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Posted: |
Sep 22, 2011 - 8:26 AM
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By: |
Col. Flagg
(Member)
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Star Wars (200ft.), Star Wars theatrical trailer (approximately 90 ft., on an oddball 100ft. reel), The Empire Strikes Back (2 x 400ft.), Raiders of the Lost Ark (400ft.), several Disney and Tom & Jerry cartoons (all 200ft.), The Black Hole (400ft.), The French Connection (400ft.), Force Ten From Navarone (400ft.), An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge w/Twilight Zone packaging (full episode), and others.
All were color and sound (except the Twilight Zone episode, which was black and white and sound) - like Dogplant, I didn't see the point otherwise.
Raiders was letterboxed 2:1 - but the quality was decent enough, and I preferred the format, so I didn't mind the loss of resolution on the tiny Super 8 frame. I remember Raiders took about a year to arrive because Lucasfilm had apparently not been satisfied with the first attempt to get it down to 16 minutes.
Collecting Super 8 digests was a random process; some camera shops stocked them, some didn't, and what WAS available wasn't always something worth buying! But when I ordered Raiders via L.A. Films, their mailing list arrived and it became my resource for years. Trouble is, I was eleven at the time - so it took quite a while to accumulate even a few.
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Posted: |
Sep 22, 2011 - 9:00 AM
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By: |
Mike_J
(Member)
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I loved Super 8 and still have my old collection - cut down prints of Empire Strikes Back, Superman, Towering Inferno and 1941 rank amongst my favorites. My old Elmo projector gave up the ghost years ago but I just can't part with the collection.
Despite the convenience, quality and affordability of home cinema, nothing really beats the fun of throwing a properly projected movie onto a screen.
I'd been a home movie maker for years (originally on Standard 8 - anyone remember that?) and then Super 8, but I didnt know you could buy movies until about 1980 when a friend introduced me to a shop in St Albans. That was like discovering heaven back then!
Incidentally, the best 3D I've ever seen - by some margin - was on 8mm. It was a Vincent Price film (possibly House of Wax but I can't recall now) and there was a scene of a bandsaw throwing up sparks which looked awesome in 3D.
JohnJohnson of this board and I both amased a pretty decent collection of Super 8mm movies and we'd lend them to each other regularly, so we always had something new to watch along withh old favorites. I think we got a bit more cautious about lending them out after another friend, Doug, discovered that one of e reels of his Avengers episode had stretched so badly it could no longer be re-wound onto a single reel!
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I've still got a box of my 8mm and Super 8mm digest films. There's also a "complete" (for the 1960s) print of METROPOLIS. I once possessed an 8mm edition of the Kodascope print of THE LOST WORLD. Unfortunately, I loaned reels 3 and 4 to a friend and never saw them again.
My family had held on to a defunct cabinet TV because it was mahogany, had doors on it, and was just a fine-looking piece of furniture. I took the set and covered the picture tube with white poster board which I used as a screen. I put this in my bedroom and kept my projector set up.
I experimented with another screen made from poster board. This was my attempt at creating Cinerama in the home. I'd bend the screen and run GUNGA DIN in a cropped, widescreen, Cinerama ratio. Some may think it sacrilegious but it was actually kinda neat.
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Posted: |
Sep 24, 2011 - 11:40 AM
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By: |
Col. Flagg
(Member)
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That was my first job, Walton Films, 8mm movies, in 1966. What a great first job, I must have sat through Stagecoach about 50 times (it was a cut down version, as were all the super 8 features), all those Laurel & Hardy films. I had no idea at the time that these would become very collectable. I worked there for two years, happy days.
CinemaScope, how did the process work at Walton? Were the Super 8 prints derived from 16mm intermediates, or did the cutdowns occur in 35mm first?
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Posted: |
Sep 24, 2011 - 12:21 PM
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By: |
CinemaScope
(Member)
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That was my first job, Walton Films, 8mm movies, in 1966. What a great first job, I must have sat through Stagecoach about 50 times (it was a cut down version, as were all the super 8 features), all those Laurel & Hardy films. I had no idea at the time that these would become very collectable. I worked there for two years, happy days.
CinemaScope, how did the process work at Walton? Were the Super 8 prints derived from 16mm intermediates, or did the cutdowns occur in 35mm first?
As I remember (it was about four lifetimes ago), they get a print (16 or 35mm), edit that print down on an ancient editing machine, that print then went to the lab, & back from the lab would come 8mm prints (but on 16mm wide film, two prints together). My main job was to record the sound onto the mag stripe, then they went downstairs to be slit into 8mm & boxed. My next job was at a film lab, where I worked for the next 12 years, & near the end of that time they did get into super 8mm. They had a printing machine that printed from 16mm to 8mm on 16mm wide film. They'd print one side at a time (I think!) It was a huge & expensive printing machine, long since scraped!
Thinking about it, back at Walton Films, they had some beautiful 35mm pristine prints of a lot of Laurel & Hardy films that they'd cut about & use as masters, but we did stuff like that in those days!
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Posted: |
Sep 24, 2011 - 8:23 PM
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By: |
dan the man
(Member)
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Back in the Christmas of 72 my family got a Super8 camera and projector, not only did i make my first official movie with it, on weekends me and folks went to Willoghbys and bought many Super 8 short films, from Born Free to the quiet man to the miracle mets of 69 to Frankenstein must be destroyed, through the 70's i collected many more, probably about a 100, i stop when video came around, but kept those films in the closet, then in the mid 90's when i was vending records and other things, maybe it was Ray Fiola?[ha ha] a man who said he worked in the film industry and loved Super 8 bought the whole collection off of me, he was reasonable the deal came into the hundreds, yes it was fun memories when we used to put the big screen up and put the reel on the projector and try to make the house look dark in the daytime etc, but to be honest i can't say i really miss it and was happy when video came around where you just put in the cassette and on comes the film.
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I still have a box full of super 8... cartoons, condensed Hollywood hits (including Poseidon Adventure), and some classic silent films (anyone remember Blackhawk Films?). And lots of home movies still waiting to be digitized for posterity.
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Yes, I remember Blackhawk and still have some of their wares. The outfit that always intrigued me was, I think, called Griggs-Moviedrome. If I'm remembering this correctly, their catalogue was the dimensions of a piece of typewriter paper tri-folded. There weren't nearly as many films offered as Blackhawk but they were all feature length silent movies. Each entry was accompanied by a well rendered black and white drawing of the stars or what looked like promotional art. At least, this is how I remember it. Boy, did I drool over those movies!
Here's a link to a great site that provides a lot of info on 16mm and 8mm history:
http://www.robbiesreels.com/16_mm_timeline.htm
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