CAPE CORAL, Fla. — A Cape Coral man is preserving the past one frame at a time.
We first told you the story of Christopher Specht, a man with a passion for archiving historic films, a year ago. Now, his work is being recognized at the national level.
“It’s not just, ‘Well I get to see grandma and grandpa in film.’ There’s a lot more to these films.”
Inside his makeshift video lab, Specht is hard at work bringing the past to the present.
“It started out with saving my own family’s history. But every film I do, even for somebody else, turns into a little rabbit hole, and sometimes it’s quite humorous,” says Specht.
That work has even involved some local interest -preserving and restoring old videos one frame at a time.
"Since we’ve spoken past, I’ve actually digitized over 1.5 million frames and I’m still going strong.”
It’s come to the point where Specht can capture Super 8 movies in 4K, 16mm films in 5K, and regular rate in almost 4K. It’s that passion for preserving old film that has led his work to be recognized at the national level.
"Two museums have taken my work and my grandfather’s movies into their permanent collections.”
Those museums are the Royal Gorge Regional Museum in Colorado and the Panama Canal Museum in Panama. Immortalizing not only that time period but also his own grandmother and grandfather.
"To have my work going into a Smithsonian Associate Museum is a real feather in my cap.”
But looking for the next big historical video doesn’t require much. Something Specht says that what a lot of people don’t realize is their own home movies have a lot of history.
"A lot of these films that we find today are the films that come out of people’s closets and garages," said Specht. "And, if they haven’t deteriorated, they have a lot of value for the family and also the general public.”
And whether it’s his family’s old videos, or others, he’s just happy to see these images move once again.
“I’m really pleased to say that my great nieces and nephews can say they have moving pictures of their great, great, great grandma and that’s really neat.”
You can find some of Specht's work that he has already preserved online here.
