Site Redesign Incorporating George Groves' Oral History
Thursday, 08 November 2007
George made two oral history recordings in which he detailed his remarkable 46-year film career as a sound man. The first was for UCLA Film & Television Archive in 1962 which lasted 2 hours, although we have only managed to obtain 20 minutes of this. The second was for the American Film Institute in 1973 and lasted over 17 hours and is deposited in the Louis B. Mayer Library in Los Angeles. This is included in their collection of forty interviews with pioneers of the motion picture industry.
The Groves family and this website would like to thank librarian Caroline Sisneros for her tremendous cooperation in sending us copies of George's oral history. As a result this website can now tell George's story in his own words. And what a story it is!
A number of improvements have been made to the site including a Downloads page and a commenting facility has been incorporated into this blog. I expect we'll be fine tuning and fixing glitches for the next few days. Please do let us know if you spot any!
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Site Offline
Saturday, 06 January 2007
This site is
now back online after being down for the
first five days of 2007. This was caused
by an employee at my hosting company
taking it on himself to reset the site to
its default state. This means that all
uploaded files were lost and a
"Coming
Soon " screen
greeted visitors despite the site being
online with this company for 12 months.
Very, very annoying as there is
increasing interest in the site with 100
unique visitors viewing it in the 24
hours before the plug was pulled. I'm
informed that the employee is going to be
disciplined for his actions. Apologies if
you tried to access the site during this
period.
Links to This Site
Thursday, 21 December 2006
So far this
month I've counted (via the site stats)
fifty inbound links to this web site.
This means that during December, a large
number of visitors to George
Groves - The First Sound Man
had clicked
on links contained within other web pages
and blogs that had directed them to
us. (This
excludes search engines like Google and
Yahoo).
It's
interesting to track down where the links
emanate, although for one reason or
another it's not always fruitful.
However, a couple of interesting sources
that I've just identified are worth
reporting.
The
Gotham
Gazette from
Gotham Sound and Communications
says:
" For a lot more on the redoubtable George Groves, check out http://www.georgegroves.org.uk/, a fantastic online tribute with anecdotes, pictures, media clips, and more. "
I do like the Gotham Gazette's strap line All the noise that's fit to print !
Plus
sync.sound.cinema
says:
" Listen up, sportsfans: Anyone interested in reading about one of the instrumental figures in creating synchronized movie sound would do well to check out A Tribute to George Groves-The First Sound Man."
The site is receiving many more favourable mentions but, more importantly, George Groves is starting to get the real recognition he deserves. The plaque unveiling at his place of birth in St. Helens, England ten years ago was great, but it was essentially a local tribute. However, using the World Wide Web his place in the history of the development and use of production and post-production film sound is slowly being cemented.
" For a lot more on the redoubtable George Groves, check out http://www.georgegroves.org.uk/, a fantastic online tribute with anecdotes, pictures, media clips, and more. "
I do like the Gotham Gazette's strap line All the noise that's fit to print !
" Listen up, sportsfans: Anyone interested in reading about one of the instrumental figures in creating synchronized movie sound would do well to check out A Tribute to George Groves-The First Sound Man."
The site is receiving many more favourable mentions but, more importantly, George Groves is starting to get the real recognition he deserves. The plaque unveiling at his place of birth in St. Helens, England ten years ago was great, but it was essentially a local tribute. However, using the World Wide Web his place in the history of the development and use of production and post-production film sound is slowly being cemented.
Broken Links Fixed
Saturday, 18 November 2006
I've
performed a routine check on all the
links in the Links page and was surprised
to find that four were broken. After some
investigation I've discovered that three
sites had moved servers and so had
changed their URLs. One had made its page
a .pdf file and changed URL. All are now
fixed. If any links don't work in the
future please let us know. If you have
any suggestions for more links to add to
the list, again please get in touch.
Thanks!
New Design
Thursday, 24 August 2006
Changes to the Video Page
Saturday, 12 August 2006
The most
common complaint about this web site is
that the videos don't work, either
because Windows users don't have
QuickTime installed on their systems or
use a version of Internet Explorer where
there is an ActiveX conflict. As a result
we've had the two videos converted to
Windows Media Video 9 format and they are
now hosted on fast streaming video
servers which should work fine on all
systems. There's two download
speeds
Standard (300 kbps)
and
High-Speed (700 kbps) to
accommodate different internet
connections.
George's Origins Update
Saturday, 05 August 2006
We've
undertaken more research into George
Groves's twenty-one years in St.Helens
and the family connection with Hollywood
character actor of the 1930s
Herbert
Mundin (pictured
below). Astonishingly
it all hinged on a terrifying night in
Duke Street on 13th November 1895!
Read it
HERE.
Read the St.Helens Newspaper's account of
23rd November 1895, entitled
A Fatal
Jump - A Barber's Sad End
HERE.
Read the
Herbert Mundin Connection
HERE.
Herbert
Mundin (1898-1939) born at 206 Windleshaw
Road, St.Helens