page_title: Super 8 film
section_title: Popularity
hierarchical_section_title: Super 8 film / Popularity
caption_attribution_description: English: A still from the super-8 Remodernist film "so tell me again" directed by Jesse Richards.
context_page_description: Super 8mm film is a motion picture film format released in 1965 by Eastman Kodak as an improvement over the older "Double" or "Regular" 8 mm home movie format.
  The film is nominally 8mm wide, the same as older formatted 8mm film, but the dimensions of the rectangular perforations along one edge are smaller, which allows for a greater exposed area. The Super 8 standard also allocates the border opposite the perforations for an oxide stripe upon which sound can be magnetically recorded.
  Unlike Super 35, the film stock used for Super 8 is not compatible with standard 8 mm film cameras.
  There are several varieties of the film system used for shooting, but the final film in each case has the same dimensions. The most popular system by far was the Kodak system.
context_section_description: Super 8 was most widely used for filming home movies. Some lower-budget television stations used Super 8 to film news stories. Today amateur usage of Super 8 has been replaced by digital, but the format is still regularly used by artists and students. Some seek to imitate the look of old home movies, or create a stylishly grainy look. Others want to create alternative looks for flashback sequences and altered states of consciousness. Some just like the idea of creating images in the classic style of using actual film. Super 8 is a relatively inexpensive film, making it popular among filmmakers working on a low budget who still want to achieve the classic look of real film.
  Super 8 has become quite common in theatrical features. Oliver Stone, for example, has used it in films such as JFK, where his director of photography Robert Richardson employed it to evoke a period or to give a different look to scenes. The PBS series Globe Trekker uses approximately five minutes of Super 8 footage per episode. In the UK, broadcasters such as the BBC still occasionally make use of Super 8 in both drama and documentary contexts, usually for creative effect. A recent example of particular note is the 2005 BBC2 documentary series Define Normal, which was shot largely on Super 8, with only interviews and special timelapse photography utilising more conventional digital formats.
  Thanks to over a dozen film stocks, the ease of function and finding a camera, and the ability to do high quality digital scanning to standard motion picture digital formats like 2K and 4K, DPX or ProRes 4444, Super 8 remains a popular format for creating a variety of interesting scenes. Super 8 provides an ideal, inexpensive medium for traditional stop-motion and cel animation and other types of filming speed effects not common to video cameras.
caption: A frame from So tell me again by Jesse Richards
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