Super 8: A Primer for the 21st Century Filmmaker

CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, held each January in Las Vegas, is usually a place where new technologies compete for eyes and wallets, where, in a way, the world of the future is presented to us. We can experience this future first hand on the show floor. We can turn on a TV, or click on news links and YouTube videos. We can also read the glossy, picture-laden pages of electronics magazines, and the somewhat less glossy ones of newspapers. These analog news sources are where one of this year's most talked about photography and film-related invention should feel most at home: Super 8 is back.

Super 8 Comeback

You may know Super 8 as the format of home movies from the 1960s through the early 1980s, when video swept into the market with force. Now it's making a comeback. A comeback of sorts, anyway. While new cameras have been scarce for decades, Kodak never completely discontinued their Super 8 film cartridge, so you've always been able to pick up a used camera from the 1970s, say, and make your own personal or professional project shooting Super 8.

For at least the last twenty years, however, that hasn't been something all that easy to do. With cameras getting older and less reliable, it hasn't exactly been a plug and play proposition. Few specialized companies offered services such as developing and scanning your Super 8 film once it was shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feXCnGfUyaI

Kodak promised to change all that when they announced at last year's CES that they were not only developing a new camera for the format, but were poised to integrate it into an ecosystem of easy film purchase, development, and scans from the film to be used in digital movie production.

Simple Makes Complicated

Perhaps one of the most revolutionary things about the Super 8 format at the time of its introduction in 1965 was its simplicity. There was a cartridge instead of film spools. Exposure was automatic. There was one speed of film, and when you went from inside a building to the outside, you merely had to flip a switch (or, in some more cumbersome cameras, turn a key) to swing a built-in filter in front of the lens. All Super 8 films were Tungsten-balanced. The filter would compensate for this so they could be used in daylight. Inside or at night, you would typically use a very bright film light in order to see anything. (My father still tells of the time he casually shot a party on Super 8 and shorted out the building's electricity by plugging in an all-too-bright spotlight).

Super 8 ran at a default speed of 18 frames per second, and at its introduction was not able to record sound. The framerate, of course, is only a question of camera support, and soon cameras appeared that would let filmmakers shoot at more typical motion picture rates like 24 and 25 frames per second, in addition to even slower and faster settings.

As the Super 8 system expanded, and as film became faster while still remaining fine-grained, things became more confusing. Better cameras supported the various new options. Daylight-balanced film appeared, which would not trigger the filter no matter which way you turned the switch. Existing light or "XL" type cameras began appearing, which could use higher ISO cartridges. Sound cameras made their debut, which were backwards compatible with soundless Super 8, but could also utilize a new, larger sound cartridge which could not be used in the smaller, more portable non-sound cameras. Much later, the gate of some cameras was expanded to allow for capture closer to the 16:9 aspect ratio, rather than the typical 4:3.

In the waning days of Super 8, it was hard to find arguments for the format. In some ways, it had become so confusing as to require expert knowledge while still not being able to hold a candle to 16mm or 35mm film in terms of quality, nor to video in terms of price. It found its niche in some direct-to VHS productions (many of the horror genre), but from the mid-1980s on, it was clearly an also-ran format for almost anybody.

Who Is This For Today?

Alright, fine, you may say. Thanks for the history lesson. But why should I care about this decades-old consumer film format that even at its best produces a picture still considerably more grainy and less sharp than most modern cell phones? What's in it for me as a working videographer who has no time for experiments and no money to waste?

Let me be clear. I'm not here to convince you to try Super 8 if you have zero interest in the format. If you don't care about some ethereal difference between film and digital and the heritage of an art form and whatnot, and you're not interested in making use of a new old artistic tool, there's really no point for you to try Super 8. If, however, you have become the slightest bit curious but are still on the fence on whether you could possibly work analog film into your workflow, there are a few advantages to Super 8.

Super 8 cartridges hold about 50ft/15m of film, roughly 3600 single exposures. At 18 frames per second, this will give you three minutes and twenty seconds recording time, at 24 two minutes and thirty seconds. This may seem very little, but constraints can be beneficial as well.

If you're out to challenge yourself artistically, you can plan out a Super 8 movie shoot and shoot scenes consecutively as the 1 Take Super 8 Event prescribes, you will learn a lot about pre-planning shots and setting up schedules and scenes.

If you are a wedding photographer, you can sell a Super 8 movie, taken by a second shooter, as part of your package. Provided the Kodak development and scanning ecosystem is in place (or you go to a service provider like Pro8mm) your work is pretty much done when the roll has been shot. There is not much editing, as the short cartridge forces editing in camera. There is less footage, which also means less time spent editing what there is.

You can also use Super 8 to delineate different storylines in a larger project, such as a music video or film or tv production. This was done, for example, in Seasons 2 and 3 of Empire, or, of course, in J.J. Abrams's movie named after the format, Super 8. The John Mellencamp documentary, It's About You, was even shot entirely on Super 8.

In short, having Super 8 as a viable format expands creative possibilities, in much the same way as having better low light performance or drone footage has expanded creative possibilities. Just like those things, it will surely be something wanted by some, needed by others, and not cared about by a third faction. As always, there's no accounting for a professional's preferences and personal style.

Ektachrome, Kodachrome?

Professional film cameras are useless without a range of quality film stock. While Super 8 film was once sold by many well-known manufacturers, we're now down to Kodak, a few black and white manufacturers, and some rebranded film sold by the likes of Wittner and Adox. Luckily, Kodak has realized that the success of Super 8 will also depend on the availability of reversal film stock, which, much like slide film, can be shot, developed, and then projected from the same roll. Their recent announcement to bring back Ektachrome as well as thinking aloud about bringing back Kodachrome, the original Super 8 movie stock, will enable filmographers to replicate the onetime home movie experience pretty exactly, should they wish to. It also gives them more aesthetic choices, allowing, for example, the use of reversal Super 8 film in mostly digital projects to achieve a more "vintage" look.

The Takeaway

Personally, I foresee using Super 8 mostly for what it was once meant to do: capture moments both mundane and monumental, taking film of friends and places, and more generally to have fun. But I'm not saying there isn't a movie project in my future either. It's not something I may ever really do. It's just nice to know that once again, it's something I could do.