A day trip to Brighton in the 1960s

This film shows a group of people on a coach taking a day trip to Brighton. Although I’m not certain of the date, the clothes worn by the people in the film suggest this was taken in the 1960s.

I acquired the film as part of a large collection of about 30 films I recently bought on eBay. It is slightly longer than a single reel, and was supplied wound on a 4 inch plastic reel, which is a quite unusual size. In fact, the reel has written on it ‘Scotch’ and ‘Made by 3M’ so I’m pretty sure it is actually a reel made for magnetic tape rather than 8mm film. It just happens that the size of magnetic tape was very similar to 8mm film and the reels tended to be used interchangeably for uses who had both film projectors and tape recorders.

Day trip to Brighton film

Just to be clear, this film was shot on Standard 8, Kodachrome II film.

In fact, I wonder if the film was actually shot twice. I noticed that at the edges of the film on some scenes, it’s possible to see other things going on. For example, in the scenes on the coach where the lady is smiling and chatting to someone sitting in a seat, on the right hand side of the picture it’s possible to see trees and what looks like a fence. I don’t think this is a reflection from the bus window, and it happens at other points in the film as well, so I wonder it the film was accidently run through a camera twice. I guess I’ll probably never know for sure, but it looks odd.

Anyway, the main film that we can definitely see seems to show a day trip to Brighton. Initially it isn’t apparent where the coach is going, but the photographer helpfully captures a picture of a guide book of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton which clarifies things. This has helped because it minimized the amount of detective work I needed to do to find the locations.

There are some problems with white balance in the film which I believe are the result of taking shots inside the coach which was possibly lit with electric light.