As home movie film collectors were we short changed ?

[Steve Lee]

The other day whilst re-recording the soundtrack of My Fair Lady back into English using my Tascam studio reel to reel recorder, sitting looking up at the reels turning, slowly hypnotizing me into a trance, it got me thinking.
Both reel to reel tape and 8mm film share so much in common, they both had about the same life span, they were both designed as a consumer product for home use, they even used the same design reels to start with, but both ended their days at different ends of the scale.

In the audio world side of things, all of the main manufacturers such as Akia, Pioneer, Technics, in the last couple of years of production in the mid 80s, throw everything they had learned from over the years into the last run of these magnificent machines, to fight back from the new fangeled CDs, which at this time could not be recorded onto at home. Now leaving the audiofile world 40 years later rubbing their hands with glee, with an array of beautifully designed engineered works of art to listen to their music on. Which were all built to last forever.

What did we get in the 8mm world? in a nutshell NOTHING!!! Quite the opposite. Rather than battling the new video tape head on, in which it could have won easily with the right marketing. As those of us who remember those day of video it was diabolical. Instead they all turned tail and did a runner. Cheapening their last runs of machines to lumps of plastic rather than metal.

Considering at this time also there had been several generations who had shot their precious home movies on the gauges, now left high and dry with no way forward, only for the handful of worthwhile machines from the past. As we all know 40 plus years later they are now starting to give us greffe.

I sometimes think it was a great shame that the likes of Fumeo could not have just held in there a little bit longer, with all the advancements in technology in the cinema world that were happening at this time. Who knows we could've had Dolby optical stereo or even Dolby digital on super 8, in hindsight it was possible to have done this.
This would have greatly reduced the cost of a film print, after the master negative it would only had to past through a printer and then be processed. Without the need to have been striped and then recorded, taking up most of the costs.

I guess we'll never know what could have been, and it's a great shame.

[David Baker]

WOW , Steve Lee , BEAUTIFULLY written , and so true !

[Maurice Leakey]

Kodak introduced Super 8, and then later, virtually killed it off.

I remember the days of filming on Kodachrome and pre-striped film in my Bell & Howell sound camera.

Then what happened?

Kodak discontinued pre-striped film, and then, not much later, discontinued Kodachrome. Agreed that they eventually introduced new colour film stock but with increased speeds which did not work correctly with many earlier automatic cameras.

It was Kodak which let us down.

And, yes; Eumig's failure with Polavision didn't help either.

[Joseph Banfield]

Yea, really nicely written indeed. I especially enjoyed the part about "lumps of plastic"!

[Douglas Meltzer]

While the introduction of home videotape players and cameras certainly contributed to the end of the Super 8mm era, it was actually the price of silver that was responsible for the quick falloff in manufacturing. Billionaires William & Nelson Hunt had been working on cornering the silver market for years. In 1980 the Hunt brothers leveraged the price of silver from $6 per ounce to over $50. Since film contains silver, the price of film stock shot up. The package film companies held on for a short while, however with the increase in expenses they soon decided to cut their losses.

[Graham Ritchie]

Cannes Film festival 2021, Note the use of a Canon 814XL-S camera, and Beaulieu 4008 .

[Dominique De Bast]

Indeed, Graham. Here is the list of the films and cameras used to shot them : https://ymcinema.com/2021/07/12/cann...ty-is-the-key/

[Graham Ritchie]

Thanks for that link Dominique that was most interesting.

The film "Mariner of the Mountains" where they also used a Canon 814XL-S would be interesting to see the results.

[Adrian Winchester]

Very interesting subject! I've never owned a Beaulieu and I'm not qualified to comment on their merits, but considering how highly regarded they are - and the fact they were still launching impressive new models until at least 1993 - I wondered whether anyone feels that they at least made some attempt to respond to the challenging circumstances that Steve refers to?

I'd guess that a significant factor in the 'mass market' home viewing shift to video is that after a period when films on tape were shockingly expensive, they (and hiring films) became cheap and convenient for the average person, and that would have been sufficient for a substantial proportion of the market. The 1980s revival that Derann spearheaded is associated with consistently good prints which must have encouraged many collectors to stick with film, but I doubt whether this lured back many people who had invested in home video and considered it the future of home viewing. Higher specification projectors may have been a hard sell to such people.

Steve makes a great point about sound technology - it's unfortunate that the stride forward in cinemas was a bit too late to make an impact on Super 8 technology. I'm confident that if the manufacture of Super 8 equipment had remained healthy in the 1990s, we would have seen projectors that incorporated CD player-type trays for DTS (or equivalent) disks. As Steve says, the resulting top quality sound and lower cost could have been a fantastic boost for film collecting, although not everyone would have wanted to buy a new projector. Disks could have been supplied with features, and perhaps Derann would have sold ones that (e.g.) included the sound for 10 cartoons. I think the same would have applied to 16mm projectors, and this might have even increased 16mm use in relation to small cinema screens.

I also think we would have become accustomed to projector remote controls that were far more sophisticated than the ones that Elmo and Eiki started producing for certain models. Even now, I find these fun to use and I'd love to be able adjust focus and sound from my seat!

[Osi Osgood]

Nicely written. Yet, thankfully, new prints are coming out now, so not dead, but on life support, but anyone on life support is very thankful to be on life support, so we're thankful to not be dead, besides, as long as we are able to watch our precious prints, it's alive and kicking!

[Maurice Leakey]

.....I'm confident that if the manufacture of Super 8 equipment had remained healthy in the 1990s, we would have seen projectors that incorporated CD player-type trays for DTS (or equivalent) disks....

Don't forget that DTS disks are keep in sync by a special optical control track on the film itself.

[Ty Reynolds]

The pie chart should show 2% for "video tape". Sony video 8 is neither film nor digital, but analogue tape, about on par with VHS.

[Paul Adsett]

Ty, the Sony Digital8 equipment used the same videocassettes as analog Hi8 equipment, but the signal is encoded digitally using the industry-standard DV codec, which means it had identical digital audio and digital video specifications compared with DV. Digital 8 tape is way superior to analog 8 tape and way superior to VHS.

[Ty Reynolds]

Video 8 is analogue and on par with VHS. Hi8 is is also analogue, but on par with S-VHS. D8 is digital, as you describe. The graph says video 8, but could be incorrect.

[Adrian Winchester]

Don't forget that DTS disks are keep in sync by a special optical control track on the film itself.

Maurice - I can confirm that I wasn't forgetting that! My assumption was that with no need for striping, it may have been possible to print the control track where the main stripe would otherwise have been. Even reel changes would then be rewarding, with the sound automatically staying in sync!