Can you trust 8mm copies of pre-50s stuff that was only officially released on 35mm?

[David Navratil]

I have an opportunity to buy some 8mm stuff but I know they are no official 8mm releases.

Basically I'd be okay with a dupe but what I'd like to avoid is buying something where somebody just pointed an 8mm camera at a silver screen and filmed a 35mm projection, since that would lead to blended frames and overall horrible quality.

How common was it back then (around 30s/40s/50s) to have the possibility to make proper 8mm dupes and how common was it for people to just film off from a projection?

I don't want to risk buying trash basically.

[Maurice Leakey]

David
Most 35mm films were also issued on 16mm on a rental basis.
I suppose 8mm dupes could be made from the 16mm but unlikely unless they were silent.
Even if an 8mm camera could have been used in the front row of a cinema it wouldn't have been very successful as one half of a standard 8 camera film was only 25ft!


Maurice

[Joseph Banfield]

I've never seen anything in 8mm, super8 or 16mm that looked like it was filmed from a movie screen, or at least not yet. I have seen some nasty looking prints through the years, as we all have, but certainly nothing filmed from a movie screen using analog motion picture cameras.

However, unless you can see a screenshot or an accurate description of what you're considering buying there is no guarantee that you will receive a decent print.

[Steve Klare]

As far as I know, small gauge films weren't pirated this way. As Maurice says, the running time of home movie camera film was only a couple of minutes and then there is the whole issue of sound capture. The flicker would be spectacular between the un-synced shutters in the projector and pirate-camera too.

This is much more a video-thing. A friend of ours gave our son kind of a funky looking DVD he "got from a guy at work" about 10 years ago. Sure enough, at least once during the show somebody's silhouette walks across the screen with his popcorn!

How it was often done back in the film era is the Pirates would need a connection inside a movie theater. Somewhere after the last screening of the night, maybe after the boss went home, or maybe it even was the boss, a 35mm print would go out the back door, a negative would be struck overnight and it would be back in the booth before breakfast.

-the quality was of course variable.

[Brian Fretwell]

Also most standard 8 cameras would have been clockwork and need rewinding after about 30 seconds.

[Osi Osgood]

Back in my first venture into film, I had an old standard 8mm camera, and filmed off of the. TV, a little bit of "Return of the Jedi", and while a little bit of it looked OK, most of it was crap!

[Lee Mannering]

I've the moon landing filmed off tv on std 8mm film very much a home movie. Very well filmed also capturing the children watching.

[Steve Klare]

Back in the pre-VCR days this wasn't nearly as funky as it sounds now. I have a Kodak "Better Home Movies" book here (somewhere) that has a paragraph or two about how to film off the TV screen.

The lady across the street (who inspired me into 8mm Film as a little kid...) was an absolutely voracious film maker. No! She wasn't particularly good, but she shot miles and miles of film. Back when the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan, she decided to "record" it. Her DVR must have been down that day . She went with Regular-8! (-silent, of course) Thing is, she also double-exposed the roll with her kids in the wading pool.

Almost 60 years later, The Beatles in the Swimming Pool is still a neighborhood classic!

(I'd PAY for a dupe of that one!)

[Osi Osgood]

Grrreat story there, Steve!

[Lee Mannering]

Classic

[Steve Klare]

Yes,

-and since I was the kid across the street and she and my Mom were close friends, I'll give you odds big parts of my childhood are on R8 and S8 film.

-somewhere where I have no access to them!

Mrs. D lived well into her nineties. Maybe 15 years ago we sat down at a party and I told her about my new adventures with Super-8.

"-Sound?!"

"Who could imagine such a thing?!"

I like that moon-shot film idea, Lee. It takes a moment in History and makes it personal!

[Adrian Winchester]

David - You could perhaps mention some titles here, just in case any are quite obscure releases that other members have or know of. Filming off a screen is practically unknown, although I've come across it in relation to Super 8 prints of two Hammer films that were 16mm prints filmed off a screen. They had splices every 50 ft and the sound regularly went in and out of sync!