Good martial Arts documentary movie

[John Bishop]

Well my copy of "The New Gladiators" arrived in the mail today.  If your not familiar with this documentary, it was the brain child of Ed Parker and funded by Elvis Presley.  It basically followed the top fighters of 1973-74 thru the tournament circuit up to the national championships.
Anyway, because of the deaths of both Elvis and Parker the film was sort of forgotten about.  It was just released this year minus 30 minutes of Elvis's martial arts  footage.  I guess that will be a separate release some time later.

The tournament fighting back then was just great to watch.  No pads, take downs, throws, hard contact.   What was really a treat for me was seeing Sifu Eric Lee competing in kata in his prime (1973).  Seeing Al Reyes's student Phil Cornin fight Benny Urquidez in the semi- finals of the U.S. Championships.  Catching a glimpse of Master Al Reyes refereeing a match.  Seeing Sifu Bill Owens at ring side.  

Some of the fighters shown are Benny Urquidez, Darnell Garcia, John Natividad, Roy Kurbin, Steve Sanders, Tom Kelly, Ralph Alegria, Byong Yu, Ray Sua, etc.

What was really a joy to see was the sportmanship and humility that was practiced by the fighters back then.  Wish we could bring it back to todays tournament scene.

If anyone's interested in buying this video, the best price I found was thru http://www.superfoots.com/newgladvid.html
for $19.99

[sleddog]

Professor Scott,

Most video stores have services to tranfer 8mm film to video and they do it for a certian fixed cost per minute of transfer time.

You can also do it the way some professionals do it.

Set up your projector as close as you can to your screen - a blank white wall will do. Make sure the projector is projecting horizontally. An effect called keystoning  occurs when the projector is projecting at an angle other than 90 degrees to the wall. (This causes the bottom  of the projected image to be larger than the top.)

Then set up your video camera as close as you can next to the projector with the lens at the same level as the projector lens. Start the film and the video camera. Don't jump around or jolt the projector or camera while filming.

Try to get the projector as close to the wall as is possible to increase the output (light intensity) so that you get a good transfer image for the video. About 12 to 18 inches will normally suffice.

Hope this helps.

PG