without any shadow of a doubt we love movies. big movie releases gross hundreds of
millions of dollars and the names of actors and directors are considered
common knowledge
but while we certainly love films many of us overlook one of the most important
elements in all of film history
the film itself
its a medium that's been around for well over a century and while
these strips of celluloid contains some of the most well-known images in all of
human history most of us are in the dark when it comes to film
this begs the question what is film
well let's break it down and look at a different components
these little cut-outs called perforations run along the edge of the strip
they provide the camera a way to move to film around easily and accurately to
keep an even spacing between images
some film contains a stripper recording audio from the camera
this is either a magnetic strip or an optical waveform
it's worth noting though that when filming motion pictures audio is
recorded to a separate device
frames of the rectangles that contain the image
and just like how megapixel determine the size of the digital image the size
of these frames impact how big the image can be printed or projected before
lose quality so the frames perforations and audio strips are often
rearranged to make space for a bigger image super 8 film in comparison to
standard 8mm film for example shrinks the perforations on the edge to make space
for a larger image across the width of the stock but there's also the
tried-and-true just make it bigger approach to film stocks 16 millimeters
the next size up with standard 16 and super 16 being the popular formats
although both are actually shot on the same single perf film
35 millimeter is probably the most notable film
it's the standard for hollywood as well as the size of the film in those little
canisters that you buy for still photography but while the size is the
same they're both different format 70 millimeter film is the largest
available film stock for the biggest of the big screens will know that this IMAX
70 millimeter film runs horizontally rather than vertically
because turn the frame sideways is a more efficient layout than vertical meaning
the extra space can be spent on making the frames even larger now there are
many different sizes and configurations of film modern film stock all works the same
way the film itself is composed of several different layers of filters
barriers and light-sensitive emulsions but I'm going to boil it down to just its two
main part the key to what makes them work as a light sensitive coating on the
film composed of tiny little grains of silver halide when struck by light
these grains change from one state to another when developing film has been exposing a
camera the chemical bath removes only the grains that have been changed by interaction
with light and the more grains the get removed from an area the whiter that area
will become
and more grains that get left behind the darker that part of the image will be
now this is fine for plain old black-and-white film but to record color
will need three of these light-sensitive layers each of these layers will be
sensitized only react with light of a single color so we'll need one blue
one green and one red layer all stacked together in that order
just like you can mix primary colors of paints together to make other colors red green
and blue are the primary colors for light is seen by the cones in the human
eye now since we have separate recordings of the red green and blue
information we can recombine these to get the full color image this is a
really cool topic by itself but I didn't have time to go into much detail so if
you want to learn more about how your kindergarten teacher lied to you about
what primary colors are or why film negatives are such weird colors go check
out the bonus video these emulsion layers as well as some additional
filters and barriers are all sandwiched together in a flexible transparent
material in the early days was in nitro celluloid but this proved to be
explosive I mean it literally chemically related to gun cotton in early
military-grade explosive this this made the safer acetate-celluloid films a much
welcomed creation although put the silver halide it still technically is
flammable acetate based film stocks were around for a good portion of the century
before film manufacturers began to favor of polyester plastic is the base starting
in the 1990s and there you have it all these components working together
create the height of image capturing technology of the twentieth century
and while other technologies of its era have either been upgraded or replaced by
newer technologies film has survived relatively unchanged and even more
impressively while more and more movies are being produced with digital cameras
film is still here and for the time being a viable alternative to the best
digital cameras we have available today but film is going away
don't be sad though digital is a worthy successor and it may very well go on to
build a legacy as lasting his film but while the tools may soon be going
digital
the people who use them will still be filmmakers