Super 35 (originally known as Superscope 235) is a
motion picture
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
film format
A film format is a technical definition of a set of standard characteristics regarding image capture on photographic film for still images or film stock for filmmaking. It can also apply to projected film, either slides or movies. The primary ...
that uses exactly the same film stock as standard
35 mm film, but puts a larger image frame on that stock by using the space normally reserved for the optical analog sound track.
History
Super 35 was revived from a similar Superscope variant known as Superscope 235, which was originally developed by the Tushinsky Brothers (who founded Superscope Inc. in 1954) for
RKO
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheu ...
in 1954. The first film to be shot in Superscope was ''
Vera Cruz'', a western film produced by
Hecht-Lancaster Productions
Hecht-Hill-Lancaster was a production company formed by the actor Burt Lancaster in association with his agent, Harold Hecht, and James Hill. In 1948 Lancaster and Hecht formed Norma Productions (named after his wife), which later became Hecht-L ...
and distributed through
United Artists
United Artists Corporation (UA), currently doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, is an American digital production company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the studi ...
.
When cameraman Joe Dunton
was preparing to shoot ''
Dance Craze
''Dance Craze'' is a 1981 American documentary film about the British 2 Tone music genre.
The film was directed by Joe Massot, who originally wanted to do a film only about the band Madness, whom he met during their first US tour. Massot lat ...
'' in 1982, he chose to revive the Superscope format by using a full silent-standard
gate
A gate or gateway is a point of entry to or from a space enclosed by walls. The word derived from old Norse "gat" meaning road or path; But other terms include ''yett and port''. The concept originally referred to the gap or hole in the wall ...
and slightly optically recentering the lens port (to adjust for the inclusion of the area of the optic soundtrack -the gray track on left side of the illustration). These two characteristics are central to the format.
It was adopted by Hollywood starting with ''
Greystoke'' in 1984, under the format name Super Techniscope. It also received much early publicity for making the cockpit shots in ''
Top Gun
''Top Gun'' is a 1986 American action drama film directed by Tony Scott, produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, with distribution by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr., and was inspired by an a ...
'' possible, since it was otherwise impossible to fit 35 mm cameras with large
anamorphic
Anamorphic format is the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It also refers to the projection format in which a distorted ...
lenses into the small free space in the cockpit. Later, as other camera rental houses and labs started to embrace the format, Super 35 became popular in the mid-1990s, and is now considered a ubiquitous production process, with usage on well over a thousand feature films. It is often the standard production format for
television show
A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...
s,
music video
A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...
s, and commercials. Since none of these require a
release print
A release print is a copy of a film that is provided to a movie theater for exhibition.
Definitions
Release prints are not to be confused with other types of prints used in the photochemical post-production process:
* Rush prints, or dailies, ...
, it is unnecessary to reserve space for an optical soundtrack.
When composing for 1.85:1, it was known as Super 1.85, since it was larger than standard 1.85.
When composing for 2.39:1, it was often typical to employ either a "common center", which keeps the 2.39 extraction area at the center of the film that results in extra headroom if opened up to 4:3 or 16:9, or a "common top", which shifts the 2.39 extraction area upwards on the film so that it shared a common top line with a centered 1.85:1 frame. This allowed frame compositions with actors to remain relatively unaffected when producing a 4:3 or 16:9 full screen version with similar headrooms. The downside with common top extraction is that lens flares may not be aligned properly as light sources that are in the center of the full frame appear slightly lower than usual in 2.39 and corner fall-offs and other distortions are not optically centered properly. Also in wide shots, there is too much footroom and not enough headroom and extreme close ups of actors faces as well as their foreheads are still cut off but more picture is gained below the frame. As 16:9 televisions increased in popularity, it became more practical for productions to use the "common center" extraction, which frames across the center of the film, although a "common third" extraction is used if directors want similar headrooms between 2.39 & 16:9 versions.
The Super 35 format has also gained attraction for use in large budget visual effects driven films as the unused frame areas outside 1.85/2.39 can be used by VFX artists to film different visual effects elements with spherical lenses and more freedom to move within the frame with 2D and 3D tracking.
Details
Super 35 is a production format. Theatres do not receive or project Super 35 prints. Rather, films are ''shot'' in a Super 35 format but are then – either through optical blowdown/matting or
digital intermediate
Digital intermediate (typically abbreviated DI) is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics.
Definition and overview
A digital intermediate ...
– converted into one of the standard formats to make release prints. Because of this, often productions also use Super 35's width in conjunction with a
3-perf negative pulldown to save costs on "wasted" frame area shot and accommodate
camera magazine A camera magazine is a light-tight chamber or pair of chambers designed to hold film and move motion picture film stock before and after it has been exposed in the camera. In most movie cameras, the magazine is a removable piece of equipment.
Many s ...
s that could shoot 33% longer in time with the same length of film.
If using 4-perf, the Super 35 camera aperture is 24.89 mm × 18.66 mm (0.980 in × 0.735 in), compared to the standard
Academy 35 mm film size of 21.95 mm × 16.00 mm (0.864 in × 0.630 in) and thus provides 32% more image area than the standard 35-mm format. 4-perf Super 35 is simply the original frame size that was used in 35 mm
silent films
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, whe ...
. That is, it is a return to the way the film stock was used before the frame size was cropped to allow room for a soundtrack.
Super 35 competes with the use of the standard 35 mm format used with an anamorphic lens. In this comparison, advocates of Super 35 claim an advantage in production costs and flexibility; when used to make 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 theatrical prints and the ability to format the film for TV, detractors complain of a loss in quality, due to less negative area used and more lab intermediate steps (if done optically).
Aspect ratio
Super 35 uses standard "spherical" camera lenses, which are
faster, smaller, and cheaper to rent – a factor in low-budget production – and provide a wider range of lens choices to the cinematographer. The chief advantage of Super 35 for productions is its adaptability to different release formats. Super 35 negatives can be used to produce high-quality releases in any aspect ratio, as the final frame is extracted and converted from the larger full frame negative. This also means that a full-frame video release can actually use more of the frame than the theatrical release (
Open matte
Open matte is a filming technique that involves matting out the top and bottom of the film frame in the movie projector (known as a ''soft matte'') for the widescreen theatrical release and then scanning the film without a matte (at Academy rat ...
), provided that the extra frame space is "protected for" during filming. Generally the aspect ratio(s) and extraction method (either from a common center or common topline) must be chosen by the
director of photography
The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the photographing or recording of a film, television production, music video or other live action piece. The cinematographer is the ch ...
ahead of time, so the correct
ground glass
Ground glass is glass whose surface has been ground to produce a flat but rough (matte) finish, in which the glass is in small sharp fragments.
Ground glass surfaces have many applications, ranging from ornamentation on windows and table glassw ...
can be created to let the
camera operator
A camera operator, or depending on the context cameraman or camerawoman, is a professional operator of a film camera or video camera as part of a film crew. The term "cameraman" does not imply that a male is performing the task.
In filmmaking ...
see where the extracted frame is.
Super 35 ratios have included:
* 1.33:1 (
4:3 full screen video)
* 1.78:1 (
16:9, widescreen video)
* 1.85:1 ("flat" print) (Super 1.85)
* 2.00:1 (
Univisium
Univisium (macaronic Latin for "unity of images") is a proposed universal film format created by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC and his son, Fabrizio, to unify all future theatrical and television films into one respective aspect r ...
)
* 2.20:1 (
70mm print)
* 2.39:1 (
anamorphic print)
1.66:1 and 1.75:1 have been indicated in some Super 35 frame leader charts, although generally they have not been used for Super 35 productions due to both relative lack of usage since the rise of Super 35 and their greater use of negative frame space by virtue of their increased vertical dimension.
Theoretically, 2.39:1 release prints made from Super 35 should have slightly lower technical quality than films produced directly in the anamorphic format. Because part of the Super 35 image is thrown away when printing to this format, films originated with anamorphic lenses use a larger negative area. Super 35 has continually been popular with television shows, due to the lack of a need for a final release print; with the advent of widescreen television sets, 3-perf Super 35 – with a native 1.78:1 (16:9) ratio – was widely used for widescreen television shows until the advent of digital shooting. 3-perf Super 35 was also used for some time for feature films in 1.85:1 & 2.39:1, and the
digital intermediate
Digital intermediate (typically abbreviated DI) is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics.
Definition and overview
A digital intermediate ...
process made it more attractive because it allowed the optical processing formerly required to be skipped entirely.
Examples
Franchises that used the Super 35 format include ''
The Matrix
''The Matrix'' is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the first installment in ''The Matrix'' film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantolia ...
'', ''
The Fast and the Furious
''Fast & Furious'' (also known as ''The Fast and the Furious'') is a media franchise centered on a series of action films that are largely concerned with street racing, heists, spies, and family. The franchise also includes short films, a t ...
'', ''
Harry Potter
''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...
'', ''
Bourne
Bourne may refer to:
Places UK
* Bourne, Lincolnshire, a town
** Bourne Abbey
** Bourne railway station
* Bourne (electoral division), West Sussex
* Bourne SSSI, Avon, a Site of Special Scientific Interest near Burrington, North Somerset
* Bourne ...
'', the first three ''
Pirates of the Caribbean
''Pirates of the Caribbean'' is a Disney media franchise encompassing numerous theme park rides, a series of films, and spin-off novels, as well as a number of related video games and other media publications. The franchise originated with th ...
'' movies, ''
National Treasure
The idea of national treasure, like national epics and national anthems, is part of the language of romantic nationalism, which arose in the late 18th century and 19th centuries. Nationalism is an ideology that supports the nation as the fundame ...
'', the first two ''
The Chronicles of Narnia
''The Chronicles of Narnia'' is a series of seven high fantasy novels by British author C. S. Lewis. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published between 1950 and 1956, ''The Chronicles of Narnia'' has been adapted for radio, telev ...
'' movies, the first three live-action ''
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks, originally David Seville and the Chipmunks or simply The Chipmunks, are an American animated virtual band and media franchise first created by Ross Bagdasarian for novelty records in 1958. The group consists of three s ...
'' movies (Super 1.85), and ''
The Twilight Saga''.
See also
*
List of film formats
This list of motion picture film formats catalogues formats developed for shooting or viewing motion pictures, ranging from the Chronophotographe format from 1888, to mid-20th century Film format, formats such as the 1953 CinemaScope format, to m ...
*
Full frame
*
Maxivision
Maxivision 24 and Maxivision 48 are 35 mm film motion picture film formats. The system was designed by Dean Goodhill in 1999. The system uses normal thirty-five millimetre motion picture film, capturing images on three perforations of film p ...
*
Negative pulldown
Negative pulldown is the manner in which an image is exposed on a film stock, described in the number of film perforations spanned by an individual frame. It can also describe the orientation of the image on the negative, whether it is captured ho ...
References
External links
James Cameron and Russell Carpenter discuss Super 35
{{Film formats
Motion picture film formats
Television technology