Question

[Seedorf81]

Does anybody know why practically all the WW2 documentary movie-clips are so ridiculously short?

I mean, in those days they must have had camera's with more film on it than the oh so very often shown two-to-seven seconds lasting shots. Every time I see WW2 documentaries I think: he, cameraman, why the f#^k don't you keep on rolling? (or maybe the editors cut the sequences that short?)

If the cameraman was directly in harm's way, I would understand, but even in non-combat situations the clips are annoyingly short.

Maybe there are some film/camera-grogs that can explain this phenomena?

[Mord]

I'd say most of what you are seeing (at least in documentaries) is edited down. There are companies that sell raw footage. However, I can't imagine those 8mm cameras could hold a whole helluva lot of film.

That's my take. I am sure people will post who know a lot more about it.

Mord.

[Pak40]

There are tons of raw footage that we never see. It's all heavily edited in documentaries, sound added in etc.. D-Day is a perfect example. We always see the same few clips over and over again but obviously there are a lot more to those original films. I'm not sure why they never show the whole film in raw form.

[c3k]

D Day: digging deep, it's late, I'm on glass number 3 (don't ask), I just finished updating my AAR, and going on memory...

I remember one of the very few US motion picture cameramen had all his film ruined a few days after coming ashore with the assault troops. He'd risked his life for the pictures and only a relatively small amount survived. It was some moisture issue after he'd sent it back to be developed. I leave it to a film grog to fill in all the mistakes I may've just made.

Ken

[Erwin]

"The standard 8 mm (also known as regular 8) film format was developed by the Eastman Kodak company during the Great Depression and released on the market in 1932 to create a home movie format that was less expensive than 16 mm. The film spools actually contain a 16 mm film with twice as many perforations along each edge than normal 16 mm film; When the first pass is complete, the camera is opened and the spools are flipped and swapped and the same film is then exposed along its other edge.

Common length film spools allowed filming of about 3 minutes to 4.5 minutes at 12, 15, 16 and 18 frames per second."

8mm was primarily for home use. Most newsreel cameras would have had 16mm, and those have very short runs. So cameramen edited in camera and would have shot the least the could since supply was limited.

[JonS]

Quite a lot of the footage is making its way onto YouTube, in what seems to be uncut form. Pathe has their own YouTube channel, with lots of really good stuff. And a fair bit of

Someone recently posted a link to a long-form version of footage shot at Arnhem during Op M-G.

[Seedorf81]

Thanks for info thus far.

Strangely enough it never bothered me, until I watched some of those (sometimes endless) Syria YouTube clips. Off course , our technology is a million times better than in ww2, but I really believed they had the possibility to film for longer periods than we see in the documentaries. Wrongly, apparently.

Still think it's a real shame they couldn't or wouldn't provide us with longer runs.

[Pak40]

D Day: digging deep, it's late, I'm on glass number 3 (don't ask), I just finished updating my AAR, and going on memory...

I remember one of the very few US motion picture cameramen had all his film ruined a few days after coming ashore with the assault troops. He'd risked his life for the pictures and only a relatively small amount survived. It was some moisture issue after he'd sent it back to be developed. I leave it to a film grog to fill in all the mistakes I may've just made.

Ken

Those were still photos, iirc, not film. I think it was the fault of the eager and excited developers that accidentally exposed the negatives to light before they were developed.

[Erwin]

They usually used smaller wind-up cameras that contained maybe 50-100 feet of film tops. That's approx 1.25-2.5 minutes at 24 frames/sec. And that's why we see so much "jerky" footage shot at 18 frames/sec. Coupled with its rarity and expense (exposed film had to be returned to labs for processing and printing etc)

[umlaut]

I know a bit about making films nowadays, but not much about how things worked back then.

Judging from the documentaries I´ve seen (and I´ve surely not seen nearly as many as many grogs here) I´d say much of the footage seems to have been reused over and over again. I suspect that this might be some of the reason:

If you don´t make your film from the original raw material, but based on an already edited documentary, your clips will be restricted by the lenght of the clips in this documentary.

So theoretically: If everyone make their movies based on the material in the previous documentary, the clips will get progressively shorter, as they can never get longer, but often will be shortened to fit the editing rythm of the current movie.

So if the original raw footage is no longer available, but the film makers base their films on already edited stuff, this could be part of the reason.

[Seedorf81]

Ok, given info makes sense, thanks again everyone.

About c3k's D-Day pictures remarks:

Robert Capa, a famous war correspondent, was at Omaha beach with the first wave.

He took more than a hundred pictures, and those must have been some of the best war-pics ever, I think.

Film was rushed back, where impatience from an lab employee overheated the film during the drying process. Just eight photo's remained.

See for more details once more the magnificent site www.strijdbewijs.nl

To go directly to story of the D-day photo's: http://www.strijdbewijs.nl/robert/capa.htm

That is the Dutch page, I know there is an English version, but I don't know whether the Capa story is translated yet.

[Michael Emrys]

"The standard 8 mm (also known as regular 8) film format was developed by the Eastman Kodak company during the Great Depression and released on the market in 1932 to create a home movie format that was less expensive than 16 mm. The film spools actually contain a 16 mm film with twice as many perforations along each edge than normal 16 mm film..."

Where did you find that quote, Erwin? I shot an 8 mm movie for a friend in film school about 45 years ago, and as I recall we used standard 16 mm film, flipping the reels over after the first run though. But it had the same perforation pattern as any 16 mm film, i.e. a single row down each side. After developing, the lab would split the film down the middle to produce an 8 mm movie with perfs down only one side. Editing equipment and projectors were built to accommodate a single row of perfs.

Michael

[Mord]

Where did you find that quote, Erwin? I shot an 8 mm movie for a friend in film school about 45 years ago,

Michael

Was it a "talkie"?

Mord.

[Wodin]

Yep this is why..same thing goes for my dads old cine footage using 8mm film..he told me about how you filmed and had to swap it around to do the next bit and it ran out very quick (and this was in the early to mid sixties)

It's a tech issue of the times.

"The standard 8 mm (also known as regular 8) film format was developed by the Eastman Kodak company during the Great Depression and released on the market in 1932 to create a home movie format that was less expensive than 16 mm. The film spools actually contain a 16 mm film with twice as many perforations along each edge than normal 16 mm film; When the first pass is complete, the camera is opened and the spools are flipped and swapped and the same film is then exposed along its other edge.

Common length film spools allowed filming of about 3 minutes to 4.5 minutes at 12, 15, 16 and 18 frames per second."

8mm was primarily for home use. Most newsreel cameras would have had 16mm, and those have very short runs. So cameramen edited in camera and would have shot the least the could since supply was limited.

[Erwin]

"we used standard 16 mm film, flipping the reels over after the first run though. But it had the same perforation pattern as any 16 mm film, i.e. a single row down each side"

That is not 8mm. Maybe it just works cos the camera could access the holes even though they were further apart?

The quote came from Wikipedia I think. But, I grew up with this stuff, used 8mm as a kid and was then professionally trained on 16mm and 35mm.

[Michael Emrys]

Was it a "talkie"?

It had a musical soundtrack.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

That is not 8mm.

It was after the lab split it.

Maybe it just works cos the camera could access the holes even though they were further apart?

I don't get why you are making this statement. Obviously the drive sprockets in the camera could engage both sets of perfs.

But, I grew up with this stuff, used 8mm as a kid and was then professionally trained on 16mm and 35mm.

You sure you aren't confusing 8 mm with Super 8? I never used the latter and don't know what the configuration of the perfs was on those, but I do know that the two types were not interchangeable.

Michael