show or to add music and transitions and to turn your boring slideshow into a real video. These videos are compressed for the internet and the original looks considerably better on DVD
