We shot a YouTube video about film formats on 35mm film

Comment below if you think there is a preexisting video which would beat me as the first 35mm filmed-as-a-YouTube-video video.

Thanks to Bec Hill for helping out with the filming on the day. All the props were lovingly hand-made by Bec using stationery we found around Sam Kieffer's place.

CORRECTIONS
- None yet, let me know if you spot anything!

Filming and editing by Truman Hanks
Sound mix by Peter Doggart
Written and performed by Matt Parker
Props by Bec Hill
Produced by Nicole Jacobus
Music by Howard Carter
Design by Simon Wright and Adam Robinson

MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician

[georgestagg]

I hope this video gets a good amount of exposure

[stevemoore]

I played it at 2x speed to cut your costs in half

[benjaminceandcheese]

I bet this is the only YouTube video that Christopher Nolan will ever watch.

[premodernist_history]

Now release this on a 16mm reel so we can watch it at home.

[JohanDeknudt]

The poor guy at Youtube who get to rewind the reel for this 35mm movie everytime someone plays this. ;-D

[greyvlad]

This looks beautiful! I can see why Christopher Nolan said that the audience does know when something is shot in film vs digital

[ChadMILLER]

That film is measured in feet is the reason spans of movie-ness is called "footage".

[voidmayonnaise]

Matt: “I’m going to film in 35mm.”
YouTube: “I’m going to display in 144p.”

[olympian]

When filming costs actual money you make sure to fill every shot with something valuable!

[AnonymousFreakYT]

Of note - running the Super35 and the Super16 at the same time was still cheaper per second than running just the 4-perf Super35.

[JohnHarrisonForever]

It's not just movies shot on film! Lots and lots of television was shot on 16mm (because the lower resolution was impossible to notice on an analog TV) With certain prestige shots being shot in 35mm. Some shows even make the jump between formats as they become more popular. IIRC the first season on Breaking Bad is shot on 16, while later seasons are shot on 35. For a more recent examples, Succession and Euphoria where both shot on 35mm with Succession using traditional color negative film stock (same type as used in this video) and Euphoria using Slide film (Ektachrome) which has much more vivid colors.

Some movies also mix formats. Christopher Nolan does this a lot in his films with certain sequences being shot in IMAX while the rest is 35mm to save cost. Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs shot different eras on different formats, with the first part on 16, the second part on 35, and the third part shot digitally.

Now if, filled with enthusiasm from reading this comment, you immediately rewatch The Dark Knight, don't come crying to me if you have trouble spotting which sections are shot in IMAX! While the exact digital equivalent resolution of film is pretty debated, it's generally accepted that 16mm = 2k (or 1080p), 35mm = 4k (or 2160p), 65mm = 8k (~3600p) and IMAX is at least 12k (7680p). This means in practice it will may difficult to tell the difference between formats if you're watching on anything other than a top of the line TV connected to a 4K bluray player. However if you stream it, the difference might be easier to spot, as the more visible grain of 35mm would put more strain on the compression algorithm of your streaming platform resulting in a mushier image.

Back to the subject of resolution, if you accept that 35mm = 4k don't go to see a 35mm projection in a theater expecting it to look the same as a 4K laser projector. Film like any analog format is subject to generation loss, and while the original camera negative might have a 4k resolution, the copy of a copy of a copy that you see in theaters will retain much less detail. And to add another wrinkle, in the early digital era many movies were shot on 35 but scanned, edited, and composited at 2k because storing terabytes of data was a lot harder to do in 2001. Because of this films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy will never truly have a 4k re-release because all of the post production was done in 2k, which would mean they would have to rescan hundreds (potentially thousands) of hours of footage, open their 2 decade old edit project and reconnect all their offline media, all the while hoping that the timing of the new scans is exactly the same as their original scans (so that they don't have to manually re sync) and then they would have to redo over 3, 000 vfx shots in higher resolution, possibly starting from scratch because the software they used in the early 2000s (Shake) isn't compatible with modern operating systems. The end result of all of this would probably look incredible, but come at a cost of at least 50-100 million dollars (for all three movies). The irony of this is that today you can watch the original Star Wars (1977) at higher resolution than The Phantom Menace (1999).

And as a reward for reading all the way through this impossibly nerdy comment, I will give you one more fun fact about shooting on film: In the days before digital editing, if you wanted your footage to play backwards you had to shoot with the camera upside down.

[mrshinebox]

This is the only explanation of film ratios I've seen that actually explains them. Saying that something was filmed on x:y format because it gives more of a 'cinema' feel doesn't actually tell me how that ratio became the cinema standard.
Thanks Matt.

[drmathochist]

The analog cinematography crew is *here for this*.

ETA: we need a follow-up YT film about shutter angles from the trigonometry lover himself!

[blckspdr]

Honestly, it's so fun to spot the film artifacts throughout the video

[junk-jg]

the ability of mathematicians to have a (200 iso) film videocamera and still film indoors in a grey room

[donsample]

My dad had an 8mm (not even super 8) camera. It actually used 16mm film, but it only exposed half of it when run through the camera. Then you’d take the take up reel out and flip it around to run the other half of the film through the camera. Then after developing, they’d cut the film in half lengthwise, and splice the two pieces together.

[VascovanZeller]

This is probably the reason for 24 fps - literally the fewest frames we could get away and not have the movie look like a slideshow.

[steveswm]

24 fps starts to make more sense at a $1 per second

[gavinjenkins]

Keep in mind that that's just the MASTER roll. Every single theater you send the movie to also needs that much film again for the whole movie for the copy, 4x more than the film they used here just to make a copy only for your own town's theater

[PlasmikProductions]

I just want to say Dan Ming is a legend. He's responsible for figuring out how to put 8 cinema cameras inside of a jet for Top Gun: Maverick. So awesome that he's involved with this!