Sidney Nicklas "Sid" Laverents (August 5, 1908 – May 6, 2009)
was an American amateur filmaker, who started making films at home in 1958, when he was 50 using a 16-millimeter Bolex Camera.
Recognized as one of the industry's most successful hobbyists, his 1970 film Multiple SIDosis is one of the few amateur films to have been selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry.
It was a nine-minute film that features multiple images of himself playing various instruments to the tune of the Felix Arndt song Nola. The film, which took four years to complete, begins with Laverents opening a Christmas present of tape recorder from his third wife, Adelaide, which he uses to play the song accompanying himself by humming, whistling and playing many of the instruments he had used in his one-man band. With the technology available at the time, he added the additional images of himself by re-exposing the film multiple times to include 11 images of himself using custom-designed equipment that he had developed to ensure that the sound and images were synchronized during the re-recordings. The multiple re-exposures meant that an error on any of the dozen images would require starting from scratch.
Laverents lived in Bonita (California), and died at age 100 on May 6, 2009 in Chula Vista (California) due to pneumonia.
It opens on Christmas morning, with an extremely square-looking Mr. and Mrs. Laverents opening their presents, but don't let that scare you away. Adelaide has bought Sid one of the early consumer sound-on-sound reel to reel decks (an Akai M8), which he proceeds to play with, creating a multi-tracked version of the song Nola (one of those tunes you recognize instantly, but can't identify). It gets psychedelic as Sid adds to his foundation of ukulele and metronome, layering on tracks of ocarina, banjo, whistling, beer bottles and jews harp.
Bla Bla Shop is already thinking about christmas, and this is a little present we want to share with you
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