American Cinematographer - January 2001 - 136

and

credibly document late 1970s
early 1980s performances by bands

such

to

as

Blondie, the Clash, the Ramones

and the

Talking Heads. According to
Garfinkel, the sound stocks (Kodachrome
40, Ektachrome 160, and Ektachrome
7242 and 7244 Sound Film) were

Special Book
Offer:

$19.95

Era will

Hollywood's Golden

want to

add this deluxe

by George E.
of Hollywood's
foremost historians, this treatise

offers in-depth coverage on 25
classic films. In addition to its

insightful text, this coffee-table
volume also features hundreds of

production photos printed in
high-quality duotone.
rare

available via mail order and the Web, as
as

Photo,

larger camera stores. (B&H
retailer in New York, lists the

at

a

four main

Super 8 stocks in its catalog.

range from $10.95 for the blackand-white to $19.95 for Kodachrome.

also sells Kodak Super 8
processing mailers at $5.59 each.)
Wal-Mart, the nation's largest
retailer, might be called a major enabler
of the Super 8 habit. The company offers
processing of Kodachrome Super 8 stock
for about $6 per 50' reel at many of its
stores (via the K-14 independent lab and
the Swiss Kodachrome lab). Many labs in
New York and Los Angeles process the
optical printing is also available at

more

than

one

company.

Los

Angeles-based Super8 Sound
has long served as the mainstream film
industry's toehold in the world of Super 8.
The company offers many of Kodak's
professional motion-picture negative
stocks cut down to size and loaded into

Super 8 cartridges. It also rents and sells
only Super 8
camera currently made in the Western
world, the professional-grade French
Beaulieu synch-sound model 9008,

what is believed to be the

$8,000-$10,000 new.
cheaper Russian-made Super 8
cameras are also widely available.
A number of Super 8 enthusiasts
are not filmmakers at all, however; they
are film fans who like showing feature

which sells for

Much

(3^)
On-line:

132

w^w.dnematographer.oom

many

most

soundtracks. Two

feature

stereo

English companies,

Derann Film Service and Classic Home

Cinema, offer a selection of such films.)
One such enthusiast is Steve
Osborne of

Super 8 and 16mm films. He also has a
121 x 30' Super 8 and 16mm private

recently, Kodak and others would stripe
Super 8 cartridges for sound use, but this
is no longer done.
It is simple to obtain Kodak's
regular Super 8 stocks; they are widely

black-and-white and Ektachrome films,

(800) 448$>145 (U.S. Of%,,^#
or (323)
9|}9-4344
By fax:
876-4973

and

Super 8;

which is aimed at collectors of 8mm,

and

To order tifpaQttfr

format,

on

anamorphic widescreen

magnetic striping presented

The company

one

available

held the

by a group of recognized
film experts and assembled with

Turner,

are

in the

environmental problems. Until fairly

They

consummate care

are

Kettering, Ohio. Osborne
publishes The Reel Image magazine,

298-page hardback edition to their
permanent reference libraries.
Written

features

are

discontinued because the adhesive that

well
True lovers of

quite elaborate. (Full

some

versions of recent and classic mainstream

camera

Limited-Time

of which

completed using this stock, and New
York film and punk-rock aficionado Brian
Zabawski used it with a Super 8 sound

films

on

film in their

own

home theaters,

cinema in his basement with

a

10'-wide,

Hurley Silver Glow high-gain screen. He
says that with a high-quality Super 8
print, the onscreen image is "like 35mm
you can't see a speck of grain and the

-

colors

are

beautiful." Osborne

uses a

high-end Elmo Super 8 stereo-sound
projector with a 24-volt, 250-watt lamp
and a 16mm anamorphic projection lens
for his widescreen Super 8 presentations.
In addition, a number of low-key
Super 8 salons/festivals (many of which
share the evocative name Flicker) are
staged around the country, in places such
as Athens, Georgia; Austin, Texas; and
Los Angeles.
The largest small-gauge film
festival, according to Garfinkel, is the
United States Super 8mm FilmA/ideo
Festival, which has been held at Rutgers
University in New Brunswick, New
Jersey, for the past 12 years. (The entry
deadline for the 2001 festival is January
19, and the festival will run from
February 16-18. The festival's e-mail
address is NJMAC@aol.com.) Al Nigrin,
a professor of cinema studies at Rutgers
and coordinator of the festival, says that
the event has attracted as many as 200
entries per year; past winners include
Jem Cohen, the director of several highprofile music videos and the recent
feature documentary Benjamin Smoke,
which has a Super 8 segment. Nigrin, a
passionate Super 8 filmmaker for the
past 20 years, says he runs the festival
because he feels "it is important to be
there for the little

guy."

■

Eric Rudolph can be contacted via e-mail
at

erudolph2@nyc.rr.com.
American Cinematographer - January 2001

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2001
