INSIDE NAUGATUCK, 1950

Here’s a documentary whose most immediate audience will be anyone who lives or ever lived in or around Naugatuck, Connecticut. As described, the film was made around 1950, and that’s important to note.
The nature of industry in the United States has changed remarkably since that time. It’s ironic that the only thing that can’t be changed or stopped in change itself. Progress in all its forms has altered life and the world since the beginning of civilization.

The narrator explains at the outset that Naugatuck’s Chamber of Commerce wanted to attract new businesses to locate their operations in this major Connecticut Valley environment.

So whether you’re a casual viewer of history or anyone who lived or worked in or around this city, located on both sides of the Naugatuck River, you’re in for a treat if you ever wondered what life was like in America in the years immediately following the end of World War Two.

Had the very rainy summer of 1955 and two major hurricanes (Connie - Aug. 11-13, and Diane one week later) not, by themselves dumped some 26 inches of water on the already saturated landscape, Naugatuck might have more fully realized its plans for industrial expansion and the creation of many new jobs. All of that was dramatically changed under a torrent of water during one of the worst floods in the state’s history on August 19th. Several other major rivers of the state were affected the same way, but the flood waters of the Naugatuck River that ran from Winsted on south all the way to Long Island Sound, pulverizing heavily populated cities and towns with walls of water in excess of 20-feet deep in most sections changed the landscape and plans of development described in this story forever.

As to the making of this documentary, the program was shot in 16mm color film, and a disc recording of the original narration was made on an extremely fragile acetate material made from shellac, typically colored a shade of blue. That disc was most likely accidentally broken and thus long lost.
In 1994, an unknown person associated with Naugatuck’s newly formed Historical Society set up a microphone for a local citizen named Dana Blackwell who remembered much of the city’s history and recorded a new narration as he watched the film play. The finished product was archived on an analog audio cassette tape.
The problem the producer of this restored version encountered was that the projector did not play at a standard rate of speed, and so the narrative recording was not in synch with the professional film transfer when that was made in 1997.
The editor/producer, Bruce Manke of Connecticut’s Video Imagination had to perform many edits to the narrator’s recording so that the descriptions would line up more accurately with what was being shown during any section of the program.
Manke then added a background of music typical to the time period to further enhance a realistic feeling to the presentation when all the elements were combined for this version in 2005.
The film transfer, pre-recorded narration and music were mixed and produced using Final Cut Pro and a Macintosh computer.

Bruce Manke is a Waterbury, Connecticut native, a radio broadcaster from the formative days of freeform FM radio as a music entertainer, a broadcast news journalist who covered many of the major local, national and international stories of the 1970s for ABC News affiliates in both Waterbury and New Haven, and owner of a successful video production shop he began in 1987 in the Greater New Haven area.

Видео INSIDE NAUGATUCK, 1950 канала Bruce