35 MM FILM… (In the Entertainment industry. What is 35 mm film and its history?)

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35 MM FILM… (In the Entertainment industry. What is 35 mm film and its history?)

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35 MM FILM

History

In 1880, George Eastman began to manufacture gelatin dry photographic plates in Rochester, New York. Along with W. H. Walker, Eastman invented a holder for a roll of picture-carrying gelatin layer coated paper. Hannibal Goodwin's invention of nitrocellulose film base in 1887 was the first transparent, flexible film. Eastman's was the first major company, however, to mass-produce these components, when in 1889 Eastman realized that the dry-gelatino-bromide emulsion could be coated onto this clear base, eliminating the paper.

The 35mm film format was developed and produced at an experimental scale in Thomas A. Edison's laboratory in New Jersey by splitting 70mm roll film. Edison compiled his caveat for the double perforated cine film in the fall of 1889, describing it as a double perforated long band passing from one reel to another, driven by two sprocket wheels. The film was obtained from the Eastman Dry Plate and film Company in Rochester, NY. However, it took several years to become a regular Kodak product.

With the advent of flexible film, Thomas Alva Edison quickly set out on his invention, the Kinetoscope, which was first shown at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on 9 May 1893. The Kinetoscope was a film loop system intended for one-person viewing. Edison, along with assistant W. K. L. Dickson, followed that up with the Kinetophone, which combined the Kinetoscope with Edison's cylinder phonograph. Beginning in March 1892, Eastman and then, from April 1893 into 1896, New York's Blair Camera Co. supplied Edison with film stock. At first Blair would supply only 40 mm (1-9/16 in) film stock that would be trimmed and perforated at the Edison lab to create 1-⅜ inch (34.925 mm) gauge filmstrips, then at some point in 1894 or 1895, Blair began sending stock to Edison that was cut exactly to specification. Edison's aperture defined a single frame of film at 4 perforations high. Edison claimed exclusive patent rights to his design of 35 mm motion picture film, with four sprocket holes per frame, forcing his only major filmmaking competitor, American Mutoscope & Biograph, to use a 68 mm film that used friction feed, not sprocket holes, to move the film through the camera. A court judgment in March 1902 invalidated Edison's claim, allowing any producer or distributor to use the Edison 35 mm film design without license. Filmmakers were already doing so in Britain and Europe, where Edison had failed to file patents.

At the time, film stock was usually supplied unperforated and punched by the filmmaker to their standards with perforation equipment. A variation developed by the Lumière Brothers used a single circular perforation on each side of the frame towards the middle of the horizontal axis. It was Edison's format, however, that became first the dominant standard and then the "official" standard of the newly formed Motion Picture Patents Company, a trust established by Edison, which agreed in 1909 to what would become the standard: 35 mm gauge, with Edison perforations and a 1.33 aspect ratio. Scholar Paul C. Spehr describes the importance of these developments:

The cine film was cheap and unused short cut-off bits would certainly be available early on for use in small cameras which were easily portable in comparison the common large-format plate cameras of the time. The cine film emulsion had at first very fin grain structure and slow speed, but as the studios started filming inside faster emulsions were required on expense of the grain size, ironically making it less suitable for 35mm still cameras once they became generally available. Although the first design was patented as early as 1908, it is generally accepted that the first commercially available 35mm camera was the 1913 Tourist Multiple, for both movie and still photography, soon followed by the Simplex providing selection between full and half frame format. Oskar Barnack built his prototype Ur-Leica in 1913 and had it patented, but Ernst Leitz did not decide to produce it before in 1924.

The early acceptance of 35 mm as a standard had momentous impact on the development and spread of cinema. The standard gauge made it possible for films to be shown in every country of the world… It provided a uniform, reliable and predictable format for production, distribution and exhibition of movies, facilitating the rapid spread and acceptance of the movies as a world-wide device for entertainment and communication.

The film format was introduced into still photography as early as 1913 (the Tourist Multiple) but first became popular with the launch of the Leica camera, created by Oskar Barnack in 1925.

35 mm film (millimeter) is the film gauge most commonly used for motion pictures and chemical still photography (see 135 film). The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 34.98 ±0.03 mm (1.377 ±0.001 inches) wide. The standard negative pulldown for movies ("single-frame" format) is four perforations per frame along both edges, which results in 16 frames per foot of film. For still photography, the standard frame has eight perforations on each side.

A variety of largely proprietary gauges were devised for the numerous camera and projection systems being developed independently in the late 19th century and early 20th century, ranging from 13 mm to 75 mm (0.51–2.95 in), as well as a variety of film feeding systems. This resulted in cameras, projectors, and other equipment having to be calibrated to each gauge. The 35 mm width, originally specified as 1.375 inches, was introduced in 1892 by William Dickson and Thomas Edison, using 120 film stock supplied by George Eastman. Film 35 mm wide with four perforations per frame became accepted as the international standard gauge in 1909, and remained by far the dominant film gauge for image origination and projection until the advent of digital photography and cinematography, despite challenges from smaller and larger gauges, because its size allowed for a relatively good trade-off between the cost of the film stock and the quality of the images captured.

The gauge has been versatile in application. It has been modified to include sound, redesigned to create a safer film base, formulated to capture color, has accommodated a bevy of widescreen formats, and has incorporated digital sound data into nearly all of its non-frame areas. Eastman Kodak, Fujifilm and Agfa-Gevaert are some companies which offered 35 mm films. Today Kodak is the last remaining manufacturer of motion picture film.

The ubiquity of 35 mm movie projectors in commercial movie theaters made 35 mm the only motion picture format that could be played in almost any cinema in the world, until digital projection largely superseded it in the 21st century. It is difficult to compare the quality of film to digital media but a good estimate would be about 33.6 megapixels (67.2 megapixels DSLR Bayer equivalent) would equal one 35 millimeter high quality color frame of film.

How film works

Inside the photographic emulsion are millions of light-sensitive silver halide crystals. Each crystal is a compound of silver plus a halogen (such as bromine, iodine or chlorine) held together in a cubical arrangement by electrical attraction. When the crystal is struck with light, free-moving silver ions build up a small collection of uncharged atoms. These small bits of silver, too small to even be visible under a microscope, are the beginning of a latent image. Developing chemicals use the latent image specks to build up density, an accumulation of enough metallic silver to create a visible image.

The emulsion is attached to the film base with a transparent adhesive called the subbing layer. On the back of the base is a layer called the anti-halation backing, which usually contains absorber dyes or a thin layer of silver or carbon (called rem-jet on color negative stocks). Without this coating, light not absorbed by the emulsion and passing into the base would be partly reflected back at the outer surface of the base, re-exposing the emulsion in less focused form and thereby creating halos around bright points and edges in the image. The anti-halation backing can also serve to reduce static buildup, which could be a significant problem with early black-and-white films. The film, running through a motion picture camera at 12 inches (300 mm) (early silent speed) to 18 inches (460 mm) (sound speed) per second, could build up enough static electricity to cause sparks bright enough to record their own forms on the film; anti-halation backing solved this problem.

Color films have multiple layers of silver halide emulsion to separately record the red, green and blue thirds of the spectrum. For every silver halide grain there is a matching color coupler grain (except Kodachrome film, to which color couplers were added during processing). The top layer of emulsion is sensitive to blue; below it is a yellow filter layer to block blue light; and under that is a green-sensitive layer followed by a red-sensitive layer. Just as in black-and-white, the first step in color development converts exposed silver halide grains into metallic silver – except that an equal amount of color dye will be formed as well. The color couplers in the blue-sensitive layer will form yellow dye during processing, the green layer will form magenta dye and the red layer will form cyan dye. A bleach step will convert the metallic silver back into silver halide, which is then removed along with the unexposed silver halide in the fixer and wash steps, leaving only color dyes.

In the 1980s Eastman Kodak invented the T-Grain, a synthetically manufactured silver halide grain that had a larger, flat surface area and allowed for greater light sensitivity in a smaller, thinner grain. Thus Kodak could solve the problem of higher speed (greater light sensitivity—see film speed) which required larger grain and therefore more "grainy" images. With T-Grain technology, Kodak refined the grain structure of all their "EXR" line of motion picture film stocks (which was eventually incorporated into their "MAX" still stocks). Fuji films followed suit with their own grain innovation, the tabular grain in their SUFG (Super Unified Fine Grain) SuperF negative stocks, which are made up of thin hexagonal tabular grains.

Sources, References & Credits: Google, Wikipedia, Wikihow, Pinterest, IMDB, Linked In, Indie Wire, Film Making Stuff, Hiive, Film Daily, New York Film Academy, The Balance, The Numbers, Film Maker, TV Guide Magazine, Media Match, Quora, Creative Skill Set, Investopedia, Variety, No Film School, Daily Variety, The Film Agency, Best Sample Resume, How Stuff Works, Camerapedia, Career Trend, Producer's Code of Credits, Producers Guild of America, Film Connection, Entertainment Careers, Adhere Creative, In Deed, Glass Door, Pay Scale, Merriam-Webster, Job Monkey, Studio Binder, The Collective, Production Hub, The Producer's Business Handbook by John J. Lee Jr., "PH22.36-1954, American Standard, Dimensions for 35 mm Motion-Picture Positive Raw Stock",  American Cinematographer, American Widescreen Museum, Fujifilm Motion Picture Films, Kodak: Cinematography, Paul C. Spehr

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