Tape Titles ...

[Osi Osgood]

OK, I can't think of anything else to call them, but I ran into something that I have never seen before. This "tape" is applied to a super 8 film, on top of the film, in pieces, to create "the end" titles or effects on an already existed, developed film. They are even animated as well, or have animated effects. Has anybody else ever ran into these?

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi! Here in Germany, you can buy them easily on eBay: from Hama and Kaiser (both mainly on Kodak and hence reddish), from DEFA Heimfilm (on ORWO and hence still with great colors unless B&W),…

[Osi Osgood]

So "Hama and Kaiser" are the people who invented these? Thanks for your reply.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

No. They only sold them. Hama and Kaiser are still active companies:
https://www.hama.de/ and https://www.kaiser-fototechnik.de/
DEFA Heimfilm got dissolved after the fall of the wall.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Looks like also ROWI sold them:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/364535348805...5a1667e3bb99b6

[Joerg Polzfusz]

one of the many DEFA sets (this time in B&W):
https://www.ebay.de/itm/116262302974...Bk9SR7a1nJCcZA

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Kaiser‘s titles have been available striped and unstriped…

[Osi Osgood]

All of this is fascinating. Would I be correct in stating that this an overseas thing, as, until today, I never even heard of these clever little reels of titles.

[Dave Bickford]

So cool! I started dabbling in Super 8mm when I was a teen in 1979. I don’t recall seeing anything like this either in stores or in the various photography magazines I read back then! I used poster board, various colored markers, and magazine cutouts to create my titles. In retrospect, I’m glad I took that route. My ancient films are 100% “me”.

[Juergen Kellermann]

The eBay links provided above are not for the stick-on titles that Osi mentioned, but for proper titles on film that could be spliced into your home movies.

[Martin Davey]

That's what I was thinking too. Osi is talking about self adhesive 'stick on effects', which I have seen mentioned over the years. The printed item is stuck directly on the film, and is not a separate piece of film to attach, like an animated 'The End' title for example, to ones own home movie, but directly on top of the footage shot.

[Steve Klare]

These titling stickers are a cool idea, but given the trouble I sometimes have getting an inch-long tape splice to lay flat, I think something similar that could easily be 15 times as long could be a little...challenging!

I did a lot of titling in the mid-2000s: recently enough to make my titles in Microsoft Word. Bring a picture into a Word document, put a text box on top of it, superimpose whatever text I want in any size or font that works, print, and film.

I don't make nearly as many films as I used to, but I still do the titling for "CineSea in Pictures" on this forum this way.

-before I used Word for titling, I printed title text as small as possible with a laser printer on transparency film, put the film over a 35mm slide, projected this sandwich on a screen and filmed that. It was not easy and...far from perfect. I only did one film that way...(we live, we learn!)

[Osi Osgood]

I did notice that the image quality of the "The End" title, is somewhat out of focus, so while you'd have a sharp focus image behind, it seems a little awkward to have something that honestly doesn't really enhance the experience.

[Steve Lee]

I sort of remember seeing these back in the day, and thinking at the time this is a recipe for disaster.
Can you imagine trying to hold a piece a sticky tape with images on and trying to aline it with the film frame, at the same time not getting any fingerprints on it, holding it in a perfect straight line without out any dust, hairs and air bubbles.

It was a nice idea to be able to superimpose titles over your own film footage, but in practice not very practical.
I can imagine after the first couple of attempts, you would have the tendency to say sod it and rip it back off.