film - 35 mm film
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Photograph by Ken Lundon Flickr.
It was Edison s format, however, that became first the de facto standard and then, in 1909, the official standard of the newly formed Motion Picture Patents Company, a trust established by Edison. Crispinel and Alan M.
Furthermore, they tended to shrink as the print slowly decayed. Spehr describes the importance of these developments: The film format was introduced into still photography as early as 1913 (the Tourist Multiple) but first became popular with the launch of the Leica camera, created by Oskar Barnack in 1925. The petrochemical and silver compounds necessary for the creation of film stock meant from the start that 35 mm filmmaking was to be an expensive hobby with a high barrier to entry for the public at large.
Gundelfinger revived the Multicolor process under the company name Cinecolor. Developing chemicals use the latent image specks to build up density, an accumulation of enough metallic silver to create a visible image. The emulsion is attached to the film base with a transparent adhesive called the subbing layer.
The proposed standard was, like KS, rectangular with rounded corners and a width of 0.1100 inches (2.79 mm), and, like BH, was 0.073 inches (1.85 mm) tall. CS perfs: In 1953, the introduction of CinemaScope required the creation of a different shape of perforation which was nearly square and smaller to provide space for four magnetic sound stripes for stereophonic and surround sound. During continuous contact printing, the raw stock and the negative are placed next to one another around the sprocket wheel of the printer. Because these soundtrack systems appear on different parts of the film, one movie can contain all of them, allowing broad distribution without regard for the sound system installed at individual theatres. The optical track technology has also changed: distributors and theaters are changing to cyan dye optical soundtracks instead of applicated tracks, which use environmentally unfriendly chemicals to retain a silver (black and white) soundtrack.
The KS1870 perforation, or KS perforation with a pitch of 0.1870 inches (4.75 mm), is the modern standard for release prints. These two perforations have remained by far the most commonly used ones. Using a beam-splitter prism behind the lens, this camera incorporated three individual strips of black and white film, each one behind a filter of one of the primary colors (red, green and blue), allowing the full color spectrum to be recorded. In 1950 Kodak announced the first Eastman color 35 mm negative film (along with a complementary positive film) that could record all three primary colors on the same strip of film.
Original camera negative is still generally made on a triacetate base. In the conventional motion picture format, frames are four perforations tall, with an aspect ratio of about 1.37:1, 22 mm by 16 mm (0.866 in × 0.630 in). The two strips were then cemented together, forming a single strip similar to duplitized film. In 1928, Technicolor introduced imbibition printing (similar to lithography) that streamlined the process.
The Fox Studio markings were the same width but allowed .04 in more height. In 1932, in refining this ratio, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences expanded upon this 1930 standard. When the crystal is struck with light, free-moving silver ions build up a small collection of uncharged atoms.
(for stills, the standard frame is eight perforations). A wide variety of largely proprietary gauges were used by the numerous camera and projection systems invented independently in the late 19th century and early 20th century, ranging from 13 mm to 75 mm (0.51–2.95 in). Because of 3-perf s incompatibility with standard 4-perf equipment, it can utilize the whole negative area between the perforations (Super 35 mm film) without worrying about compatibility with existing equipment; the Super 35 image area includes what would be the soundtrack area in a standard print. The VistaVision motion picture format was created in 1954 by Paramount Pictures in order to create a finer-grained negative and print for flat widescreen films. While the format was dormant by the early 1960s, the camera system was revived for visual effects by John Dykstra at Industrial Light and Magic, starting with Star Wars, as a way of reducing granularity in the optical printer by having increased original camera negative area at the point of image origination. BH perfs: Film perforations were originally round holes cut into the side of the film, but as these perforations were subject to wear and deformation, the shape was changed to what is now called the Bell & Howell (BH) perforation, which has straight top and bottom edges and outward curving sides.
Although the first design was patented as early as 1908, the first commercial 35 mm camera was the 1913 Tourist Multiple, for movie and still photography, soon followed by the Simplex providing selection between full and half frame format. The first Leica camera to be fully standardised was the Leica Standard of 1932. Inside the photographic emulsion are millions of light-sensitive silver halide crystals.
Before the end of the year, 20th Century Fox had narrowly won a race to obtain an anamorphic optical system invented by Henri Chrétien, and soon began promoting the Cinemascope technology as early as the production phase. Looking for a similar alternative, other major studios hit upon a simpler, less expensive solution by April 1953: using a removable aperture plate in the film projector gate, the top and bottom of the frame could be cropped to create a wider aspect ratio. It also was the first major format to be released with only fireproof cellulose diacetate (and later cellulose triacetate) safety film base.
Unlike Kinemacolor, which recorded color frame-sequentially, Technicolor s camera recorded red and green frames simultaneously through a beam splitting prism onto one strip of film. Hannibal Goodwin s invention of nitrocellulose film base in 1887 was the first transparent, flexible film; With the advent of flexible film, Thomas Alva Edison quickly set out on his invention, the Kinetoscope, which was first shown at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893.
There are also films sensitive to non-visible wavelengths of light, such as infrared. Originally, film was a strip of cellulose nitrate coated with black-and-white photographic emulsion. In 1916, William Van Doren Kelley produced the first commercially successful American color system using 35 mm film called Prizma. The ratio was 2.35:1 — and is still often mistakenly referred to as such — until a SMPTE revision of projection standards in 1970). The unexpected success of the Cinerama widescreen process in 1952 led to a boom in film format innovations to compete with the growing audiences of television and the dwindling audiences in movie theaters.
An improved version in 1952 was quickly adopted by Hollywood, making the use of tri-strip Technicolor cameras and bi-pack cameras (used in two-color systems such as Cinecolor) obsolete in color cinematography. In its earliest conception, Technicolor was a two-color system, recording red and green.
This monopack structure is made up of three separate emulsion layers, one sensitive to red light, one to green and one to blue. Although Eastman Kodak had first introduced acetate-based film, it was far too brittle and prone to shrinkage, so the dangerously flammable nitrate-based cellulose films were generally used for motion picture camera and print films. This amateur market would be further diversified by the introduction of 8 mm film (0.31 in) in 1932, intended for amateur filmmaking and home movies .
Initially a system that used frame sequential photography and projected through additive synthesis, Prizma was refined to bi-pack photography, with two strips of film (one sensitized for red and one for blue) threaded as one through the camera. Walker, Eastman invented a holder for a roll of picture-carrying gelatin layer coated paper.
The photographic film is cut into strips 35 millimeters (about 1 3/8 inches) wide — hence the name. Since the beginning of the 21st century, Eastman Kodak and Fujifilm have held a duopoly in the manufacture of 35 mm motion picture film. In 1880, George Eastman began to manufacture gelatin dry photographic plates in Rochester, New York.
With the advent of Digital intermediates (DI) at the beginning of the 21st century, however, Super 35 photography has become even more popular, since the cropping and anamorphosing stages can be done digitally in-computer without creating an additional optical generation with increased grain. Most motion pictures today are shot and projected using the 4-perforation format, but cropping the top and bottom of the frames for an aspect ratio of 1.85 or 1.66. By the early 1920s, several formats had successfully split the amateur market away from 35 mm: 28 mm (1.1 in) (1912), 9.5 mm (0.37 in) (1922), 16 mm (0.63 in) (1923), and Pathe Rural, a 17.5 mm format designed for safety film (1926).
In 1949 Kodak began replacing all the nitrate-based films with the safer, more robust cellulose triacetate-based Safety films. (except for the KodaChrome Process - see below) For every silver halide grain there is a matching color coupler grain.
In 1982, Joe Dunton revived the format for Dance Craze, and Technicolor soon marketed it under the name Super Techniscope before the industry settled on the name Super 35. These processes could give theatergoers an experience that television couldn t—color, stereophonic sound and panoramic vision.
This is a derivation of the aspect ratio and frame size designated by Thomas Edison (24.89 mm by 18.67 mm or 0.980 in by 0.735 in) at the dawn of motion pictures, which was an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. By 1929, most movie studios had revamped this format using their own house aperture plate size to try to recreate the older screen ratio of 1.33:1. Below the base is an undercoat called the antihalation backing, which usually contains absorber dyes or a thin layer of silver or carbon (called rem-jet on color negative stocks).
It was Universal Studios, however, with their May release of Thunder Bay that introduced the now standard 1.85:1 format to American audiences and brought attention to the industry the capability and low cost of equipping theaters for this transition. Other studios followed suit with aspect ratios of 1.75:1 up to 2:1. The Bell & Howell perf remains the standard for camera negative films because of its perforation dimensions in comparison to most printers, thus it can keep a steady image compared to other perforations. DH perfs: The Dubray Howell (DH) perforation was first suggested in 1931 to replace the two perfs with a single hybrid.
The top layer contains blue-sensitive emulsion, followed by a yellow filter to cancel out blue light; after this comes a green sensitive layer followed by a red sensitive layer. Just as in black-and-white, the first step in color development converts exposed silver halide grains into metallic silver – except that an equal amount of color dye will be formed as well. For a time, these various ratios were used by different studios in different productions, but by 1956, the aspect ratio of 1.85:1 became the standard US format.
35 mm film is the basic film gauge most commonly used for still photography (see 135 film) and motion pictures, and remains relatively unchanged since its introduction in 1892 by William Dickson and Thomas Edison, using film stock supplied by George Eastman. For theaters, this requires replacing the incandescent exciter lamp with a complementary colored red LED or laser, which is backwards-compatible with older tracks. To facilitate this changeover, intermediate prints known as high magenta prints were distributed.
Therefore, larger perforations with a rectangular base and rounded corners were introduced by Kodak in 1924 to improve steadiness, registration, durability, and longevity. These sizes often did not match up even between theaters and studios owned by the same company, and therefore, uneven projection practices occurred. In November 1929, the Society of Motion Pictures Engineers set a standard aperture ratio of 0.800 in by 0.600 in.
BH perforations are also known as N (negative) and KS as P (positive). Along with W.
In the past one hundred years, it has been modified to include sound, redesigned to create a safer film base, formulated to capture color, has accommodated a bevy of widescreen formats, and has incorporated digital sound data into nearly all of its non-frame areas. The color couplers in the blue-sensitive layer will form yellow dye during processing, the green layer will form magenta dye and the red layer will form cyan dye.
The 16 mm size was specifically chosen to prevent third-party slitting, as it was easy to create 17.5 mm stock from slitting 35 mm stock in two. Furthermore, every theater chain had their own house aperture plate size in which the picture was projected.
Technical specifications for 35 mm film are standardized by SMPTE. 35 mm spherical Super 35 mm film 35 mm anamorphic 35 mm: CinemaScope (1953) · VistaVision (1954) · Modern anamorphic (1957) · Super 35 (1982) 70 mm: Todd-AO (1953) · IMAX (1970) 35 mm × 3 strips: Cinerama (1952) · Kinopanorama (1958) · Cinemiracle (1958) . These small bits of silver, too small to even be visible under a microscope, are the beginning of a latent image.
Without this coating, bright points of light would penetrate the emulsion, reflect off the inner surface of the base, and reexpose the emulsion, creating a halo around these bright areas. With T-Grain technology, Kodak refined the grain structure of all their EXR line of motion picture film stocks Besides black & white and color negative films, there are black & white and color reversal films, which when developed create a positive ( natural ) image that is projectable.
Most if not all film prints today are made from synthetic polyester safety base (which started replacing Triacetate film for prints in the early 1990s). Paramount Studios began this trend with their aspect ratio of 1.66:1, first used in Shane, which was originally shot for Academy ratio.
Using two matrices coated with hardened gelatin in a relief image, thicker where the image was darker, aniline color dyes were transferred onto a third, blank strip of film. In 1934, William T. In television production, where compatibility with an installed base of 35 mm film projectors is unnecessary, a 3-perf format is sometimes used, giving — if used with Super 35 — the 16:9 ratio used by HDTV and reducing film usage by 25 percent.
The frame size was increased to 24×36 mm. The camera aperture became 22 mm by 16 mm (0.866 in by 0.630 in), and the projected image would use an aperture plate size of 0.825 by 0.600 in (21 by 15 mm), yielding an aspect ratio of 1.37:1.
These prints used a silver plus dye soundtrack that were printed into the magenta dye layer. The effect of these gauges was to essentially make the 35 mm gauge almost the exclusive province of professional filmmakers, a divide which mostly remains to this day. Just as the format was recognised as a standard in 1909, still film cameras were developed that took advantage of the 35 mm format and allowed a large number of exposures for each length of film loaded into the camera.
This became known as the Academy ratio, named so after them. The commonly used anamorphic format uses a similar four-perf frame, but an anamorphic lens is used on the camera and projector to produce a wider image, today with an aspect ratio of about 2.39 (more commonly referred to as 2.40:1. Scholar Paul C.
Two prints on half-width stock were processed from this negative, and one was toned red, and the other toned green. The ubiquity of 35 mm movie projectors in commercial movie theaters makes it the only motion picture format, film or video, that can be played in almost any cinema in the world. The gauge is remarkably versatile in application.
Furthermore, the nitrocellulose film base of all early film stock was dangerous and highly flammable, creating considerable risk for those not accustomed to the precautions necessary in its handling. The negative, which is the closer of the two to the sprocket wheel (thus creating a slightly shorter path), must have a marginally shorter pitch between perforations (0.1866 in pitch); the raw stock has a long pitch (0.1870 in).
This basic principle behind color photography set the standard for many later successful color formats, such as Multicolor, Brewster Color, and Cinecolor. Although it had been available previously, color in Hollywood feature films became popular with Technicolor, whose main advantage was quality prints in shorter time than its competitors. Known as Kodak Standard (KS), they are 0.0780 inches (1.981 mm) high by 0.1100 inches (2.794 mm) wide.
A bleach step will convert the metallic silver back into silver halide, which is then removed along with the unexposed silver halide in the fixer and wash steps, leaving only color dyes. In the 1980s Eastman Kodak invented the T-Grain, a synthetically manufactured silver halide grain that had a larger, flat surface area and allowed for greater light sensitivity in a smaller, thinner grain. Oskar Barnack built his prototype Ur-Leica in 1913 and had it patented, but Ernst Leitz did not decide to produce it before in 1924.
Birt Acres was the first to attempt an amateur format, creating Birtac in 1898 by slitting the film into 17.5 mm widths. The advantage gained was an optical soundtrack, with low levels of sibilant (cross-modulation) distortion, on both types of sound heads.
Also, polyester film will melt if exposed to the projector lamp for too long. The method of projection was also changed: each record was printed and processed on duplitized stock, creating a successful subtractive color process.
The film, which runs through the camera at 18 inches (460 mm) per second, could build up enough static electricity to cause a spark bright enough to expose the film; antihalation backing solved this problem. VistaVision, however, would be revived decades later by Lucasfilm and other studios for special effects work, while a SuperScope variant became the predecessor to the modern Super 35 format that is popular today. The concept behind Super 35 originated with the Tushinsky Brothers SuperScope format, particularly the SuperScope 235 specification from 1956.
While Cinecolor used the same duplitized stock method as Prizma and Multicolor, its main advantage was inventing processing machines that could do larger quantities of film in a shorter time. Technicolor re-emerged with a three-color process for cartoons in 1932, and live action in 1934. The antihalation backing can also serve to reduce static buildup, which was a significant problem with old black and white films.
Cinecolor enjoyed large success in animation and low-budget pictures, largely due to its inexpense and good image results. These flat films are photographed with the full Academy frame, but are matted (most often with a mask in the theater projector, not in the camera) to obtain the wide aspect ratio.
Each crystal is a compound of silver plus a halogen (such as bromine, iodine or chlorine) held together in a cubical arrangement by electrical attraction. While cellulose nitrate and cellulose diacetate stocks used to shrink during processing slightly enough to have this difference naturally occur, modern safety stocks do not shrink at the same rate, and therefore negative (and some intermediate) stocks are perforated at a pitch of 0.2% shorter than print stock. New digital soundtracks introduced since the 1990s include Dolby Digital, which is stored between the perforations on the sound side; SDDS, stored in two redundant strips along the outside edges (beyond the perforations); and DTS, in which sound data is stored on separate compact discs synchronized by a timecode track stored on the film just to the right of the analog soundtrack and left of the frame.
Known as the 1930 standard, studios which followed the suggested practice of marking their camera viewfinders for this ratio were: Paramount-Famous-Lasky, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, United Artists, Pathe, Universal, RKO, Tiffany-Stahl, Mack Sennett, Darmour, and Educational. Thus Kodak could solve the problem of higher speed (greater light sensitivity — see film speed) which required larger grain and therefore more grainy images.
Color films have three layers of silver halide emulsions to separately record the red, green, and blue information. In 1950 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Kodak with a Scientific and Technical Academy Award (Oscar) for the safer triacetate stock.
Eastman Kodak s 16 mm format won the amateur market and is still widely in use today, mainly in the Super 16 variation, which remains popular with professional filmmakers. Ironically, the downside of polyester film is that it is extremely strong, and, in case of a fault, will stretch and not break–potentially causing damage to the projector and ruining a fairly large stretch of film: 2–3 ft or ~2 seconds.
and has remained by far the dominant film gauge for image origination and projection despite threats from smaller and larger gauges, and from novel formats, because its size allows for a relatively good tradeoff between the cost of the film stock and the quality of the images captured. H.
The BH perforation s dimensions are 0.110 inches (2.79 mm) from the middle of the side curve to opposite top corner by 0.073 inches (1.85 mm) in height. KS perfs: Because BH perfs have sharp corners, the repeated use of the film through intermittent movement projectors creates strain that can easily tear the perforations.
