Today at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, Kodak made a very interesting and unexpected announcement – they are releasing Brand new Super 8mm film camera. While Super 8mm film was once the gold standard for home movies and ultra-low-budget student films, it really hasn’t seen any significant use over the past 30 years… but thanks to today’s news, that may actually be changing.
You might be wondering why the prospect of a new Super 8mm film camera is so important. After all, digital film technology has developed so far that even the lowest-end digital cameras will far surpass Super 8mm film in terms of resolution and other technical characteristics…
But it’s not just about technical superiority, it’s about whether movies can stay relevant for years to come, and this is a step in the right direction.
Digital technology has been catching up with film technology for years. The focus is on whether digital cameras can have as much dynamic range as film, or as high resolution as film, and so on. But in the past few years, digital technology has really caught up with film, and the landscape has changed to a great extent.
Cameras like the Arri Alexa show us that compromises are no longer necessary with digital cameras that surpass Super 35mm film in some technical standards. Yet many of the world’s best filmmakers still choose to shoot on film, at least some of the time.
The great thing about filmmaking today is that we have choices. If you want to shoot digital, you can choose from dozens of incredible digital film cameras, but if you want to shoot on film, you can still choose to go that route. It’s a choice, a creative decision that determines the tone, mood, and aesthetic of the project you’re working on, and it’s good to have two options…at least for now.
My latest concern is that the film will disappear altogether. Kodak nearly went out of business a few years ago, and as time went on it became increasingly challenging to get film stock and develop it in many cities.
For this reason, I actually decided to shoot my next project partially on Super 16mm film. I won’t go into detail about this right now (I’ll save that for another post), but the point is, the continued existence of cinema has been in jeopardy for years, and we’re at a crossroads.
Ten years from now, film will likely no longer be a viable shooting option, if it even existed at all. But in the meantime, it’s likely that it’s here to stay, at least for a small group of artists — much like vinyl’s re-emergence in the audio world.
Whether film will continue to exist, even on a microscopic level, depends largely on companies like Kodak continuing to introduce new technologies. I certainly hope they do because there really is no replacement.
Shooting on film requires a lot of discipline, including the simple fact that on most projects, there is a limit to the amount of film you can use. This means your ideas need to be polished, your actors need to perform well, you have to rely more on intuition, and you approach your film with a greater sense of immediacy.
With all of this in mind, I’m excited to see what Kodak has in store for us. Whether this new Super 8mm camera is for professional use, educational use, or just for nostalgia, it’s exciting to know that a cost-effective film camera will once again be available to the masses.
JJ Abrams released a statement about Kodak’s new cameras that I think sums it up best:
While any technology that can tell a story visually must be embraced, nothing beats film. The fact that Kodak is creating a new Super 8 camera is a dream come true. With a gorgeous new design, interchangeable lenses, and an excellent approach to material development and delivery, this camera seems to be the perfect bridge between the efficiency of the digital world and the warmth and quality of the analog world.
Details about the new Super 8mm camera have yet to be released, but here’s a first look at a prototype.
It is speculated that the camera cost $400 to $700 to purchase and $50 to $75 to develop each roll of film, including digital copies. Kodak also said it would launch a lower-cost version by 2017, describing the initiative as a “movie production ecosystem.” I can only speculate on what this means, but I imagine it will involve an end-to-end solution for film shooting, processing, and possibly even projection.
Personally, I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these and shoot a few rolls for fun.
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