8mm Forum: Stuart Warriner's historical widescreen Pan-16 film format

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Posted by Nicholas Kovats (Member # 2622) on December 16, 2013, 08:58 AM:

Introducing a rare scan of Stuart Warriner's (UK) amazing widescreen Pan-16 film format from the late 1960's based on the Bolex camera system. This historical 32 year old Kodachrome II footage was shot by Tony Shapps whilst on vacation with his family in Portugal. Both gentleman were instrumental and active in the historic UK Widescreen Association.

Stuart's engineering is remarkable. The frameline and perforations are absolutely steady. What Stuart accomplished was very difficult from an camera engineering perspective. He modified the 16mm gate to replicate the 1/2 pulldown cycle of 8mm using standard single perf 16mm film stock.The universality of his approach was nothing short of brilliant considering the availability of single perf standard 16m film stock globally.

In effect his camera's film transport created two 8mm intermittent pulldowns per single perf 16mm frame height! Two 8mm cycles in the same interval as one complete standard 16mm pulldown cycle. An excellent overview of his efforts are detailed in Guy Edmonds academic paper "Amateur widescreen; or, some forgotten skirmishes in the battle of the gauges, i.e. academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/frames/P&S/Edmonds07.pdf

Guy Edmonds's paper states Pan-16 was designed with an aspect ratio of 1:2.87. However, I calculated a usable aspect ratio closer to the classic Cinemascope format in the range of 1:2.5. This is positioned between Emel's Pan-8 format (1:2.2) and UltraPan8 2.8 (1:2.8). Note that both formats utilize double perf 8mm film stock as opposed to Pan-16's more common standard 16mm film. Stuart originally modified a Siemens 16mm camera but later settled on the Bolex as his conversion of choice. He also modified Specto 500 projectors for Pan-16 and engineered an associated Variable Pitch Compensator (VPC) for these UK manufactured machines. Regrettably, Stuart's engineering notes no longer exist.

The cropped 1:2.5 scan is available for viewing here, i.e.https://vimeo.com/81976714

The full overscan with visible perforartions and frameline are available here, i.e. https://vimeo.com/81960081

I am indebted to Tony Shapps for providing this invaluable film record of small format ultra widescreen history.

Cheers!

Nicholas Kovats
Toronto, Canada

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on December 16, 2013, 12:56 PM:

Neat link there, I enjoyed it. That was so sharp, you could have shot a feature film with it. May not have been 35MM but it certainly looked quite good!

Posted by Nicholas Kovats (Member # 2622) on December 16, 2013, 02:29 PM:

Thanks, Osi.

Kodachrome 25 was an exquisite color reversal stock, indeed.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on December 16, 2013, 03:00 PM:

Why did'nt he just use double 8 roll film, exposed full 16mm across (minus perforations), with the camera modified for a standard 8mm pulldown? Would have been a whole lot easier.

Posted by Nicholas Kovats (Member # 2622) on December 16, 2013, 03:55 PM:

Paul: The ultrawide format that utilizes Double 8 roll film is called UltraPan8 2.8. We have built approximately 12 of these Bolex H16/H8 hybrids to date, i.e. https://vimeo.com/81306448

However, Double 8 aka Regular 8mm film stock supplies are not in great supply. One hundred foot rolls of Standard 16mm film stock are still commonplace.

Stuart's historic achievement is highly commendable in achieving a universality of a common film stock.

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on December 16, 2013, 05:31 PM:

Thanks for that info Nick. I have often thought that Eastman Kodak should have designed super 8 as a widescreen format (16:9) from the getgo.

Posted by Jean-Louis Seguin (Member # 2200) on December 17, 2013, 01:49 PM:

In the Edmonds study, it is mentioned that Mr. Warriner did a detailed presentation of his PAN-16 system in the June 1968 issue of Widescreen magazine. Does anyone have this issue in their collection?

Jean-Louis

Posted by Alan Frederick Brookes (Member # 4483) on October 16, 2014, 07:21 PM:

I was also an active participant in the Widescreen Association and also the Stereoscopic Society, and, together with Don Jeater, was one of the founders of the International Stereoscopic Union.

I knew Stuart Warriner well, and I used Pan-16 with a Bolex H16 camera, converted to Pan-16 by Stuart, to which I attached the Bolex Stereo Attachment, a process first used by the late Don Jeater. I went one further and attached two Delrama Anamorphics to the stereo attachment, giving me widescreen 3D. As far as I know, I was the only one shooting Stereoscopic Pan-16 in Widescreen back in the middle 70s.
[IMG]http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/showpic.cgi?dir=uploads1102&file=d:\Documents and Settings\Alan F Brookes\Desktop\For email\Alan & Bolex H16.jpg[/IMG]
I visited Stuart Warriner at his workshop in Morecambe several times. He and I were both participants in the annual Widex exhibition, at which Tony Shapps was usually present.
[IMG]http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/showpic.cgi?dir=uploads1102&file=d:\Documents and Settings\Alan F Brookes\Desktop\For email\sevt0202.jpg[/IMG]
I exhibited two films at Widex75 in Pan-16 Stereoscopic format, "Paris in Depth" and "Isle of Man Railways".

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on October 27, 2014, 08:09 AM:

I saw a demonstration of this at the "Widex" held at Watford Junction many years ago. It was stunning.

The other reason given then for not using double 8 film was that UK Kodak often didn't read the instructions sent with the film and slitted it to 8mm as usual.

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