As a Super 8 user I often felt like a tiny fish in a huge photographic ocean, so, to put this feeling into perspective I swam off to visit the Great White Shark of the photographic world to obtain some clear hard facts about Kodak’s recent policy decisions regarding Super 8, and to gain some understanding of how the little film format and its loyal band of followers are being considered by the men in grey suits. The train journey out to Hertfordshire was a good time to compose my overall frustrations about the many myths surrounding the world of Super 8. The most common one sounds something like, “What? Super 8? No, mate - they don’t make film for those cameras any more - haven’t since the 1970s”. It always amazes me how often shopkeepers (especially in camera or processing shops) will say with great authority how the Super 8 format is completely obsolete. I don’t think anyone has purposely given them this misinformation, but Kodak’s lack of marketing over the years probably hasn’t helped. It is, however, understandable that a film stock which brings in minimal profits for the company compared to most of their other products, would not really be worth a large advertising campaign, although it’s sad that as a result of this, the format is perceived by many to be dead.

However, things may be looking up. For the first time in years, Kodak have launched a glossy colour brochure listing all the Super 8 film cartridges currently available to consumers. As an avid Super 8 user, I’m probably as guilty as anyone of thinking about Kodak as an unconcerned industrial giant, out of touch with the requirements of the amateur and scornful of the requirements of the professional Super 8 users. What I found was that there is a human side to the world’s largest film stock manufacturer, and that, given half a chance, a few friendly faces at Kodak are only too happy to set the record straight.

Somewhere around the middle floor of the building in which 800 people work, I met Peter Milson, Marketing Planning Manager for Kodak Professional Motion Imaging. As the clouds rolled past beneath us I looked down over the view of the rest of Europe and began my interrogation, starting with the obvious question of discontinued film stocks.

Giles Musitano: What were the reasons behind Kodak’s decision to discontinue Kodachrome and Ektachrome Sound films?
Peter Milson: We coat motion picture film in rolls that are 54 inches wide, and out of that width we can slit 166 strips of Super 8 film. After it’s been perforated the next step, if you want to add the sound stripe, is to use a special solvent to stick a tiny band of magnetic oxide to the edge of the film.

The problem is the solvents used. With increasing health and safety demands we were being asked to make certain operational changes. It was clear that the amount of money we were going to have to spend to bring the process in line with the new regulations, was not economic from our point of view. The manufacture of Kodachrome Sound film was a very small run anyway, but it was a difficult decision to stop production because obviously there are still people out there who want to shoot with sound.

GM: On the same subject, the Ektachrome 160 ASA sound and silent film was also discontinued. Was this for similar environmental reasons?
PM: Ektachrome 160 was a fairly old technology emulsion (a high speed reversal film) and it was particularly good for people in the TV industry who wanted a faster stock for use in low level light.
Some of the chemicals that went into making the emulsion were environmentally non-friendly and we weren’t allowed to use them any more, so it was obvious that we’d have to discontinue it when the new regulations came into force. However, because the stock was predominantly used by the motion picture industry rather than the amateur, we knew that there was a demand for a high speed reversal film, so we set about trying to find a replacement. We introduced the new Ektachrome VNF film which we’ve been selling in 16mm format since the late 1970s early 1980s. It was originally used for news gathering in TV stations, and then when those sales demised with the change over to video, we still had sales to people who do car and rocket research. It’s used to shoot crash test footage so that the scientists can analyse the film on a projector frame by frame.

One of the things we were faced with is the question of which films have all the right characteristics to handle being loaded into a Super 8 cartridge. You can slit and perforate almost any film to Super 8 size, but there are a few important requirements to consider. Many people think that film is film is film but that’s not the case. Some film is different to others and the tolerances of the Super 8 format are fairly small. You’ve got to have a film that has a good resistance when it’s wound up tight on a 50 ft roll so that it won’t rub against itself and become scratched. You’ve got to ask yourself, will it go through a camera without any problems? Will it go through a projector without any problems? Is there an easy enough process to develop the film?...

Full article published in Filmwaves - Issue 4, Spring 1998. Subscribe now!