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Super 8 film (an 8mm wide film) was introduced to the public by Kodak in 1965, making home movies easy for millions of budding amateur filmakers. Super 8 came in a plastic cartridge and is probably the fastest loading film system ever developed. It could be loaded into the Super 8 camera in less than two seconds without the need to directly thread or even touch the film. The notches in the film aligned with the cartridge and spooled the film automatically. Originally, Super 8 was silent only but a few years later a sound track was added. The cartridge spools were loaded with 50 feet (15 m) of film which was enough film for 2.5 minutes at 24 frames per second, which is the number of frames for most feature films. (Side note: Peter Jackson is filming the Hobbit at 48 fps which is supposed to enhance the clarity and realism. For more , see Peter Jackson’s Facebook Page) Despite these technical advances, filming in Super 8 was far from easy. A person still had to know all the requirement from a manual film camera such as aperture, speed and film iso (which is sensitivity to light). Super 8 always required editing since you couldn’t erase anything. Parts of the film would be too light, too dark, or out of focus. All the unusable pieces needed to be removed. This had to be done by hand.
The film would be viewed in a small projector like the one here.full reel would be put on the left side with an empty on the right side. Most were hand wound. You had to be careful. If you viewed a frame for too long, the bulb would heat up the film and it would melt. Step one would be to get a general idea of what is worth keeping. Then, the video was marked for editing by watching each shot and ‘recording’ the start/stop times in a notebook along with any other comments on quality or use of the clip. 
To edit Super 8 footage, a ‘splicer’ would be used to cut and recombine the pieces. Once all the pieces were reassembled, a leader was usually added to the beginning so there were a few frames to wrap around the receiving reel, which always showed up at the beginning of the movie. Finally, the film would be put back onto a reel. Family viewing required a dark room, projector and a screen.
The film quality of Super 8 was never that good for the amateur. Studio films managed lighting and staged movements that the home movie photographer didn’t, and there was no cpu in the background managing the changes as we have today in the iPhone. The result was often washed out colors. changes in focus, or jerking and fast movements due to the weight of the handheld camera. The splicing cuts often showed up in the film so transitions between section were anything but smooth. Even more pronounced was the sound of the film, both from the projector and from the film itself having picked up the sound of the camera as it spooled the film. Obviously this made showing home movies a sever pain-in-the-ass. But for most people, it was excruciating to watch someone’s really bad film of their kids. Considering all the time they put in, it was too rude to just walk away, so you had to grin and bear it.
Still, there is something endearing about the quality. Even with all those deficiencies, nothing says “home movie” quite like an old Super 8. So it is not surprising that someone would want to bypass the clean, perfectly lit, in-focus, digital films available from the iPhone and transform them into their ancient analog counterpart. So enter Super 8, an app developed to coincide with the soon-to-be-released movie produced by Stephen Spielberg and directed by J.J Abrams. I have been playing around with it quite a bit, and it really makes filming fun, just like Histamatic or Instagram does for still cameras. It’s free, so if you have an iPhone, I suggest you give it a try. I am nto going to review the app, there are many other better reviewers out there. I have posted some below along with some other interesting tidbits. But take a look at the video below and see what you can make from this free app.
Paris • 8mm from camilo rojas on Vimeo.
NY Times Art & Design
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