Home Moviemaking Kit - 1930's

The vast majority of home movies are shots around the house, vacations, holidays, and the like.  Every once in a while amateur movie makers get a bit ambitious and take a shot at making a film with a story.  Here is a kit from the 1930's to let a filmmaker do just that.

Inside the box are several complete scripts, special props mentioned in the scripts, title cards, even pre-made animated titles to splice in!  Since home movies had no sound abilities, the scripts play like old silent films.  This strikes me as a quite good idea.  Your amateur "actors" will likely offer up some pretty comical histrionics rather than a nuanced and evocative performance.  Imagine your neighbor as a conniving moustache-twirling bad guy, and the good looking girl down the hall could play... uh... the good looking girl down the hall.  :)

The kit is impressive and ambitious - I wish that I could find some films made with set-ups like this one.  Though I have no doubt that healthy numbers of this kit were sold, I'll bet that few were actually pressed into use.  It would represent an ambitious project indeed to shoot and direct one of these short films, let alone do all the the editing necessary to put it together.  I don't know how many people would find that kind of project fun (I know that I sure would!)  Even today, most folks seem happy just watching the footage as it comes out of their camera.