8mm Forum: Did people pay film based on the actual length?

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Posted by Winbert Hutahaean (Member # 58) on December 09, 2007, 11:13 PM:

Hi all,

I was not into 8mm yet when it reached the peak in 70s.

But now, when I have 8mm films I often curious how the company priced their films.

We all knew that 200" or 400" reel did have various length of film. But on Ken's or Castles' catalogs they were priced all the same (based only either colour/bw and or sound/silent) without mentioning the actual length.

But on the latest Walt Disney and Universal 8 releases, the company did mention the actual length, varies from 6-9.8 minutes for 200" or 15-19 minutes for 400".

So during that time, when the company was (already) honest with the length, did they priced differently?

As far as I knew, if there every 1 minute equals to 20 feet of film.

Advise me please,

Posted by John Clancy (Member # 49) on December 10, 2007, 02:35 AM:

If I remember correctly they were sold by the size of the reel. Now this didn't always mean the same price if for example a 400ft reel only contained 230ft of film. But generally a 400ft reel had in excess of 15 minutes running time so here in Blighty the usual cost was £29.95. Some outlets such as Harrods charged the recommended retail price of £42 but not the regular film dealers.

Perry's 400ft releases came with just that - 400ft of film and ran for 20 minutes. They still cost about the same as other film distributors product.

Posted by Barry Attwood (Member # 100) on December 10, 2007, 02:45 AM:

Iver Film Services also filled there 400' editions to the rim, and they constantly had a running time between 17-19 minutes (occasionally a little mor).

Posted by Jean-Marc Toussaint (Member # 270) on December 10, 2007, 03:10 AM:

Film Office, the French Super 8 leader, had a very detailed price list and you would pay by the foot/meter. They had a selection of shorts on 50 and 200ft reels (b&w, colour, sound or silent, like Chaplin, L&H, cartoons of all sorts) and they were the distributor for Disney. All with fixed prices, Disney spools being more expensive.But other titles were sold by linear meter.

For instance, if you wanted the King Kong reduction, you had to buy the boxed set of two reels holding 215 meters (675 ft) for 632.10 French Francs (130 US dollars of 1981). But this ended with Kong being gased and captured on Skull Island. To make the digest complete, you had to purchase the reel called "King Kong in New York", on one reel holding 106 meters (318 ft) of film for 311.64 FF (62 USD).

The company moved to VHS in 1982, and all super 8 stocks were binned. It then switched to DVD. It went bust a couple of years ago.

Posted by Mark Williams (Member # 794) on December 10, 2007, 03:28 AM:

Winbert,

It was a very strange situation here as Companies such as Portland films who were the main distributor for Mountain,Columbia,20th Century Fox etc used to sell there films quite cheaply for example a 4 x 400ft cutdown feature of say PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE would cost just £45 in 1979 and the Columbia imported colour digests only £21 which was very cheap then.

However if you were to go to Selfridges in Oxford St,London who sold only Walton Films a 4 x 400ft Colour print of WITCHFINDER GENERAL would probably set you back £120!!!

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