Super 8 feature film lengths?

[Osi Osgood]

Jerry, you live in a world with hundreds or perhaps thousands of channels. Back when these came out, there were only three networks and the occasional UHF channel, and sometimes channel 12. The only way you could see a Hollywood feature film, was to either go to the movie theater, or luck out and see it on one of the networks, and videotape wouldn't really come out for the average person until the late 70's early 80's, so, seeing your favorite scenes from a Hollywood film in your own home, was a wonderful treat.

[Paul Adsett]

I have come to appreciate digests more and more as time goes on. Where else can you get the best scenes from your favorite movies in 20 minutes.

[Janice Glesser]

I have come to appreciate digests more and more as time goes on. Where else can you get the best scenes from your favorite movies in 20 minutes.

I agree Paul. I tend to pull out 2 or 3 digests to watch at one sitting. Love seeing the best parts of more than one movie.

[Jerry Coker]

Thanks for all the replies, info. & links. I've got some S8 film research to do now, looking at existing titles! And that is a good thing 😊 I also appreciate the history lesson on S8 film. Most of my experience is with 8mm home movies & some 16mm sport shorts. I will be referring back to this thread a lot. Thank you!

[Eivind Mork]

I you go to https://super8database.com and and writes "tag:feature" in the search field, you get all the films marked as a feature. We also have a tag "abridged" that goes for releases with at least half of the content (search for "tag:abridged"). Digests are anything shorter than half of the full feature (search for "tag:digest"). We set these tags to the best of our knowledge.

If you don't remember how to search specifically for features later, just click on "Tags" in the menu, find "feature" and then click on "List all films". It will make this search for you.

For any search result you can narrow down the result by using the filter on the left side (on a desktop - or clicking the filter button on a mobile), or you can add to the search text

If you look specifically for 3x400 abridged, you can search for "tag:abridged reels:3x400". You can also search by distributor: "tag:feature distributor:derann". And combine it with the year the film was made. Let's say you want features from the 70s released by Derann, then search for "tag:feature distributor:derann year:1970-1979" (you can search by year with the filter function, so you don't need to remember the magic search patterns).

The search function is quite powerful if you know how to use it. If you have questions or very complex queries to the dataset, do not hesitate to contact me, and I will help you.

Any search result can be downloaded as a spreadsheet. Just click on the download button below the search field after searching.

You can also download the entire database as a spreadsheet if you like (https://super8database.com/api/v1/films.xlsx). This way you can manipulate the list as you like to get a list of what you look for.

Keep in mind that the database is not complete. We have more than 6200 films, and more than 100 distributors, but many films have not yet been registered, although add more films regularly.

[Rob Young]

Eivind, the super8database really is a tremendous source of information and a real labour of love for super 8 fans.

I can spend ages looking around there!

So grateful for this constantly evolving website.

[Eivind Mork]

Thank you so much for the kind words! It makes me very happy to see all the work I and Greg has put into this, with the help of many contributors, being appreciated by collectors! It motivates me to continue! So thank you! :-)

[Jerry Coker]

Thank you for this additional search criteria for the database. I will try it tonight!

[Jerry Coker]

Hello, a bit of a follow up question, how common is silent Super 8 film, both for feature & home movies? The reason I ask is that I see some Super 8 films with no sound. Same with projectors. I thought Super 8 was heavily marketed as sound film since previous to that, 8mm film did not have sound, I think. Sorry for my ignorance. I'm still learning 😀 Thank you.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Jerry,

Castle Films started selling Standard 8mm magnetic sound versions of their digest films in 1961. Previous to that, only their 16mm releases were available with sound. The 16mm & 8mm silent versions used title cards or subtitles when necessary to convey the story. As for features, other companies released a number of feature films in Standard 8mm sound.









Castle and other distributors put out Super 8mm silent versions in 1966. A year later they started releasing their Super 8mm films with sound.

For amatuer home movie use, Fairchild manufactured the Cinephonic Standard 8mm sound camera in 1960. After the introduction of Super 8mm, that camera disappeared. Kodak released the first Super 8mm sound camera in 1973.

[Eivind Mork]

When you look at old catalogs, you will very often see multiple different releases of the same film. It could be with different lengths (for example 400' and 200'), different sound settings (silent/sound/stereo) or different color settings (color or b/w). When I see the covers I receive to add on Super8database, most of them are with sound, but when I read catalogs, there are many silent ones too. I guess the ones with sound has survived better through the years.

Here are the statistics from Super8database:
silent - 1680
sound - 4480
optical - 7
stereo - 93

Keep in mind that these numbers are not necessarily representative for the true numbers released, as many have been added when I receive a cover and at the time I did not know if there were other releases too. I therefore suspect that the true number of silent releases are higher. The numbers may change as we have more time to go through catalogs to add all films, with or without a cover. But as you can see, there were many silent Super 8's released.

[Jerry Coker]

Thank you Doug and Eivind for the replies. I'm a bit of a history buff, so reading/learning about the release of film is really interesting to me. We are always learning 😀 Thank you Doug for the lesson. Eivind, thank you for the summary and stats. I think I will buy a digest/feature of a film I really like, and see what I think. Also, I'm guessing eventually I may want to get a Super 8 projector with sound too 😀 Thanks again for the replies!