A movie trailer is a research-based reporting that deals with a specific topic and format

A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record".[1] Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries".[2]

A movie trailer is a research-based reporting that deals with a specific topic and format

A 16 mm spring-wound Bolex "H16" Reflex camera—a popular entry-level camera used in film schools

Early documentary films, originally called "actuality films", lasted one minute or less. Over time, documentaries have evolved to become longer in length, and to include more categories. Some examples are educational, observational and docufiction. Documentaries are very informative, and are often used within schools as a resource to teach various principles. Documentary filmmakers have a responsibility to be truthful to their vision of the world without intentionally misrepresenting a topic.

Social-media platforms (such as YouTube) have provided an avenue for the growth of the documentary-film genre. These platforms have increased the distribution area and ease-of-accessibility.

 

The cover of Bolesław Matuszewski's 1898 book Une nouvelle source de l'histoire. (A New Source of History), the first publication about documentary function of cinematography.

Polish writer and filmmaker Bolesław Matuszewski was among those who identified the mode of documentary film. He wrote two of the earliest texts on cinema Une nouvelle source de l'histoire (eng. A New Source of History) and La photographie animée (eng. Animated photography). Both were published in 1898 in French and among the early written works to consider the historical and documentary value of the film.[3] Matuszewski is also among the first filmmakers to propose the creation of a Film Archive to collect and keep safe visual materials.[4]

The word "documentary" was coined by Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson in his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana (1926), published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926, written by "The Moviegoer" (a pen name for Grierson).[5]

Grierson's principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form; that the "original" actor and "original" scene are better guides than their fiction counterparts to interpreting the modern world; and that materials "thus taken from the raw" can be more real than the acted article. In this regard, Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality"[6] has gained some acceptance, with this position at variance with Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov's provocation to present "life as it is" (that is, life filmed surreptitiously) and "life caught unawares" (life provoked or surprised by the camera).

The American film critic Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film as "a factual film which is dramatic."[7] Others further state that a documentary stands out from the other types of non-fiction films for providing an opinion, and a specific message, along with the facts it presents.[8]

Documentary practice is the complex process of creating documentary projects. It refers to what people do with media devices, content, form, and production strategies to address the creative, ethical, and conceptual problems and choices that arise as they make documentaries.

Documentary filmmaking can be used as a form of journalism, advocacy, or personal expression.

Early film (pre-1900) was dominated by the novelty of showing an event. They were single-shot moments captured on film: a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. These short films were called "actuality" films; the term "documentary" was not coined until 1926. Many of the first films, such as those made by Auguste and Louis Lumière, were a minute or less in length, due to technological limitations (example on YouTube).

Films showing many people (for example, leaving a factory) were often made for commercial reasons: the people being filmed were eager to see, for payment, the film showing them. One notable film clocked in at over an hour and a half, The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight. Using pioneering film-looping technology, Enoch J. Rector presented the entirety of a famous 1897 prize-fight on cinema screens across the United States.

In May 1896, Bolesław Matuszewski recorded on film a few surgical operations in Warsaw and Saint Petersburg hospitals. In 1898, French surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen invited Bolesław Matuszewski and Clément Maurice and proposed them to recorded his surgical operations. They started in Paris a series of surgical films sometime before July 1898.[9] Until 1906, the year of his last film, Doyen recorded more than 60 operations. Doyen said that his first films taught him how to correct professional errors he had been unaware of. For scientific purposes, after 1906, Doyen combined 15 of his films into three compilations, two of which survive, the six-film series Extirpation des tumeurs encapsulées (1906), and the four-film Les Opérations sur la cavité crânienne (1911). These and five other of Doyen's films survive.[10]

 

Frame from one of Gheorghe Marinescu's science films (1899).

Between July 1898 and 1901, the Romanian professor Gheorghe Marinescu made several science films in his neurology clinic in Bucharest:[11] Walking Troubles of Organic Hemiplegy (1898), The Walking Troubles of Organic Paraplegies (1899), A Case of Hysteric Hemiplegy Healed Through Hypnosis (1899), The Walking Troubles of Progressive Locomotion Ataxy (1900), and Illnesses of the Muscles (1901). All these short films have been preserved. The professor called his works "studies with the help of the cinematograph," and published the results, along with several consecutive frames, in issues of La Semaine Médicale magazine from Paris, between 1899 and 1902.[12] In 1924, Auguste Lumiere recognized the merits of Marinescu's science films: "I've seen your scientific reports about the usage of the cinematograph in studies of nervous illnesses, when I was still receiving La Semaine Médicale, but back then I had other concerns, which left me no spare time to begin biological studies. I must say I forgot those works and I am thankful to you that you reminded them to me. Unfortunately, not many scientists have followed your way."[13][14][15]

1900–1920

 

Geoffrey Malins with an aeroscope camera during World War I.

Travelogue films were very popular in the early part of the 20th century. They were often referred to by distributors as "scenics." Scenics were among the most popular sort of films at the time.[16] An important early film to move beyond the concept of the scenic was In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), which embraced primitivism and exoticism in a staged story presented as truthful re-enactments of the life of Native Americans.

Contemplation is a separate area. Pathé is the best-known global manufacturer of such films of the early 20th century. A vivid example is Moscow Clad in Snow (1909).

Biographical documentaries appeared during this time, such as the feature Eminescu-Veronica-Creangă (1914) on the relationship between the writers Mihai Eminescu, Veronica Micle and Ion Creangă (all deceased at the time of the production) released by the Bucharest chapter of Pathé.

Early color motion picture processes such as Kinemacolor—known for the feature With Our King and Queen Through India (1912)—and Prizmacolor—known for Everywhere With Prizma (1919) and the five-reel feature Bali the Unknown (1921)—used travelogues to promote the new color processes. In contrast, Technicolor concentrated primarily on getting their process adopted by Hollywood studios for fictional feature films.

Also during this period, Frank Hurley's feature documentary film, South (1919), about the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was released. The film documented the failed Antarctic expedition led by Ernest Shackleton in 1914.

1920s

Romanticism

 

Nanook of the North poster.

With Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North in 1922, documentary film embraced romanticism; Flaherty filmed a number of heavily staged romantic films during this time period, often showing how his subjects would have lived 100 years earlier and not how they lived right then. For instance, in Nanook of the North, Flaherty did not allow his subjects to shoot a walrus with a nearby shotgun, but had them use a harpoon instead. Some of Flaherty's staging, such as building a roofless igloo for interior shots, was done to accommodate the filming technology of the time.

Paramount Pictures tried to repeat the success of Flaherty's Nanook and Moana with two romanticized documentaries, Grass (1925) and Chang (1927), both directed by Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.

City-symphony

The city-symphony sub film genre were avant-garde films during the 1920s and 1930s. These films were particularly influenced by modern art; namely Cubism, Constructivism, and Impressionism.[17] According to art historian and author Scott Macdonald,[18] city-symphony films can be described as, "An intersection between documentary and avant-garde film: an avant-doc"; However, A.L. Rees suggests to see them as avant-garde films.[17]

Early titles produced within this genre include: Manhatta (New York; dir. Paul Strand, 1921); Rien que les heures/Nothing But The Hours (France; dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1926); Twenty Four Dollar Island (dir. Robert J. Flaherty, 1927); Études sur Paris (dir. André Sauvage, 1928); The Bridge (1928) and Rain (1929), both by Joris Ivens; São Paulo, Sinfonia da Metrópole (dir. Adalberto Kemeny, 1929), Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (dir. Walter Ruttmann, 1927); Man with a Movie Camera (dir. Dziga Vertov, 1929) and Douro, Faina Fluvial (dir. Manoel de Oliveira, 1931).

 

In this shot from Walter Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927), cyclists race indoors. The film is shot and edited like a visual-poem.

A city-symphony film, as the name suggests, is most often based around a major metropolitan city area and seeks to capture the life, events and activities of the city. It can be abstract cinematography (Walter Ruttman's Berlin) or may use Soviet montage theory (Dziga Vertov's, Man with a Movie Camera); yet, most importantly, a city-symphony film is a form of cinepoetry being shot and edited in the style of a "symphony".

 

In this shot from Man with a Movie Camera, Mikhail Kaufman acts as a cameraman risking his life in search of the best shot

The continental tradition (See: Realism) focused on humans within human-made environments, and included the so-called "city-symphony" films such as Walter Ruttmann's, Berlin, Symphony of a City (of which Grierson noted in an article[19] that Berlin, represented what a documentary should not be); Alberto Cavalcanti's, Rien que les heures; and Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera. These films tend to feature people as products of their environment, and lean towards the avant-garde.

Kino-Pravda

Dziga Vertov was central to the Soviet Kino-Pravda (literally, "cinematic truth") newsreel series of the 1920s. Vertov believed the camera—with its varied lenses, shot-counter shot editing, time-lapse, ability to slow motion, stop motion and fast-motion—could render reality more accurately than the human eye, and made a film philosophy out of it.

Newsreel tradition

The newsreel tradition is important in documentary film; newsreels were also sometimes staged but were usually re-enactments of events that had already happened, not attempts to steer events as they were in the process of happening. For instance, much of the battle footage from the early 20th century was staged; the cameramen would usually arrive on site after a major battle and re-enact scenes to film them.

1930s–1940s

The propagandist tradition consists of films made with the explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point. One of the most celebrated and controversial propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will (1935), which chronicled the 1934 Nazi Party Congress and was commissioned by Adolf Hitler. Leftist filmmakers Joris Ivens and Henri Storck directed Borinage (1931) about the Belgian coal mining region. Luis Buñuel directed a "surrealist" documentary Las Hurdes (1933).

Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1938) and Willard Van Dyke's The City (1939) are notable New Deal productions, each presenting complex combinations of social and ecological awareness, government propaganda, and leftist viewpoints. Frank Capra's Why We Fight (1942–1944) series was a newsreel series in the United States, commissioned by the government to convince the U.S. public that it was time to go to war. Constance Bennett and her husband Henri de la Falaise produced two feature-length documentaries, Legong: Dance of the Virgins (1935) filmed in Bali, and Kilou the Killer Tiger (1936) filmed in Indochina.

In Canada, the Film Board, set up by John Grierson, was created for the same propaganda reasons. It also created newsreels that were seen by their national governments as legitimate counter-propaganda to the psychological warfare of Nazi Germany (orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels).

 

Conference of "World Union of documentary films" in 1948 Warsaw featured famous directors of the era: Basil Wright (on the left), Elmar Klos, Joris Ivens (2nd from the right), and Jerzy Toeplitz.

In Britain, a number of different filmmakers came together under John Grierson. They became known as the Documentary Film Movement. Grierson, Alberto Cavalcanti, Harry Watt, Basil Wright, and Humphrey Jennings amongst others succeeded in blending propaganda, information, and education with a more poetic aesthetic approach to documentary. Examples of their work include Drifters (John Grierson), Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright), Fires Were Started, and A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings). Their work involved poets such as W. H. Auden, composers such as Benjamin Britten, and writers such as J. B. Priestley. Among the best known films of the movement are Night Mail and Coal Face.

Film Calling mr. Smith (1943) was anti-nazi color film[20][21][22] created by Stefan Themerson and being both documentary and avant-garde film against war. It was one of the first anti-nazi films in history.

1950s–1970s

 

Lennart Meri (1929–2006), the second President of the Republic of Estonia, directed documentaries several years before his presidency. His film The Winds of the Milky Way won a silver medal at the New York Film Festival in 1977.[23][24][25]

Cinéma-vérité

Cinéma vérité (or the closely related direct cinema) was dependent on some technical advances to exist: light, quiet and reliable cameras, and portable sync sound.

Cinéma vérité and similar documentary traditions can thus be seen, in a broader perspective, as a reaction against studio-based film production constraints. Shooting on location, with smaller crews, would also happen in the French New Wave, the filmmakers taking advantage of advances in technology allowing smaller, handheld cameras and synchronized sound to film events on location as they unfolded.

Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there are important differences between cinéma vérité (Jean Rouch) and the North American "direct cinema" (or more accurately "cinéma direct"), pioneered by, among others, Canadians Allan King, Michel Brault, and Pierre Perrault,[26] and Americans Robert Drew, Richard Leacock, Frederick Wiseman and Albert and David Maysles.

The directors of the movement take different viewpoints on their degree of involvement with their subjects. Kopple and Pennebaker, for instance, choose non-involvement (or at least no overt involvement), and Perrault, Rouch, Koenig, and Kroitor favor direct involvement or even provocation when they deem it necessary.

The films Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch), Dont Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker), Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles), Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman), Primary and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (both produced by Robert Drew), Harlan County, USA (directed by Barbara Kopple), Lonely Boy (Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor) are all frequently deemed cinéma vérité films.

The fundamentals of the style include following a person during a crisis with a moving, often handheld, camera to capture more personal reactions. There are no sit-down interviews, and the shooting ratio (the amount of film shot to the finished product) is very high, often reaching 80 to one. From there, editors find and sculpt the work into a film. The editors of the movement—such as Werner Nold, Charlotte Zwerin, Muffie Myers, Susan Froemke, and Ellen Hovde—are often overlooked, but their input to the films was so vital that they were often given co-director credits.

Famous cinéma vérité/direct cinema films include Les Raquetteurs,[27] Showman, Salesman, Near Death, and The Children Were Watching.

Political weapons

In the 1960s and 1970s, documentary film was often conceived as a political weapon against neocolonialism and capitalism in general, especially in Latin America, but also in a changing Quebec society. La Hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, from 1968), directed by Octavio Getino and Arnold Vincent Kudales Sr., influenced a whole generation of filmmakers. Among the many political documentaries produced in the early 1970s was "Chile: A Special Report," public television's first in-depth expository look of the September 1973 overthrow of the Salvador Allende government in Chile by military leaders under Augusto Pinochet, produced by documentarians Ari Martinez and José Garcia.

A 28 June 2020, article by The New York Times talks about a political documentary film 'And She Could Be Next', directed by Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia. The documentary not only brings focus to the role of women in politics but more specifically to the women of color, their communities and the significant changes they are bringing about in the American politics.[28]

Modern documentaries

Box office analysts have noted that this film genre has become increasingly successful in theatrical release with films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Super Size Me, Food, Inc., Earth, March of the Penguins, and An Inconvenient Truth among the most prominent examples. Compared to dramatic narrative films, documentaries typically have far lower budgets which makes them attractive to film companies because even a limited theatrical release can be highly profitable.

The nature of documentary films has expanded in the past 20 years from the cinéma vérité style introduced in the 1960s in which the use of portable camera and sound equipment allowed an intimate relationship between filmmaker and subject. The line blurs between documentary and narrative and some works are very personal, such as Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) and Black Is...Black Ain't (1995), which mix expressive, poetic, and rhetorical elements and stresses subjectivities rather than historical materials.[29]

Historical documentaries, such as the landmark 14-hour Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1986—Part 1 and 1989—Part 2) by Henry Hampton, 4 Little Girls (1997) by Spike Lee, and The Civil War by Ken Burns, UNESCO awarded independent film on slavery 500 Years Later, expressed not only a distinctive voice but also a perspective and point of views. Some films such as The Thin Blue Line by Errol Morris incorporated stylized re-enactments, and Michael Moore's Roger & Me placed far more interpretive control with the director. The commercial success of these documentaries may derive from this narrative shift in the documentary form, leading some critics to question whether such films can truly be called documentaries; critics sometimes refer to these works as "mondo films" or "docu-ganda."[30] However, directorial manipulation of documentary subjects has been noted since the work of Flaherty, and may be endemic to the form due to problematic ontological foundations.

Documentary filmmakers are increasingly using social impact campaigns with their films.[31] Social impact campaigns seek to leverage media projects by converting public awareness of social issues and causes into engagement and action, largely by offering the audience a way to get involved.[32] Examples of such documentaries include Kony 2012, Salam Neighbor, Gasland, Living on One Dollar, and Girl Rising.

Although documentaries are financially more viable with the increasing popularity of the genre and the advent of the DVD, funding for documentary film production remains elusive. Within the past decade, the largest exhibition opportunities have emerged from within the broadcast market, making filmmakers beholden to the tastes and influences of the broadcasters who have become their largest funding source.[33]

Modern documentaries have some overlap with television forms, with the development of "reality television" that occasionally verges on the documentary but more often veers to the fictional or staged. The "making-of" documentary shows how a movie or a computer game was produced. Usually made for promotional purposes, it is closer to an advertisement than a classic documentary.

Modern lightweight digital video cameras and computer-based editing have greatly aided documentary makers, as has the dramatic drop in equipment prices. The first film to take full advantage of this change was Martin Kunert and Eric Manes' Voices of Iraq, where 150 DV cameras were sent to Iraq during the war and passed out to Iraqis to record themselves.

Documentaries without words

Films in the documentary form without words have been made. Listen to Britain, directed by Humphrey Jennings and Stuart McAllister in 1942, is a wordless meditation on wartime Britain. From 1982, the Qatsi trilogy and the similar Baraka could be described as visual tone poems, with music related to the images, but no spoken content. Koyaanisqatsi (part of the Qatsi trilogy) consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States. Baraka tries to capture the great pulse of humanity as it flocks and swarms in daily activity and religious ceremonies.

Bodysong was made in 2003 and won a British Independent Film Award for "Best British Documentary."

The 2004 film Genesis shows animal and plant life in states of expansion, decay, sex, and death, with some, but little, narration.

Narration styles

Voice-over narrator

The traditional style for narration is to have a dedicated narrator read a script which is dubbed onto the audio track. The narrator never appears on camera and may not necessarily have knowledge of the subject matter or involvement in the writing of the script.

Silent narration

This style of narration uses title screens to visually narrate the documentary. The screens are held for about 5–10 seconds to allow adequate time for the viewer to read them. They are similar to the ones shown at the end of movies based on true stories, but they are shown throughout, typically between scenes.

Hosted narrator

In this style, there is a host who appears on camera, conducts interviews, and who also does voice-overs.

The release of The Act of Killing (2012) directed by Joshua Oppenheimer has introduced possibilities for emerging forms of the hybrid documentary. Traditional documentary filmmaking typically removes signs of fictionalization to distinguish itself from fictional film genres. Audiences have recently become more distrustful of the media's traditional fact production, making them more receptive to experimental ways of telling facts. The hybrid documentary implements truth games to challenge traditional fact production. Although it is fact-based, the hybrid documentary is not explicit about what should be understood, creating an open dialogue between subject and audience.[34] Clio Barnard's The Arbor (2010), Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing (2012), Mads Brügger's The Ambassador, and Alma Har'el's Bombay Beach (2011) are a few notable examples.[34]

Docufiction

Docufiction is a hybrid genre from two basic ones, fiction film and documentary, practiced since the first documentary films were made.

Fake-fiction

Fake-fiction is a genre which deliberately presents real, unscripted events in the form of a fiction film, making them appear as staged. The concept was introduced[35] by Pierre Bismuth to describe his 2016 film Where is Rocky II?

DVD documentary

A DVD documentary is a documentary film of indeterminate length that has been produced with the sole intent of releasing it for direct sale to the public on DVD, as different from a documentary being made and released first on television or on a cinema screen (a.k.a. theatrical release) and subsequently on DVD for public consumption.

This form of documentary release is becoming more popular and accepted as costs and difficulty with finding TV or theatrical release slots increases. It is also commonly used for more "specialist" documentaries, which might not have general interest to a wider TV audience. Examples are military, cultural arts, transport, sports, etc.

Compilation films

Compilation films were pioneered in 1927 by Esfir Schub with The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty. More recent examples include Point of Order! (1964), directed by Emile de Antonio about the McCarthy hearings. Similarly, The Last Cigarette combines the testimony of various tobacco company executives before the U.S. Congress with archival propaganda extolling the virtues of smoking.

Poetic documentaries, which first appeared in the 1920s, were a sort of reaction against both the content and the rapidly crystallizing grammar of the early fiction film. The poetic mode moved away from continuity editing and instead organized images of the material world by means of associations and patterns, both in terms of time and space. Well-rounded characters—"lifelike people"—were absent; instead, people appeared in these films as entities, just like any other, that are found in the material world. The films were fragmentary, impressionistic, lyrical. Their disruption of the coherence of time and space—a coherence favored by the fiction films of the day—can also be seen as an element of the modernist counter-model of cinematic narrative. The "real world"—Nichols calls it the "historical world"—was broken up into fragments and aesthetically reconstituted using film form. Examples of this style include Joris Ivens' Rain (1928), which records a passing summer shower over Amsterdam; László Moholy-Nagy's Play of Light: Black, White, Grey (1930), in which he films one of his own kinetic sculptures, emphasizing not the sculpture itself but the play of light around it; Oskar Fischinger's abstract animated films; Francis Thompson's N.Y., N.Y. (1957), a city symphony film; and Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1982).

Expository documentaries speak directly to the viewer, often in the form of an authoritative commentary employing voiceover or titles, proposing a strong argument and point of view. These films are rhetorical, and try to persuade the viewer. (They may use a rich and sonorous male voice.) The (voice-of-God) commentary often sounds "objective" and omniscient. Images are often not paramount; they exist to advance the argument. The rhetoric insistently presses upon us to read the images in a certain fashion. Historical documentaries in this mode deliver an unproblematic and "objective" account and interpretation of past events.

Examples: TV shows and films like Biography, America's Most Wanted, many science and nature documentaries, Ken Burns' The Civil War (1990), Robert Hughes' The Shock of the New (1980), John Berger's Ways Of Seeing (1974), Frank Capra's wartime Why We Fight series, and Pare Lorentz's The Plow That Broke The Plains (1936).

Observational

 

film team at Port of Dar es Salaam with two ferries

Observational documentaries attempt to simply and spontaneously observe lived life with a minimum of intervention. Filmmakers who worked in this subgenre often saw the poetic mode as too abstract and the expository mode as too didactic. The first observational docs date back to the 1960s; the technological developments which made them possible include mobile lightweight cameras and portable sound recording equipment for synchronized sound. Often, this mode of film eschewed voice-over commentary, post-synchronized dialogue and music, or re-enactments. The films aimed for immediacy, intimacy, and revelation of individual human character in ordinary life situations.

Types

Participatory documentaries believe that it is impossible for the act of filmmaking to not influence or alter the events being filmed. What these films do is emulate the approach of the anthropologist: participant-observation. Not only is the filmmaker part of the film, we also get a sense of how situations in the film are affected or altered by their presence. Nichols: "The filmmaker steps out from behind the cloak of voice-over commentary, steps away from poetic meditation, steps down from a fly-on-the-wall perch, and becomes a social actor (almost) like any other. (Almost like any other because the filmmaker retains the camera, and with it, a certain degree of potential power and control over events.)" The encounter between filmmaker and subject becomes a critical element of the film. Rouch and Morin named the approach cinéma vérité, translating Dziga Vertov's kinopravda into French; the "truth" refers to the truth of the encounter rather than some absolute truth.

Reflexive documentaries do not see themselves as a transparent window on the world; instead, they draw attention to their own constructedness, and the fact that they are representations. How does the world get represented by documentary films? This question is central to this subgenre of films. They prompt us to "question the authenticity of documentary in general." It is the most self-conscious of all the modes, and is highly skeptical of "realism". It may use Brechtian alienation strategies to jar us, in order to "defamiliarize" what we are seeing and how we are seeing it.

Performative documentaries stress subjective experience and emotional response to the world. They are strongly personal, unconventional, perhaps poetic and/or experimental, and might include hypothetical enactments of events designed to make us experience what it might be like for us to possess a certain specific perspective on the world that is not our own, e.g. that of black, gay men in Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989) or Jenny Livingston's Paris Is Burning (1991). This subgenre might also lend itself to certain groups (e.g. women, ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians, etc.) to "speak about themselves". Often, a battery of techniques, many borrowed from fiction or avant-garde films, are used. Performative docs often link up personal accounts or experiences with larger political or historical realities.

Educational films

Documentaries are shown in schools around the world in order to educate students. Used to introduce various topics to children, they are often used with a school lesson or shown many times to reinforce an idea.

There are several challenges associated with translation of documentaries. The main two are working conditions and problems with terminology.

Working conditions

Documentary translators very often have to meet tight deadlines. Normally, the translator has between five and seven days to hand over the translation of a 90-minute programme. Dubbing studios typically give translators a week to translate a documentary, but in order to earn a good salary, translators have to deliver their translations in a much shorter period, usually when the studio decides to deliver the final programme to the client sooner or when the broadcasting channel sets a tight deadline, e.g. on documentaries discussing the latest news.[36]

Another problem is the lack of postproduction script or the poor quality of the transcription. A correct transcription is essential for a translator to do their work properly, however many times the script is not even given to the translator, which is a major impediment since documentaries are characterised by "the abundance of terminological units and very specific proper names".[37] When the script is given to the translator, it is usually poorly transcribed or outright incorrect making the translation unnecessarily difficult and demanding because all of the proper names and specific terminology have to be correct in a documentary programme in order for it to be a reliable source of information, hence the translator has to check every term on their own. Such mistakes in proper names are for instance: "Jungle Reinhard instead of Django Reinhart, Jorn Asten instead of Jane Austen, and Magnus Axle instead of Aldous Huxley".[37]

Terminology

The process of translation of a documentary programme requires working with very specific, often scientific terminology. Documentary translators are not usually specialists in a given field. Therefore, they are compelled to undertake extensive research whenever asked to make a translation of a specific documentary programme in order to understand it correctly and deliver the final product free of mistakes and inaccuracies. Generally, documentaries contain a large number of specific terms, with which translators have to familiarise themselves on their own, for example:

The documentary Beetles, Record Breakers makes use of 15 different terms to refer to beetles in less than 30 minutes (longhorn beetle, cellar beetle, stag beetle, burying beetle or gravediggers, sexton beetle, tiger beetle, bloody nose beetle, tortoise beetle, diving beetle, devil's coach horse, weevil, click beetle, malachite beetle, oil beetle, cockchafer), apart from mentioning other animals such as horseshoe bats or meadow brown butterflies.[38]

This poses a real challenge for the translators because they have to render the meaning, i.e. find an equivalent, of a very specific, scientific term in the target language and frequently the narrator uses a more general name instead of a specific term and the translator has to rely on the image presented in the programme to understand which term is being discussed in order to transpose it in the target language accordingly.[39] Additionally, translators of minorised languages often have to face another problem: some terms may not even exist in the target language. In such cases, they have to create new terminology or consult specialists to find proper solutions. Also, sometimes the official nomenclature differs from the terminology used by actual specialists, which leaves the translator to decide between using the official vocabulary that can be found in the dictionary, or rather opting for spontaneous expressions used by real experts in real life situations.[40]

  • Actuality film
  • Animated documentary
  • Citizen media
  • Concert film
  • Dance film
  • Docudrama
  • Documentary mode
  • Documentary theatre
  • Ethnofiction
  • Ethnographic film
  • Filmmaking
  • List of documentary films
  • List of documentary film festivals
  • List of documentary television channels
  • List of directors and producers of documentaries
  • Mockumentary
  • Mondo film
  • Nature documentary
  • Outline of film
  • Participatory video
  • Political cinema
  • Public-access television
  • Reality film
  • Rockumentary
  • Sponsored film
  • Television documentary
  • Travel documentary
  • Visual anthropology
  • Web documentary
  • Women's cinema

  • Grierson Awards
  • Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature
  • Joris Ivens Award, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), (named after Joris Ivens)
  • Filmmaker Award, Margaret Mead Film Festival
  • Grand Prize, Visions du Réel

  • Aitken, Ian (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film. New York: Routledge, 2005. ISBN 978-1-57958-445-0.
  • Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, 2nd rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0-19-507898-5. Still a useful introduction.
  • Ron Burnett. "Reflections on the Documentary Cinema"
  • Burton, Julianne (ed.). The Social Documentary in Latin America. Pittsburgh, Penn.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0-8229-3621-3.
  • Dawson, Jonathan. "Dziga Vertov".
  • Ellis, Jack C., and Betsy A. McLane. "A New History of Documentary Film." New York: Continuum International, 2005. ISBN 978-0-8264-1750-3, ISBN 978-0-8264-1751-0.
  • Goldsmith, David A. The Documentary Makers: Interviews with 15 of the Best in the Business. Hove, East Sussex: RotoVision, 2003. ISBN 978-2-88046-730-2.
  • Gaycken, Oliver (2015). Devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science. ISBN 978-0-19-986070-8.
  • Klotman, Phyllis R. and Culter, Janet K.(eds.). Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-253-21347-1.
  • Leach, Jim, and Jeannette Sloniowski (eds.). Candid Eyes: Essays on Canadian Documentaries. Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8020-4732-8, ISBN 978-0-8020-8299-2.
  • Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-253-33954-6, ISBN 978-0-253-21469-0.
  • Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-0-253-34060-3, ISBN 978-0-253-20681-7.
  • Nornes, Markus. Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8166-4907-5, ISBN 978-0-8166-4908-2.
  • Nornes, Markus. Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era through Hiroshima. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8166-4045-4, ISBN 978-0-8166-4046-1.
  • Rotha, Paul, Documentary diary; An Informal History of the British Documentary Film, 1928–1939. New York: Hill and Wang, 1973. ISBN 978-0-8090-3933-3.
  • Saunders, Dave. Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties. London: Wallflower Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-905674-16-9, ISBN 978-1-905674-15-2.
  • Saunders, Dave. Documentary: The Routledge Film Guidebook. London: Routledge, 2010.
  • Tobias, Michael. The Search for Reality: The Art of Documentary Filmmaking. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions 1997. ISBN 0-941188-62-0
  • Walker, Janet, and Diane Waldeman (eds.). Feminism and Documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0-8166-3006-6, ISBN 978-0-8166-3007-3.
  • Wyver, John. The Moving Image: An International History of Film, Television & Radio. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. in association with the British Film Institute, 1989. ISBN 978-0-631-15529-4.
  • Murdoch.edu, Documentary—reading list

  • Emilie de Brigard, "The History of Ethnographic Film," in Principles of Visual Anthropology, ed. Paul Hockings. Berlin and New York City : Mouton de Gruyter, 1995, pp. 13–43.
  • Leslie Devereaux, "Cultures, Disciplines, Cinemas," in Fields of Vision. Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology and Photography, ed. Leslie Devereaux & Roger Hillman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 329–339.
  • Faye Ginsburg, Lila Abu-Lughod and Brian Larkin (eds.), Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-520-23231-0.
  • Anna Grimshaw, The Ethnographer's Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0-521-77310-2.
  • Karl G. Heider, Ethnographic Film. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.
  • Luc de Heusch, Cinéma et Sciences Sociales, Paris: UNESCO, 1962. Published in English as The Cinema and Social Science. A Survey of Ethnographic and Sociological Films. UNESCO, 1962.
  • Fredric Jameson, Signatures of the Visible. New York & London: Routledge, 1990.
  • Pierre-L. Jordan, Premier Contact-Premier Regard, Marseille: Musées de Marseille. Images en Manoeuvres Editions, 1992.
  • André Leroi-Gourhan, "Cinéma et Sciences Humaines. Le Film Ethnologique Existe-t-il?," Revue de Géographie Humaine et d'Ethnologie 3 (1948), pp. 42–50.
  • David MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-691-01234-6.
  • David MacDougall, "Whose Story Is It?," in Ethnographic Film Aesthetics and Narrative Traditions, ed. Peter I. Crawford and Jan K. Simonsen. Aarhus, Intervention Press, 1992, pp. 25–42.
  • Fatimah Tobing Rony, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0-8223-1840-8.
  • Georges Sadoul, Histoire Générale du Cinéma. Vol. 1, L'Invention du Cinéma 1832–1897. Paris: Denöel, 1977, pp. 73–110.
  • Pierre Sorlin, Sociologie du Cinéma, Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1977, pp. 7–74.
  • Charles Warren, "Introduction, with a Brief History of Nonfiction Film," in Beyond Document. Essays on Nonfiction Film, ed. Charles Warren. Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1996, pp. 1–22.
  • Ismail Xavier, "Cinema: Revelação e Engano," in O Olhar, ed. Adauto Novaes. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1993, pp. 367–384.

  1. ^ "Oxford English Dictionary". oed.com. Archived from the original on 25 April 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  2. ^ Nichols, Bill (1998). "Foreword to the new and expanded edition". In Grant, Barry Keith; Sloniowski, Jeannette (eds.). Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Contemporary approaches to film and media series. Detroit: Wayne State University Press (published 2013). p. xiv. ISBN 9780814339725. Retrieved 6 July 2020. Even after the word 'documentary' began to designate something that looked like a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception, it remains, to this day, a practice without clear boundaries.
  3. ^ Scott MacKenzie, Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology, Univ of California Press 2014, ISBN 9780520957411, p.520
  4. ^ James Chapman, "Film and History. Theory and History" part "Film as historical source" p.73–75, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, ISBN 9781137367327
  5. ^ Ann Curthoys, Marilyn Lake Connected worlds: history in transnational perspective, Volume 2004 p.151. Australian National University Press
  6. ^ "History/Film". wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au. Archived from the original on 26 March 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  7. ^ "Pare Lorentz Film Library – FDR and Film". 24 July 2011. Archived from the original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 25 April 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  8. ^ Larry Ward (Fall 2008). "Introduction" (PDF). Lecture Notes for the BA in Radio-TV-Film (RTVF). 375: Documentary Film & Television. California State University, Fullerton (College of communications): 4, slide 12. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 September 2006. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. ^ Charles Ford, Robert Hammond: Polish Film: A Twentieth Century History. McFarland, 2005. ISBN 9781476608037, p.10.
  10. ^ Baptista, Tiago (November 2005). ""Il faut voir le maître": A Recent Restoration of Surgical Films by E.-L. Doyen, 1859–1916". Journal of Film Preservation (70).
  11. ^ Mircea Dumitrescu, O privire critică asupra filmului românesc, Brașov, 2005, ISBN 978-973-9153-93-5
  12. ^ Rîpeanu, Bujor T. Filmul documentar 1897–1948, Bucharest, 2008, ISBN 978-973-7839-40-4
  13. ^ Ţuţui, Marian, A short history of the Romanian films at the Romanian National Cinematographic Center. Archived 11 April 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ The Works of Gheorghe Marinescu Archived 25 May 2010 at the Wayback Machine, 1967 report.
  15. ^ Excerpts of prof. dr. Marinescu's science films. Archived 26 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  16. ^ Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film, 2005.
  17. ^ a b Rees, A.L. (2011). A History of Experimental Film and Video (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-84457-436-0.
  18. ^ MacDonald, Scott (2010). "Avant-Doc: Eight Intersections". Film Quarterly. 64 (2): 50–57. doi:10.1525/fq.2010.64.2.50. JSTOR 10.1525/fq.2010.64.2.50.
  19. ^ Grierson, John. 'First Principles of Documentary', in Kevin Macdonald & Mark Cousins (eds.) Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. London: Faber and Faber, 1996
  20. ^ "Calling Mr. Smith – LUX". lux.org.uk. Archived from the original on 25 April 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  21. ^ "Calling Mr Smith – Centre Pompidou". centrepompidou.fr. Archived from the original on 31 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  22. ^ "Franciszka and Stefan Themerson: Calling Mr. Smith (1943) – artincinema". artincinema.com. 21 June 2015. Archived from the original on 31 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  23. ^ Jr, Donald G. Mcneil (7 April 2001). "Estonia's President: Un-Soviet and Unconventional – The New York Times". The New York Times.
  24. ^ "Ten years since the passing of Estonia's second president, Lennart Meri – ERR". 14 March 2016.
  25. ^ "'True European' Lennart Meri passes away – The Baltic Times".
  26. ^ Pevere, Geoff (27 April 2007). "Celebrating Allan King's video-era vérité". The Toronto Star. ISSN 0319-0781. Retrieved 21 February 2022.
  27. ^ "Les raquetteurs". National Film Board of Canada. 15 August 2017.
  28. ^ Phillips, Maya (28 June 2020). "In 'And She Could Be Next,' Women of Color Take on Politics". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
  29. ^ Struggles for Representation African American Documentary Film and Video, edited by Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler,
  30. ^ Wood, Daniel B. (2 June 2006). "In 'docu-ganda' films, balance is not the objective". The Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on 12 June 2006. Retrieved 6 June 2006.
  31. ^ Johnson, Ted (19 June 2015). "AFI Docs: Filmmakers Get Savvier About Fueling Social Change". Variety. Archived from the original on 4 June 2016. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  32. ^ "social impact campaigns". www.azuremedia.org. Archived from the original on 31 March 2016. Retrieved 23 June 2016.
  33. ^ indiewire.com, "Festivals: Post-Sundance 2001; Docs Still Face Financing and Distribution Challenges." 8 February 2001.
  34. ^ a b Moody, Luke (2 July 2013). "Act normal: hybrid tendencies in documentary film". Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  35. ^ Campion, Chris (11 February 2015). "Where is Rocky II? The 10-year desert hunt for Ed Ruscha's missing boulder". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 22 October 2016. Retrieved 22 October 2016.
  36. ^ Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 110-111.
  37. ^ a b Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 111
  38. ^ Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 113
  39. ^ Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 113–114
  40. ^ Matamala, A. (2009). Main Challenges in the Translation of Documentaries. In J. Cintas (Ed.), New Trends in Audiovisual Translation (pp. 109–120). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, p. 114–115

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16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film; other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educational) film-making, or for low-budget motion pictures. It also existed as a popular amateur or home movie-making format for several decades, alongside 8 mm film and later Super 8 film. Eastman Kodak released the first 16 mm "outfit" in 1923, consisting of a camera, projector, tripod, screen and splicer, for US$335 (equivalent to US$5,328 in 2021).[1] RCA-Victor introduced a 16 mm sound movie projector in 1932, and developed an optical sound-on-film 16 mm camera, released in 1935.[2]

A movie trailer is a research-based reporting that deals with a specific topic and format

16 mm sound movie showing a variable width sound track on single perforation film stock

Eastman Kodak introduced 16 mm film in 1923, as a less expensive alternative to 35 mm film for amateurs. During the 1920s the format was often referred to by the professional industry as sub-standard.[3]

Kodak hired Willard Beech Cook from his 28 mm Pathescope of America company to create the new 16 mm 'Kodascope Library'. In addition to making home movies, people could buy or rent films from the library, a key selling aspect of the format.

Intended for amateur use, 16 mm film was one of the first formats to use acetate safety film as a film base. Kodak never used nitrate film for the format, owing to the high flammability of the nitrate base. 35 mm nitrate was discontinued in 1952.

 

16 mm black and white reversal silent home movie on double perforation film stock

 

16 mm Eastman Kodak color movie from Warsaw dated 1939

 

16 mm Eastman Kodak color movie from Paris dated 1939

Production evolution

The silent 16 mm format was initially aimed at the home enthusiast, but by the 1930s it had begun to make inroads into the educational market. The addition of optical sound tracks and, most notably, Kodachrome in 1935, gave an enormous boost to its popularity. The format was used extensively during World War II, and there was a huge expansion of 16 mm professional filmmaking in the post-war years. Films for government, business, medical and industrial clients created a large network of 16 mm professional filmmakers and related service industries in the 1950s and 1960s. The advent of television production also enhanced the use of 16 mm film, initially for its advantage of cost and portability over 35 mm. At first used as a news-gathering format, the 16 mm format was also used to create television programming shot outside the confines of the more rigid television studio production sets. The home movie market gradually switched to the even less expensive 8 mm and Super 8 mm film formats.

16 mm, using light cameras, was extensively used for television production in many countries before portable video cameras appeared. In Britain, the BBC's Ealing-based film department made significant use of 16mm film and, during its peak, employed over 50 film crews. Throughout much of the 1960s-1990s period, these crews made use of cameras such as the Arriflex SP and Eclair NPR in combination with quarter-inch sound recorders, such as the Nagra III. Using these tools, film department crews would work on some of the most significant programmes produced by the BBC, including Man Alive, Panorama and Chronicle. Usually made up of five people, these small crews were able to work incredibly efficiently and, even in hostile environments, were able to film an entire programme with a shooting ratio of less than 5:1.[4]

Beginning in the 1950s, news organizations and documentarians in the United States frequently shot on portable Auricon and, later, CP-16 cameras that were self-blimped and had the ability to record sound on film. The introduction of magnetic striped film further improved sound fidelity.

Replacing analog video devices, digital video has made significant inroads in television production use. Nevertheless, 16 mm is still in use in its Super 16 ratio (see below) for productions seeking its specific look.

Two perforation pitches are available for 16 mm film. One specification, known as "long pitch", has a spacing of 7.62 mm (0.300 in) and is used primarily for print and reversal film stocks. Negative and intermediate film stocks have perforations spaced 7.605 mm (0.2994 in), known as "short pitch". These differences allow for the sharpest and smoothest possible image when making prints using a contact printer.

Film stocks are available in either 'single-perf' or 'double-perf', meaning the film is perforated on either one or both edges. A perforation for 16 mm film is 1.829 mm × 1.27 mm (0.0720 in × 0.0500 in) with a radius curve on all four corners of 0.25 mm (0.0098 in). Tolerances are ±0.001 mm (4×10−5 in).[5][6]

Standard 16 mm

The picture-taking area of standard 16 mm is 10.26 mm × 7.49 mm (0.404 in × 0.295 in), an aspect ratio of 1.37:1, the standard pre-widescreen Academy ratio for 35 mm. The "nominal" picture projection area (per SMPTE RP 20-2003) is 0.380 in by 0.284 in,[7] and the maximum picture projection area (per SMPTE ST 233-2003) is 0.384 in by 0.286 in,[8] each implying an aspect ratio of 1.34:1. Double-perf 16 mm film, the original format, has a perforation at both sides of every frame line. Single-perf is perforated at one side only, making room for an optical or magnetic soundtrack along the other side.

Super 16 mm

 

Super 16 and 16 mm film

The variant called Super 16 mm, Super 16, or 16 mm Type W is an adaptation of the 1.66 aspect ratio of the "Paramount format"[9] to 16 mm film. It was developed by Swedish cinematographer Rune Ericson in 1969,[10] using single-sprocket film and taking advantage of the extra room for an expanded picture area of 12.52 mm × 7.41 mm (0.493 in × 0.292 in).

Super 16 cameras are usually 16 mm cameras that have had the film gate and ground glass in the viewfinder modified for the wider frame, and, since this process widens the frame by affecting only one side of the film, the various cameras' front mounting plate or turret areas must also be re-machined to shift and re-center the mounts for any lenses used. Because the resulting, new, Super 16 aspect ratio takes up the space originally reserved for the 16mm soundtrack, films shot in this format must be enlarged by optical printing to 35 mm for sound-projection, and, in order to preserve the proper 1.66:1, or (slightly cropped) 1.85:1 theatrical aspect ratios which this format was designed to provide. And, with the recent development of digital intermediate workflows, it is now possible to digitally enlarge to a 35 mm sound print with virtually no quality loss (given a high quality digital scan), or alternatively to use high-quality video equipment for the original image capture.

In 2009, German lens manufacturer Vantage introduced a series of anamorphic lenses under its HAWK brand. These provided a 1.33× squeeze factor (as opposed to the standard 2×) specifically for the Super 16 format, allowing nearly all of the Super 16 frame to be used for 2.39:1 widescreen photography.

Ultra 16 mm

The DIY-crafted Ultra 16 is a variation of Super 16. Cinematographer Frank G. DeMarco is credited with inventing Ultra 16 in 1996 while shooting tests for Darren Aronofsky's Pi.[11] Ultra 16 is created by widening the left and right sides of the gate of a standard 16 mm camera by 0.7 mm to expose part of the horizontal area between the perforations. Perforation placement on standard 16 mm film at the divisions between frames accommodates use of these normally unexposed areas.

The Ultra 16 format, with frame dimensions of 11.66 mm × 6.15 mm (0.459 in × 0.242 in), provides a frame size between standard 16 mm and Super 16—while avoiding the expense of converting a 16 mm camera to Super 16, the larger lens-element requirements for proper aperture field coverage on Super 16 camera conversions, and, the potential image vignetting caused by trying to use some "conventional" 16 mm lenses on those Super 16 converted cameras. Thus, almost all standard 16 mm optics can now achieve the wider image in Ultra 16, but without the above pitfalls and optical "shortcomings" encountered when attempting their use for Super 16.

The image readily converts to NTSC/PAL (1.33 ratio), HDTV (1.78 ratio) and to 35 mm film (1.66 [European] and 1.85 wide screen ratios), using either the full vertical frame, or the full width (intersprocket) frame, and at times, portions of both, depending upon the required application.

The two major suppliers of 16 mm film in the 21st century are Kodak and Agfa (Fuji closed its film manufacturing facility on 31 December 2012). 16 mm film is used in television, such as for the Hallmark Hall of Fame anthology (it has since been produced in 16:9 high definition) and Friday Night Lights and The O.C. as well as The Walking Dead in the US. In the UK, the format is exceedingly popular for television series such as Doc Martin, dramas and commercials. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) played a large part in the development of the format. It worked extensively with Kodak during the 1950s and 1960s to bring 16 mm to a professional level, since the BBC needed cheaper, more portable production solutions while maintaining a higher quality than was offered at the time, when the format was mostly for home display of theatrical shorts, newsreels, and cartoons, documentary capture and display for various purposes (including education), and limited "high end" amateur use.[12] As of 2016[update] the format is frequently used for student films, while usage in documentary has almost disappeared. With the advent of HDTV, Super 16 film is still used for some productions destined for HD.[12] Some low-budget theatrical features are shot on 16 mm and super 16 mm such as Kevin Smith's 16 mm 1994 independent hit Clerks, or Man Bites Dog, and Mid90s.

Thanks to advances in film stock and digital technology—specifically digital intermediate (DI)—the format has dramatically improved in picture quality since the 1970s, and is now a revitalized option. Vera Drake, for example, was shot on Super 16 mm film, digitally scanned at a high resolution, edited and color graded, and then printed out onto 35 mm film via a laser film recorder. Because of the digital process, the final 35 mm print quality is good enough to fool some professionals into thinking it was shot on 35 mm.[citation needed]

In Britain most exterior television footage was shot on 16 mm from the 1960s until the 1990s, when the development of more portable television cameras and videotape machines led to video replacing 16 mm in many instances. Many drama shows and documentaries were made entirely on 16 mm, notably Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, The Ascent of Man and Life on Earth. More recently, the advent of widescreen television has led to the use of Super 16. For example, the 2008 BBC fantasy drama series Merlin was shot in Super 16.[13]

As recently as 2010, Scrubs was shot on Super16 and aired either as 4:3 SD (first 7 seasons) or as 16:9 HD (seasons 8 and 9). John Inwood, the cinematographer of the series, believed that footage from his Aaton XTR Prod camera was not only sufficient to air in high definition, it "looked terrific".[14]

The Academy Award winning Leaving Las Vegas (1995) was shot on 16 mm.

The first two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were shot on 16 mm and switched to 35 mm for its later seasons.

The first season of the popular series Sex and the City was shot on 16 mm. Later seasons were shot on 35 mm. All three seasons of Veronica Mars were shot on 16 mm and aired in HD. This Is Spinal Tap, and Christopher Guest's subsequent mockumentary films, are shot in Super 16 mm.

The first three seasons of Stargate SG-1 (bar the season 3 finale and the effects shots) were shot in 16 mm, before switching to 35 mm for later seasons.

Peter Jackson's 1992 zombie comedy Braindead was shot on Super 16mm, so that more of its $3 millon budget could be spent on its extensive gore effects.

The 2009 Academy Award winner for Best Picture, The Hurt Locker, was shot using Aaton Super 16 mm cameras and Fujifilm 16 mm film stocks. The cost savings over 35 mm allowed the production to utilize multiple cameras for many shots, exposing over one million feet of film.[15]

British Napoleonic-era TV drama Sharpe was shot on Super 16 mm right through to the film Sharpe's Challenge (2006). For the last film in the series, Sharpe's Peril (2008), the producers switched to 35 mm.

Moonrise Kingdom was shot using super 16 mm.

Darren Aronofsky shot mother! on 16 mm.[16]

Linus Sandgren shot most of the 2018 biographical drama First Man on Super 16.[17]

Spike Lee shot the Netflix film Da 5 Bloods' flashback scenes on 16 mm film. This is part of the reason cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel was considered for an Oscar nomination. The Insider reports that Netflix was "initially concerned about having the movie's flashback scenes shot on grainy 16 mm film ... There was pushback because it opened up a lot of challenges." According to Sigel, the film stock Lee wanted to use was expensive because it is rarely used. It would be even more expensive to shoot on 16mm film while on location in Vietnam and then ship the film back to the United States to be processed at a film lab. Lee was "pretty adamant" about using 16mm for the flashbacks; Sigel said "I would never have been able to do it without such fervent support from him." Sigel had pitched to Lee the idea to shoot the Vietnam sequences using the kind of camera and film stock that would have been available during the Vietnam era.[18]

Digital 16 mm

A number of digital cameras approximate the look of the 16 mm format by using 16 mm-sized sensors and taking 16 mm lenses. These cameras include the Ikonoskop A-Cam DII (2008) and the Digital Bolex (2012). The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera (2013) and the Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera (2015) has a Super 16-sized sensor. The Z CAM E2G (2019) even offers Digital 16 mm in 4K and with a global shutter.

 

A 16 mm spring-wound Bolex camera

 

A modern 16 mm Arri camera

The professional industry tends to use 16 mm cameras from Aaton and Arri, most notably the Aaton Xtera, Aaton XTRprod, Arriflex 16SR3, and Arriflex 416. Aaton also released the A-Minima, which is about the size of a video camcorder and is used for specialized filming requiring smaller, more versatile cameras. Photo Sonics have special extremely high speed cameras for 16 mm that film at up to 1,000 frames per second. Panavision has produced the Panaflex 16, nicknamed "Elaine".

Amateur cameras

For amateur, hobbyist, and student use, it is more economical to use older models from Arri, Aaton, Auricon, Beaulieu, Bell and Howell, Bolex, Canon, Cinema Products, Eclair, Keystone, Krasnogorsk, Mitchell, and others.

Most original movie production companies that use film shoot on 35 mm. The 35 mm size must be converted or reduced to 16 mm for 16 mm systems. There are multiple ways of obtaining a 16 mm print from 35 mm. The preferred method is to strike a 16 mm negative from the original 35 mm negative and then make a print from the new 16 mm negative. A 16 mm negative struck from the original 35 mm negative is called an original. A new 16 mm print made from a print with no negative is called a reversal. 16 mm prints can be made from many combinations of size and format, each with a distinct, descriptive name:

  • A 16 mm negative struck from an original 35 mm print is a print down.
  • A 16 mm negative struck from an original 16 mm print that was struck from a 35 mm original is a dupe down.
  • A 16 mm print struck directly from a 16 mm print is a double dupe.
  • A 16 mm print struck directly from a 35 mm print is a double dupe down.

Film traders often refer to 16 mm prints by the print's production method, i.e., an original, reversal, dupe down, double dupe, or double dupe down.

Color fading of old film and color recovery

Over time, the cyan, magenta and yellow dyes that form the image in color 16 mm film inevitably fade. The rate of deterioration depends on storage conditions and the film type. In the case of Kodachrome amateur and documentary films and Technicolor IB (imbibition process) color prints, the dyes are so stable and the deterioration so slow that even prints now over 70 years old typically show no obvious problems.

Unfortunately, dyes in the far more common Eastmancolor print film and similar products from other manufacturers are notoriously unstable. Prior to the introduction of a longer-lasting "low fade" type in 1979, Eastmancolor prints routinely suffered from easily seen color shift and fading within ten years. The dyes degrade at different rates, with magenta being the longest-lasting, eventually resulting in a pale reddish image with little if any other color discernible.[19]

In the process of digitizing old color films, even badly faded source material can sometimes be restored to full color through digital techniques that amplify the faded dye colors.

 

A strip of single perf 16 mm film with Super 16-sized frames.

 

A 100-foot (30.5 m) tin of 16 mm Fujifilm.

  • 7.62 mm per frame (40 frames per foot) for print stock—7.605 mm per frame for camera stock
  • 122 m (400 feet) = about 11 minutes at 24 frame/s
  • vertical pulldown
  • 1.37 aspect ratio
  • enlarging ratio of 1:4.58 for 35 mm Academy format prints
  • camera aperture: 10.26 by 7.49 mm (0.404 by 0.295 in)
  • projector aperture: 9.65 by 7.21 mm (0.380 by 0.284 in)
  • projector aperture (1.85): 9.60 by 5.20 mm (0.378 by 0.205 in)
  • TV station aperture: 9.65 by 7.26 mm (0.380 by 0.286 in)
  • TV transmission: 9.34 by 7.01 mm (0.368 by 0.276 in)
  • TV safe action: 8.40 by 6.29 mm (0.331 by 0.248 in); corner radii: 1.67 mm (0.066 in)
  • TV safe titles: 7.44 by 5.61 mm (0.293 by 0.221 in); corner radii: 1.47 mm (0.058 in)
  • 1 perforation per frame (may also be double perf, i.e. one on each side)
  • Picture to sound separation: sound in advance of picture by 26 frames for optical sound and 28 frames for magnetic.
  • 1.66 aspect ratio
  • camera aperture: 12.52 by 7.41 mm (0.493 by 0.292 in)
  • projector aperture (full 1.66): 11.76 by 7.08 mm (0.463 by 0.279 in)
  • projector aperture (1.85): 11.76 by 6.37 mm (0.463 by 0.251 in)
  • 1 perforation per frame, always single perf
  • 1.85 aspect ratio
  • camera aperture: 11.66 mm by 7.49 mm (0.459 by 0.295 in)
  • projector aperture: 11.66 mm by 6.15 mm (0.459 by 0.242 in)
  • 1 perforation per frame (may also be double perf, i.e. one on each side)

  •  Film portal

  • List of film formats
  • Sync sound
  • Pilottone
  • Direct cinema
  • Cinéma vérité
  • Docufiction
  • Ethnographic film
  • Ethnofiction

  1. ^ Kattelle, Alan (2000). Home Movies: A History of the American Industry, 1897–1979. Transition Publishing. p. 334. ISBN 0-9654497-8-5.
  2. ^ Kattelle, Alan (2000). Home Movies: A History of the American Industry, 1897–1979. Transition Publishing. p. 231. ISBN 0-9654497-8-5.
  3. ^ Eisloeffel, Paul (2013). "16mm Format History" (PDF). Archives Filmworks. Retrieved November 10, 2016.
  4. ^ Ellis, John; Hall, Nick (November 9, 2017). "ADAPT". Figshare. doi:10.17637/rh.c.3925603.v1.
  5. ^ "Film specifications" (PDF). Kodak. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-03-26. Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  6. ^ "How to Read a Kodak Film Can Label" (PDF). Kodak. 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-03-23. Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  7. ^ Specifications for 16-mm Registration Test Film. doi:10.5594/SMPTE.RP20.2003. ISBN 978-1-61482-073-4.
  8. ^ For Motion-Picture Film (16-mm) — Projectable Image Area and Projector Usage. doi:10.5594/SMPTE.ST233.2003. ISBN 978-1-61482-382-7.
  9. ^ Jones, Andy (2014). "Beyond HD". BBC Academy. Archived from the original on 2014-12-19. Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  10. ^ "The Early Years of Super 16 and How it All Started – Film and Digital Times". Film and Digital Times. August 20, 2009.
  11. ^ Gullickson, Brad (May 29, 2018). "Frank G. DeMarco On Capturing Punk Rock Grit in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"". Film School Rejects. Retrieved July 19, 2018.
  12. ^ a b Ferrari, Alex (2016-10-17). "How to Shoot Super 16mm Film Tutorials". Indie Film Hustle. Retrieved 2019-07-19.
  13. ^ "Mill TV Taps Baselight to Work Magic for BBC's 'Merlin'". Archived from the original on July 18, 2011.
  14. ^ "A new HD frontier for Scrubs" (PDF). Retrieved November 1, 2009.
  15. ^ Macaulay, Scott (November 14, 2011). "Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd Discusses Oscar Winner The Hurt Locker". Filmmaker Magazine.
  16. ^ Thorsteinsson, Ari Gunnar (October 11, 2016). "Darren Aronofsky on His Private Writing Process, Fighting Financiers and His Mysterious New Film". indiewire.com. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  17. ^ Kadner, Noah (January 7, 2019). "Moon Walk: First Man". ASC Magazine. Retrieved April 14, 2019.
  18. ^ Sharf, Zack (2020-06-18). "'Da 5 Bloods' Cinematographer Says Netflix Pushed Back Against Spike Lee Using 16mm Film". IndieWire. Retrieved 2020-06-19.
  19. ^ "A History of Low Fade Color Print Stocks". In70mm.com. 1963-07-11. Retrieved 2014-05-20.

  • Demonstration of a BBC 16mm film crew preparing to shoot
  • Discussion and demonstration of 16mm film cameras by former BBC cameraman
  • Demonstration of 'lacing up' a 16mm film camera
  • History of sub-35 mm Film Formats & Cameras
  • SUPER-16 modification of Bolex Reflex 16 mm camera
  • "Sweet 16: A-list Cinematographers Say the Emulsion’s Never Looked So Good, Here’s Why...", written February 1, 2005, and accessed December 29, 2005.
  • DIY processing 16 mm – guide for DIY processing of black/white 16 mm film
  • Early list of films shot in Super16

(Wayback Machine copy)

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