8mm Forum: Optical sound super 8mm, the definitive POST

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Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on June 21, 2006, 12:30 PM:

I would like to see if anybody out there in the 8mm forum would like to do a definitve series of posts on optical sound super 8, as there have been quite a few, listing everything from known optical sound super 8 titles, to that wonderful article from someone who went to where the super 8 optical sounds were actually made, (AND DESTROYED!!! GAAAH!! That still pisses me off!!!)

I am endlessly fascinated with the optical sound super 8's. It really seems like it was the "Sub-format that Time Forgot". Before writing this post, I looked on the internet and found zilch, except for a few little nuggets here and there, but nothing definitive.

If you compare the quality of the optical sound releases from literally the very beginning, (which must have been around the beginning of Super 8's release, as there are optical sound super 8 releases from the late 60's at least), the quality was either the absolute best to an equal with anything put out on super 8.

When compared with, for instance late 70's early 80's releases on super 8 (including Derrann, and not to put them down), the super 8 releases were absolutely brilliant, with a sharpness that STILL amazes me. I would compare, for instance, "Broadway Danny Rose" (Woody Allen, sepiatone) on super 8 with ANY 16mm print I have seen, and that is truly NOT an over-estimation. Or, for instance Yellowbeard.

I believe part of this is simply the negative material used for these releases. Most were from the newest releases at that time. This becomes apparent when looking at the classics re-issued on super 8 optical, (stagecoach 1939, for instance which, while looking great in sepiatone, has a grain and sharpness of just your average super 8 relased in the 70's or so, because of the negative used.) I would hope that the professionals, (such as Kevin Faulkner, for instance) could enlighten us as to whether Derrann uses the same facilities that were used on these optical super 8's as the standards have the same consistent high levels of quality.

The only downside to the optical sound super 8's was that they used, usually, whatever film stock seemed available, which is why, sadly, my print of Gorky Park, from 1983, already has the dreaded PINK overcast to it, (damned eastman lowgrade freaking stock!)

The other drawback, from some collectors point of view, was that the features were edited for content, as these features were placed as inflight movies and so whole familes could be watching and you couldn't have children hearing profanities or seeing nudity.

... but this seems like a moot argument, as super 8 collectors are well suited to buying 1 to 2 or 3x400 edited features.

These optical sound prints were not supposed to actually exist for collectors and it is a miracle that they exist today, and in the quantity that they do, though the early to mid 80's prints are pretty much what was left.

... and the wide range of titles that were released were so that many a title, that you would never find on magnetic sound super 8, was released on optical. Why buy the 400ft. "Dilinger" digest, (Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, mid 1970's) when you can get the whole feature on optical sound super 8?

They were very efficient films as well. While a magnetic striped film, on a 400ft. reel would only give you, perhaps 22 minutes tops, per reel, optical would give you 25 to 26 minutes per reel, as the sound was printed directly onto the film stock, which also makes them easier to clean, as older magnetic sound super 8 tracks CAN come off if not cleaned in certian ways. That is never a fear with the optical sound super 8.

As stated earlier, I hope that other will join up on this post. Perhaps listing that photo again of the airline super 8 optical projecotrs, for instance. Lets see if we can make the ultimate optical sound super 8 post out there!

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on June 21, 2006, 02:47 PM:

Hi Osi,
I think ,if video had not come along, optical sound on super 8 would gradually have become the standard for printed film releases. It had to be a lot cheaper to produce than magnetic sound prints, and of course it does not wear out any sound heads on the projector. It runs a lot smoother in the projector , does not generate oxide dust, and lies perfectly flat in the film gate, so you get a perfectly focused picture. Stereo optical sound tracks would eventually have appeared as well, with magnetic sound being used primarily for home movie sound tracks. The big advantage that magnetic sound has over optical is the much better frequency response.

Posted by Jan Bister (Member # 332) on June 21, 2006, 08:51 PM:

I was interested to hear that once there were super-8 prints with dual optical tracks in existence, with the secondary audio track next to the sprocket holes (just like a magnetic balance stripe). Osi, do you actually have a print like that, or did you ever see one? And if they still exist, how would one go about actually playing the secondary optical soundtrack? I find it interesting to think that Elmo (as well as Chinon, Bauer, Fumeo and a few others) made projectors capable of playing optical sound - one has to wonder why, if airline prints were never supposed to get into private collectors' hands and there were no other optical films for home use at the time (or were there?) - and where are the machines that can play twin optical tracks? Other than actual inflight projectors, that is?

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on June 21, 2006, 09:38 PM:

I agree that if there had been a continued development of Super-8 technology, the sound on commercial releases would be optical, yet digitally encoded. This is not a wild guess either: it's how it's now done on 35mm theatrical prints. They actually manage to squeeze a digital audio track between the sprocket holes and yet leave room for two analog optical tracks for theaters that still need them.

Posted by Winbert Hutahaean (Member # 58) on June 21, 2006, 10:50 PM:

Jan,

If I am not mistaken, Andreas had ever posted a picture of dual optical soundtrack in 8mm.

And also in Andreas's website there are also optical home movies for sale.

cheers,

Posted by Mike Peckham (Member # 16) on June 22, 2006, 03:59 AM:

Hi Osi

Was this the quote you were looking for;

quote:
A few years ago I was at Rank Film Labs in Denham, having gone there to collect some work they had produced for us. I was having a chat with Roy Hubbard, the manager of the department at that time, when a gentleman entered the room. He was introduced to me and it was explained that he worked for the company that provided 8mm optical prints for the airlines. This fascinated me, and being the film fanatic that I am, I wanted to know more. I stayed and talked with him for nearly two hours, and eventually he said “next time you’re down here, give me a ring and I will come and collect you and take you round our place”. I made sure that I visited the labs the next week, and before setting out I telephoned my new found friend. He promised to come along to the labs and we would then go on to his main depot. When I left the labs, following the car in front, I was more than a little surprised to find we were heading towards the Technicolor Labs, near Heathrow Airport. We swung through the main gates, drove round the main building and ended up at the rear of the labs. There I saw a sign SUNSTRAND, and it was then that I realised that this was the company that I had come to visit.

I was led into a small office, and told that most of the prints were printed at Technicolor Labs in New York, whilst Rank Labs also provided prints of their own titles and some of the British TV material, but it was explained that the airlines preferred the material that was printed in New York since Technicolor ‘coated’ the sound tracks and this rendered much better results.

If you compare an 8mm Optical Print made in the UK against an American print, you will note that the optical track is almost pure black and white, whereas the track on a British print is dark blue. This results in the British track giving a lower level of volume and certainly more track noise, hiss and plops. Rank would never give any reason for not coating the optical tracks on 8mm prints. I hasten to add, that all 16mm prints made by the lab at the lab at that time, were coated to give optimum performances. One can only assume that in their opinion, 8mm was just not important enough for them to provide this extra service.

I was then told that a lot of the prints carried multi-tracks; the main track always being in English. But, on some prints there was another track, just on the edge of the sprocket holes, much like the balance track on a magnetic print, and this track was mostly French, German or Spanish.

I was then taken into the room where the films were checked upon return from the air craft, and where new prints were being put on to giant spools for polishing. I was astounded at the number of prints in the room – it must have been at least five or six thousand! Can you imagine standing in front of five or six thousand full length 8mm sound feature, 99% of which were never going to be offered to the collector?

When the prints came in from the various labs, they were in the same number of roles as the 16mm prints, since they had been taken from the 16mm negatives. For aircraft use they need to be on one continuous reel, so the first job was the splicing together of all the various reels. The films were then coated with a silicone polish, and then flat wound into a giant cartridge, as one continuous roll, ie; the film came form the outer edge of the large roll, went through the projector gate and sound head and wound back onto the inside of the roll. This is the reason that the films were coated with silicone, to make them very smooth and slippery, and to avoid emulsion build up and scratching. After this they were put onto projectors, the same Technicolor machines that the airlines used, each print was run, and then the prints shipped to various airlines. At one time there were twenty projectors running, checking films. These specially made machines had Xenon lamps, and the sound out put was remarkably good. Much better than the quality received through those dreadful earphones they give you on the plane!

Once the films had served their purpose, they were returned to the various dumps around the world and supposedly junked. I was at SUNSTRAND at one time when they destroyed about 500 feature films, and an official from the film industry stood there whilst they put an axe through every print. ( I don’t think I have ever got over the shock).

It seems that some prints have got out from various dumps, and have found their way onto the market. I must say that a few years ago I did persuade Warner Bros and Columbia to sell us a few prints, which they did. I think we had about ten titles in all and about fifty copies of each. But sadly, the airlines soon stopped using 8mm, when cheaper, video copies became available, and as far as I am aware, no 8mm prints are now made for airline use. If you are offered an ex-airline print, make sure they are not turning pink, as most of them were printed at the time when Eastman stock was suspect.

It was of course written by Derek simmonds for the Film For The Collector magazine.

Mike [Cool]

Posted by Eberhard Nuffer (Member # 410) on June 22, 2006, 05:24 AM:

Jan,

yes, some optical sound prints were made especially for home use by Piccolo Film in Munich, Germany. They offered 400' optical digests of "Lawrence of Arabia", "Cat Ballou" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" for example as well as a two-parter (2x400') of "The Naked and the Dead". A couple of optical digests could also be obtained from "Revue Film" (trademark of Foto-Quelle).

Full-length optical prints were available for rental from "Ullstein AV" who were also collaborating with "Revue/Foto-Quelle" (with Foto-Quelle providing the optical sound projectors). The most popular "Ullstein" releases must have been "Kind Hearts and Coronets" and "Ladykillers" - with an optical track in German of course.

Posted by Joerg Polzfusz (Member # 602) on June 22, 2006, 06:17 AM:

Hi,

Ullstein AV and Revue/Foto-Quelle have released several Super8-prints with optical sound:
Select "UlStein" (<- yes, there's a typo [Wink]

) as "Hersteller" and click onto "Suche starten" on this page:
http://www.super8online.de/suchen.php
You'll find 33 films with "LT" (Lichtton = Optical Sound) - and that list isn't complete since it lacks some more German fairy tales. AFAIK all Ullstein-movies have either been German or English. This list lists a French version of "Lawrence of Arabia" with optical sound - released by Revue:
http://www.super-8-hobby.de/revue-titel.pdf
It looks like the German company "Piccolo" released super8-films with optical sound, too:
http://www.super-8-hobby.de/k-piccolo.htm
I've got a cartoon ("thin soldier" - or was it "toy soldier"?) released with optical soundtrack in the USA, too.

Jörg
P.S.: on Ebay there's an Ullstein three-parter with optical sound - it's missing in the above listing, too: http://cgi.ebay.de/Super-8-Raritaet-in-Ein-Mae dchen-wie-das-Meer_W0QQitemZ9742329906QQihZ008QQcategoryZ27761QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

P.P.S.: It looks like the Italian companies "Epifilm" and "Cifop film" released prints with Italian optical soundtracks:
http://spazioinwind.libero.it/passoridotto/SHOP_SUPER8_16MM/SCAMBIO-VENDO-SUPER8-16MM-MATT.HTM
http://www.superotto.it/Criminali.htm
http://www.superotto.it/Johnny.htm

Posted by John Whittle (Member # 22) on June 22, 2006, 08:51 AM:

One major problem for optical sound was the dye track. Most sound pick up devices are sensitive in the infrared region and the dyes in color films do a poor job of blocking light in that area. Thus on 35mm and 16mm prints for years they were applicated (treated with a special developer agent in processing that trapped the silver along with the dye). This was very difficult to do in Super8 since there were four prints side by side and the special developer would have to be put on in mid process by special rollers and then washed off. Any that got onto the picture left a dark yellow stain.

The Agfa-Gevaert stock had a better cyan dye and got away with dye tracks better than Eastman. The reference in the above quote to Technicolor "coating" the tracks is sound track developer processing.

Prints that were not applicated and start to suffer fade will also lose their sound track. Since the culprit dye is the cyan dye, that's also the critical dye in the optical sound. Once that's gone then the sound goes with it!

In recent years there has been considerable work on 35mm to produce dye tracks and the studios and labs are switching over to a high magneta track. This has required changing out projector sound heads for analogue sound. Of course the digital tracks have all be printed as dye only tracks and the CCD pick ups have been designed to read the dye tracks.

There have been no changes in the printing specs for 16mm films since there is no "modification package" for the various sound pick up systems on these projectors.

John

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on June 22, 2006, 10:47 AM:

So John, I guess the worse possible scenario for degradation of a super 8 print would be that of a 3D black and white anaglyphic (blue and red glasses) sound film, such as Universals 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' 400ft digest, with an optical sound track, printed on Eastman stock, which by now would be converted to a red 2-D silent film! [Big Grin]

Posted by Andreas Eggeling (Member # 105) on June 22, 2006, 11:09 AM:

Jörg, Eberhard,

there were also some UFA 3x400 releases available with optical sound. Never advertised in any of their catalogues.
The order-numbers of these films ended with "-5".

Andreas

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on June 22, 2006, 05:05 PM:

Magnificent info and yes, thanks for reposting that story. I honestly almost cry when I hear of hundreds of prints being axed. Hollywood idiots, if they only knew the collectors that would have paid even good money for a good used super 8 feature. i almost weep when I think of how many great films over the past 30 years were no doubt released on super 8 yet just got axed. Why didn't anybody AXE me? (yeah, I know, corny)

Jan, unfortunately, of my 32 optical sound features, not a one has the twin optical tracks. my God, the second must be majorly small and I would bet has lower sound output.

Posted by Barry Attwood (Member # 100) on June 24, 2006, 03:19 AM:

Osi,

Did you know that Pathe were experimenting with Optical sound for Standard 8 films, and I even know of someone who has a prototype projector with an optical lamp, if they had pursued it more, the soundtracks on Standard 8 prints would have been marvelous as they would have been the same size as 16mm, but perhaps they thought at the time (early 60's I think) that there would not be enough of a market.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on June 24, 2006, 10:10 AM:

Thanks Barry for that info. The true fact is, they must have pursued standard 8mm optical sound. The reason why i know this is a fact, is that one seller, (who got a vast collection of optical sound super 8, and from whom I bought most of my prints) had one print of "Futureworld" (1976, Peter Fonda) on STANDARD 8MM optical sound! I had him verify whether this was true and he, knowing hias film gauges, verified. It appear that at least for awhile, the airlines, (perhaps overseas? used standard 8mm prints.

It seems kind of strange to me, as standard 8mm was all but dead, at least, commerically, by 1976

Oh, could anyone, who has the "list" of optical sound super 8's please relist it on this post, as that would be nice to have all the info on optical, and before doing so, perhaps ask the question about what releases there were, as there are always more that are popping up.

Posted by Kevin Faulkner (Member # 6) on June 24, 2006, 10:17 AM:

I bought that copy of Star Trek 1V off of Andreas just to see that extra optical track for myself.

I Would say that if the optical slit just clipped the sprocket holes there would be a really nasty noise for instance if the slitting was slightly out etc.

Anyway here's the pic again.

This is mounted on 2 x 800 ft reels. The first 800ft is just the std one track optical in English sound. The second 800 ft is the one photographed. The main track is Spanish and the second is probably English.
Shame this print is well on the fade.

Kev.

Posted by Jan Bister (Member # 332) on June 24, 2006, 01:43 PM:

Pretty amazing. It does appear that the secondary track itself is slightly clipping the sprocket holes (the track area is a bit darker than the areas between the holes) - but I did read that the manufacturers of inflight projectors, as well as the labs printing these dual-track films, went to extremes to keep tolerances down to a minimum. It must have worked pretty well actually - or maybe the airline companies are keeping all those passenger complaints about a "jackhammer type of noise in the background" under wraps! [Wink]

Posted by Mike Peckham (Member # 16) on June 25, 2006, 03:48 AM:

Osi

quote:
Oh, could anyone, who has the "list" of optical sound super 8's please relist it on this post, as that would be nice to have all the info on optical, and before doing so, perhaps ask the question about what releases there were, as there are always more that are popping up.

Have brought the relevant thread up to the front for you so you can update the "list" if you want and post it here. [Wink]

Mike

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