Lostalgia: Super 8

My makeshift setup for my Dualux, showing a frame
 from 'Cinderella's Fairy Godmother', an extract from
Disney's 'Cinderella'.

Nostalgia is defined as "a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life"- a fond yearning for your past. From this I have arrived at a secondary concept that I intend to visit in a column- 'lostalgia'. Lostalgia occurs when one experiences a fondness like nostalgia for a thing one was not acquainted with before. Here, I will be exploring my latest object of lostalgia- 8 millimeter films.

I use the general 8 millimeter as technically, there are two formats. Standard 8 millimeter film, and the latecomer Super 8. The format came to prominence first as a format for the recording of home movies. However, soon enough the idea was hit of producing films on the format, and as such, 8 millimeter became the first format of home video. The projectors often varied in reel capacity and sound capability, and as such, most features were cost prohibitive from reel numbers or size. This resulted in some rather creative solutions on part of the studios. The most common is the 'digest' film. The 'digest' film attempts to offer the overall flavor and plot of a film in a highly abridged format, often without the aid of sound either. Most often available in 200 foot or 400 foot reels, the digest usually runs 10 to twenty minutes. Often a company would release separate digests in each size, each focusing on different parts of a film. For example, the Godzilla film 'Ghidrah, the Three Headed Monster' had two silent digests- one 200 foot digest focused on the first fight of the film, and one 400 foot focused on the ending. Similarly, Star Wars had a 200 foot digest that focused on the climactic Death Star trench sequence while a 400 foot digest told the entire story. The other popular way to publish a film was the extract format. The extract format would take a single scene that in itself would be sold as a short subject on Super 8. Comedy and animation often used this format with its animated features, often releasing even cheaper 50 foot reels of single scene gags and the like.

What brought me to the format personally, was an old Sankyo Dualux 2000H, mint in box, we found cleaning out my grandparents' house. Faced with the prospect of having one, I couldn't resist buying a few films to see what it was like. The abridgments themselves are also often interesting to see- though admittedly many have popped up all over the internet, such as this Youtube posting of Castle Films' 8 minute abridging of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. The film experience does add to the character of watching a Super 8 film- the audible whir of the spindle motor and the manual threading and focus. It adds a kind of investment that might seem small but keeps you focused on the film, perhaps moreso than modern, easier means. Super 8 is far from dead either- a die-hard fanbase keeps hobby prints around, even of modern films! So if you can get the equipment without dropping much on it, Super 8 is a very fun bit of novelty lostalgia to experience.