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There is a series of documentaries on the History of Scotland on YouTube and here is Part 1 of a six part presentation.
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Re: History of Scotland on YouTube
Legacy of Scotland's old films lives on ... on YouTube
heraldscotland staff
6 Sep 2008
British Film Institute releases pioneering footage of Edinburgh and Glasgow
By Brian Pendreigh
FILMS dating back to the very beginning of Scottish cinema are attracting a big new international audience on the internet via the video-share site YouTube.
Movie reels of Glasgow city centre in 1901 and Edinburgh Zoo in the 1920s are proving a huge hit with viewers from as far afield as the US and China, following a link-up between the British Film Institute (BFI) and YouTube.
The BFI's recently launched YouTube channel was intended to broaden the audience for its old archive films. Many were previously available only to viewers who were prepared to travel to the BFI's headquarters in London.
The BFI, which is 75 years old this month, has its own section of YouTube, with 186 films on offer, 23 of which have a specific Scottish element. Many are only a couple of minutes long.
"We've gone past the 250,000 mark for hits viewings," said BFI curator Simon McCallum. "We've been totally astonished by how many hits some of them are getting."
Two thousand people have watched colour footage from Edinburgh Zoo in 1926 in the past two months. It shows chimps mingling with penguins and Sandra the elephant being led out by her keeper - something visitors would not see today, as there are no elephants at the zoo any more.
A nine-minute film called The Otter, "approved and edited" by J Arthur Thomson, professor of natural history at Aberdeen University, was one of a few films put on the site on a trial basis at the end of last year and has now had almost 7000 hits. Dating from 1912, it includes the earliest known footage of an otter swimming underwater.
While the figures do not compare with the numbers of people who access YouTube to watch the latest trailers for big Hollywood movies, pop videos or snippets of sports events, they are massive for old archive films which might otherwise be watched by just a handful of people.
Jamaica Street, Glasgow (1901)
"YouTube is the leading site for people uploading their own material," said McCallum. "It's got such a huge amount of traffic that we really felt we had to have a presence on there. We couldn't really not be part of that."
The films originally came from several sources. There are a number of early colour sequences shot by the British pioneer filmmaker Claude Friese-Greene during a trip around Britain in 1926. They include footage of Edinburgh city centre, John o'Groats, the Ballachulish ferry and a family busking on the roadside at the Duke's Pass near Stirling.
While the father plays the bagpipes a kilted toddler dances, though either the busking or perhaps the filming prompts a flood of tears from the child.
One of the most interesting films is black-and-white footage of Jamaica Street in Glasgow in 1901, showing a bustling thoroughfare with pedestrians and a steady stream of horses and carts and horse-drawn trams. A voice-over, obviously added much later, points out that the traffic moved faster than it does in modern Glasgow.
McCallum said: "People are really pleased to see this material from their own regions, people who perhaps haven't had opportunities to access this kind of material before We do get a lot of comments on the Scottish ones."
But the audience is not restricted to local people comparing their cities with the way they used to be. The BFI is able to monitor the source of visitors to its YouTube channel.
"There's a lot of traffic coming from the US, and there was a certain amount registered in China, which is interesting," said McCallum.
Other BFI films on YouTube include test footage of Audrey Hepburn from the early 1950s and a suffragette riot in Trafalgar Square in 1913.
The BFI has the largest archive of its type in the world, with almost a million films and television programmes stored at Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire. Lottery funding has enabled it to digitise many of the films and upload them on to the internet. It intends to add more films to its YouTube channel in future.
Scotland has its own national archive, which is now part of the National Library of Scotland. It has put a few films and extracts on YouTube and is currently considering its options for embracing the digital age.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/legacy...utube-1.826355
This is just one I selected for all to see .....
St. Kilda, Its People and Birds (1908) - extract
From: BFIfilms | April 09, 2010 | 1,147 views
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This was the first film to be shot on the Hebridean island of St. Kilda, and should not be confused with the later film from 1928 ('St. Kilda - Britain's Loneliest Isle'), which is more closely concerned with the population that would later be evacuated from the island forever. This earlier film was by the pioneering bird cinematographer, Oliver Pike, and focuses on the island's bird population, as well as the St. Kildans' remarkable methods of snaring sea birds for food and gathering eggs from the precarious cliff face. To achieve the spectacular shots of the bird colonies and birds in flight, Pike had to develop his climbing skills, with the aid of the locals, burdened as he was with a heavy film camera. (Bryony Dixon)
http://www.youtube.com/user/BFIfilms#p/u/15/-SDVV4Vz2kI -
Re: History of Scotland on YouTube
Oban, Scotland (1926)
Once a major fishing port, this clip features herring girls at work and traders bidding on the catch.
This extract comes from Claude Friese-Greene's 'The Open Road' - originally filmed in 1925/6 and now re-edited and digitally resto This extract comes from Claude Friese-Greene's 'The Open Road' - originally filmed in 1925/6 and now re-edited and digitally resto This extract comes from Claude Friese-Greene's 'The Open Road' - originally filmed in 1925/6 and now re-edited and digitally restored by the BFI National Archive. Britain seen in colour for the first time was heralded as a great technical advance for the cinema audience - now we can view a much improved image, but one which still stays true to the principles of the colour process.
The rather haphazard journey from Land's End to John O'Groats creates a series of moving picture postcards. Look out for shots containing the component colours - red and blue-green - such as when a little girl in a red coat and hat walks among peacocks in the grounds of a castle, and three girls with red curly hair pose by the sea at Torquay.
The car is a Vauxhall D-type - considered a sporty model at the time. A long-distance journey by car was a relatively new concept, with none of the amenities en route now taken for granted. The visit to a petrol station shows smoking on the forecourt: no health and safety issues back then! The travelogue ends with a series of recognisable London landmarks. Much remains the same - one major exception being the volume of traffic on the roads. (Jan Faull)
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Re: History of Scotland on YouTube
Weavers in Kilbarchan, Scotland (1926)
Kilbarchan was central to the weaving industry, this clip features three generations of weavers in one scene.
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