Four Finger Productions

(Phantom Lake Films)

Waiters of the Lost DH - 4fp sign2 - PLY

The following is a list of movies I made at Phantom Lake YMCA Camp. Most were made using a Super 8 camera borrowed from Riley Cooper (Much thanks!). The oldest clips I took were made using a wind-up Bell & Howell camera that I brought from home which used regular 8mm film. The movies that unfortunately have a lot of "bleached" and blurry footage were made using a Nikon Super 8 camera that had a faulty light meter. It did have a nice telephoto lens, but I should have used a tripod for all the footage.

The first film on the list, Seasons at Phantom Lake, was made in 1984 when Phantom Lake YMCA Camp was under the threat of being sold. At the time Phantom was owned and operated by the Waukesha Family YMCA (Waukesha, WI). I was Program Director that summer and learned of the camp's pending peril from Jerry “Sir G” Carman, the camp's director. The parent YMCA was giving serious consideration to closing and selling the camp after the summer. Despite the cloud that hung over camp we had, in my opinion, a strong and successful summer. Not knowing if camp would live on to see another summer it was on a quiet day in September early in the evening that I took a Super 8 movie camera around camp and filmed the various scenes that make up the beginning of my film. Long story short Phantom survived the ordeal becoming an independent Y and continues to operate to this day. Most of the films were made the during those early years of camp's independence.

Awarded Best Documentary, Seasons at Phantom Lake, Associated Students Washington State University Video and Film Festival, Pullman, Washington, 1998.