Super 8 Film: A Production Platform from an Era Gone By

If you had $20.00 to buy a film camera in 1971, Super 8 was the way to go. The descendant of Reg 8, which was a wind-up yet effective way of making film, your Super 8 camera was battery operated.

It was very convenient dropping in your 4 inch square cartridge, which lasted approximately five minutes, and telling everyone to mug for the camera. Hopefully you had a few extra cartridges on hand.

After shooting film to your heart's delight, you inserted them into small mailers and sent them to some developer somewhere, out of state along with your developing fee, hoping they would come back within six days. I don't know about anyone else, but thankfully all my envelopes found their way home.

The quality of the images was absolutely superb and remain so to this very day. Then you had to have a large white screen which rolled out of a cylinder in order to display your newly-minted films. Actually I found out later you didn't need the screen at all; a firm white-painted plaster wall worked just as well. Sans the romanticism.

Another component of showing off your never before seen film to participants in the film was the projector. They made a delightful noise. Whirring, hissing like there was no tomorrow. An incredibly bright light emanating from the little compartment where the sprocket was spinning around. Serendipitous it was, because in the Super 8 format there is no sound. You had everything but sound. We didn't need it; we were so happy with the film we could hear ourselves talking right through it. You could also set up an external light source if you wished, but most of the time you didn't need one.

The huge drawback was that there was no way to make sound. Same as with its' older cousin the Reg 8 format. There was just nothing around to plug a microphone into. I don't even think cassette recorders were widely available at that time. Otherwise perhaps I would've used one. If cassette recorders were available, it wasn't the way to shoot. It just wouldn't look right, and it would be very inconvenient. It would've been a waste of time and effort.

The camera itself was small, black and handheld. You had a zoom-in amenity, although I don't think it had an automatic capability. It had to be done manually. I think I still have mine. I should take a picture of it if I can find it. It too made a spinning, albeit more subdued production sound. The cartridges ran smoothly, and never jammed.
My camera was taken to many places in the early seventies. Family outings to Dutch Amish Pennsylvania, Coney Island, Ski Run Road in Sullivan County in upstate New York where I spent every summer and where the big Woodstock concert took place, the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, ...tons of places.

One place in particular was a place called Camp Sussex where I spent all other summers after Sullivan County. This was a particularly important place to bring the camera, because it winds up I'm the first person ever to have taken film of the younger Brandon Steiner, who today is one of the biggest businessmen in the world. I filmed the platinum-haired 15 year old Brandon in his kitchen whites as he was a trainee at the summer sleep-away Camp. I had a private screening with Brandon in 2005 to show him the first film of himself. Let's just say that became an experience neither one of us are going to forget very soon.

Another famous person I have on my "Home Movies" is baseball great Jim Bouton. There was my co-worker and I Steven interrupting him while sitting in a chair at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium during his breakfast of a danish. Without even coffee. In retrospect, perhaps we shouldn't of bothered him during his breakfast, demanding he shake our hands and cavorting with him in the middle of his meal. But he's ever the gentleman. Then I follow him with the camera as he shakes many other hands and gives autographs on cardboard beer carriers.

Another of my favorite Super 8 films is someone I consider "the Greatest Athlete Who Ever Lived." His remarks include "I'm the greatest in everything sports except Tennis and Golf." And the way I made this film he makes Mickey Mantle look like another Mickey we all know.

I also have two of the funniest folk comedians of all time, I believe. Uncle Al and Uncle Artie. The latter especially. With his routines, on film, he still ranks as one of the funniest men of all time. His routines cannot be "matched," literally. You have to see the film to get my gist.

There are many other themes to my superb collection of this blissful, yet now lost art of media. A few years ago I entered eight of these films separately into an annual film festival in Rutgers University. I got a notice in a review of the festival, although none of my films won any honors. Four versions of my Super 8s are now making the rounds in various museums in Upstate New York where they are creating quite a stir!

Therefore I hereby propose a film festival dedicated to nothing but the form of film I'm talking about; Super 8 shots from the 70s. Even with a separate category for nothing but it's predecessor Reg 8.There is a paucity of such films on Youtube, however I have seen nothing there lately that is overly impressive. Anyone in on this? Anyone want to help get the Super 8 Film ball rolling?