Amateur film is a genre of

filmmaking Filmmaking or film production is the process by which a Film, motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, beginning with an initial story, idea, or commission. Production then continues through screen ...

done primarily for personal enjoyment, passion, or hobby, without commercial intent or substantial funding. It encompasses a wide range of activities, from recording family events and local news to creating experimental works or dramatic productions. It later overlapped with

fan film A fan film is a film or video inspired by a film, television program, comic book, book, or video game created by fans rather than by the source's copyright holders or creators. It is a form of fan fiction. Fan filmmakers have traditionally been ...

, a filmmaking genre used for amateur films created by fans rather than by the source's copyright holders or creators.

Organizations

The international organization for amateur film makers is UNICA ( Union International du Cinema Non Professionel); in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

the American Motion Picture Society (AMPS), in Canada the Society of Canadian Cine Amateurs (SCCA), in the UK it is the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers. These organizations arrange annual

festival A festival is an event celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A ...

s and conventions. There are several amateur film festivals held annually in the United States,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

and

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. The Cinema Museum in London holds a large collection of amateur films whose details can be accessed on-lin

Creation

Amateur films were usually shot on

16 mm film 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical Film gauge, gauge of Photographic film, film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 mm film, 8 mm and 35mm movie film, 35 mm. It ...

or on

8 mm film 8 mm film is a motion picture film format in which the film strip is wide. It exists in two main versions – the original standard 8 mm film, also known as regular 8 mm, and Super 8. Although both standard 8 mm and ...

(either Double-8 or Super-8) until the advent of cheap

video camera A video camera is an optical instrument that captures videos, as opposed to a movie camera, which records images on film. Video cameras were initially developed for the television industry but have since become widely used for a variety of other ...

s or digital equipment. The advent of

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

and computer based editing programs greatly expanded the technical quality achievable by the amateur and low-budget filmmaker. Amateur video has become the choice for the low-budget filmmaker and has boomed into a very watched and even produced industry with the use of VHS and digital video camcorders.

Notable films

National Film Registry

A number of amateur films have been added to the National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB)

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation (library and archival science), preservation, each selected for its cultural, historical, and aestheti ...

(NFR) including: * '' The Augustas'' (1930s-1950s) * '' Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse'' (1940) * '' Disneyland Dream'' (1956) *

Zapruder film The Zapruder film is a silent 8 mm film, 8mm color motion picture sequence shot by Abraham Zapruder with a Bell & Howell home-movie camera, as United States President John F. Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on N ...

(1963)

Later works

* '' Firelight'' (

Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is ...

—1964) * '' The Valley'' (

Peter Jackson Sir Peter Robert Jackson (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand filmmaker. He is best known as the director, writer, and producer of the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy (2001–2003) and the ''Hobbit'' trilogy (2012–2014), both of which ar ...

—1976) * '' Bad Taste'' (Peter Jackson—1987) * ''

It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books ''It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books'' is a 1988 American film written, produced, and directed by Richard Linklater, who also stars in it. Plot The protagonist (played by Linklater) receives a cassette tape from a friend, with a re ...

'' (

Richard Linklater Richard Linklater (; born July 30, 1960) is an American filmmaker. He is known for making films that deal thematically with suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. In 2015, Linklater was included on the annual ''Time'' 100 li ...

—1988)

Publications

* Ian Craven (ed.) ''Movies on Home Ground: Explorations in Amateur Cinema.'' Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. * Francis Dyson (2012) ''Challenging assumptions about amateur film of the inter-war years: Ace movies and the first generation of London based cine-clubs''. Unpublished PhD thesis, Norwich: University of East Anglia *Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia Zimmerman (eds.) (2008) ''Mining the Home Movies: Excavations in Histories and Memories.'' Berkeley: University of California Press. *Heather Norris Nicholson (2012) ''Amateur Film: Meaning and Practice, 1927-77.'' Manchester: Manchester University Press. *Laura Rascorolli and Gwenda Young (2014) ''Amateur Filmmaking: The Home Movie, the Archive and the Web.'' London: Bloomsbury. *Ryan Shand and Ian Craven (eds.) (2013) ''Small Gauge Storytelling: Discovering the Amateur Fiction Film.'' Edinburgh University Press.

References

External links

Amateur Film Clips

Streaming Amateur Film

Amateur Cinema Project

Russian amateur films of the 70s
Film genres Hobbies Amateur filmmaking {{film-genre-stub