Prepacked 8mm films from Japan market, are they many?

[Winbert Hutahaean]

i knew there is at least one member here who live in Japan, so I call upon Jason Smith to join the discussion, but I of course would like also to hear others who may have more information.

I found the below picture from the net. This is obvoiously Japanese prints.

- What type of films are they?

- Are they silent or with sound?

- There is on the the rigt top corner somekind like Fuji Film logo, are all Japanese prints printed on Fuji stock or some on Kodak or AGFA too?

- For those who own Japanese prints, how do they look a like that color wise? reddish or purplish or excelent ?

- Are there many films printed there? or various titles like German markets?

- I always curios knowing 80% of projectors lying around were actually made in Japan but there is only a little information about Japanese prints, why?

cheers,

winbert

[Osi Osgood]

Winbert, I own an optical soundj feature of the Burt Reynolds feature film "Hooper", with fairly small Japanese subtitles, and it is printed on that really good late 70's Fuji, and the colors great!

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

There are travelogues/souvenir films, railroad-movies, pornos, educational movies, animes (abridged and full length), Japanese non-anime movies (abridged and full length) and foreign movies (mainly abridged).

You’ll have the usual mix of striped and unstriped films - and several films with an optical soundtrack. There are also sometimes unstriped films with the sound on separate MCs or LPs.

I have never heard of any Japanese print on European filmstocks. They’re all on Japanese or US-American stocks.
Some of the prints distributed by Fujifilm (on Fuji stock) turned green over the years, e.g. many of the Star Wars „selected scenes“.
The reasons for the lack of information are that only a few collectors outside of Japan can speak/understand Japanese and that the Japanese destroyed much of their information when switching to video (same as in Europe).
Another reason is that many of the abridged „Non Japanese movies“ have simply been taken over from the USA (Ken Films,…).
And a lot of information got lost when Yahoo turned off geocities.jp.

Some railroad movies that most likely have not been released outside of Japan (in any format):
https://www.easyauctionjapan.com/Yah...084625915.html

https://www.easyauctionjapan.com/Yah...088199443.html

James Dean:
https://www.easyauctionjapan.com/Yah...048782206.html

Animes:
https://www.easyauctionjapan.com/Yah...080711795.html

Some more examples:
https://www.easyauctionjapan.com/Yah...080725820.html

https://www.easyauctionjapan.com/Yah...080722274.html

https://www.easyauctionjapan.com/Yah...083468417.html

https://www.easyauctionjapan.com/Yah...078528863.html

[Osi Osgood]

Joerg! Great information, there!

[Mike Newell]

Any Japanese releases I have seen are big into packaging. Quality tends to be pretty good as well.

[Osi Osgood]

I was able to buy a Japanese 400ft alternative cut of Magical Mystery Your on a lovely Fuji stock, with not a bit of fade, which is rare for this title!

[Mike Newell]

They were big into Beatles. At least no sub titles for them unlike James Bond trailers. Animation similar to Spirted Away.

[Steve Klare]

A kind CineSea friend gave me a Japanese railway film a few years ago.

Being that the narration is Japanese on an optical track and I don't either speak Japanese or own any 8mm machines that are optical sound capable, I cheat a little and consider it an honorary silent!

Optical sound is much more common in Japan than in the rest of the world. There is a special version of the GS-1200 there which is Xenon and optical sound only.

[Jason Smith]

The films appearing in the picture are all optical sound digests on Fujifilm stock. Fujifilm was the company releasing all of these films, so all of the films were released on Fujifilm stock.

Most Fujifilm releases were on Fujifilm stock. I have come across quite a few films Fujifilm released that were printed in overseas labs on Eastman stock. Usually these releases also had Ken Films written on the lab head as well. In seems that for some foreign Fujifilm releases, they just used a Ken Films negative and had a foreign lab handle the printing. I have seen in these releases a disclaimer in Japanese stating that the film had been printed in a foreign lab and that quality might be different from a normal Fujifilm release.

The color of Fujifilm releases varies but overall they usually have very good colors. Usually the blacks have faded to purple. I have owned early 70s Fujifilm releases that were almost faded red. Most of the Fujifilm releases have purple fade in varying degrees. It is usually the shadows or black areas of the screen where the purple fade is most noticeable.

I have owned several copies of the Magical Mystery Tour that Osi mentioned. Every copy I have seen has purple fade. There are plenty of vibrant colors present but there is no Fujifilm release that I have seen that has perfect colors. I have probably owned over seventy different Fujifilm releases over the years and purple fade is something that is always present. The blacks will always have some purple fade present.

Here is a video from a Magical Mystery tour optical digest from Japan.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/v37MNhT9XNdRdkJL8

Purple fade though usually does not look bad at all when compared to Eastman or even Kodak SP fade.

There were other companies in Japan that released digests on Super 8 film in Japan. Most of those color releases in the 1970s though ended up being on Eastman stock.

Overall you cant go wrong with any of these Fujifilm releases. I have found some over the years that had vinegar syndrome but not that many. The colors still look pretty good considering that all of the Fujifilm releases you will find are from the 1970s. You will need a projector though capable of playing back optical films though. All of the Fujifilm releases I have seen have optical tracks. None of the above pictured boxes have it, but the smaller 200-300ft optical digests/shorts that came in smaller thicker boxes all came with a cassette tape. So that could be an option if you do not have optical sound.