Obviously, the best format for music is the cassette tape, the best for film and television is video and the best format for books is illuminated manuscripts…or rather these were the dominant formats when I was growing up. So I attach particular value to them. In truth, all formats have strengths and weaknesses. When Quentin Tarantino made The Hateful Eight the film was projected in 70mm Ultra Panavision, a film stock used decades ago to help give the film the right look, the grand sweeping look of an old western. Different formats can be evocative, with many being nostalgic for the “cigarette burns” and minor imperfections of film over the more perfect digital. When a TV show or film does a flashback often they will copy the format style of the appropriate era and it works.
Cinerama
Competition from television drove a lot of innovation in formats and Cinerama is a classic example. Briefly, Cinerama involved three cameras set up as one unit to film a scene, when shown in cinemas you needed three carefully positioned projectors. The screen was curved allowing a panoramic picture, taking up most of the audience’s field of version. Not only did this add to the immersion of the audience but for something like a Western with long shots of never-ending spectacular nature it added a lot to the experience. Filming in Cinerama was expensive, you needed three times as many cameras, if the film from one camera was damaged then the complete footage from all three would be useless and while it could look spectacular you needed to be in the right place in the audience, and this by no means meant everyone in the cinema. Due to the high costs, Cinerama was phased out for cheaper techniques – such as the Ultra Panavision so beloved by Tarantino.
VistaVision
VistaVision was Paramount’s attempt at showing people the value of cinema. This was a higher quality 35mm print that was very good for widescreen. Even when more traditional film stocks gained in quality some persisted in using VistaVision, famously for special effects scenes Star Wars used it. In fact VistaVision was still used in some shots for The Dark Knight, but that is just the sort of thing you’d expect from Christopher Nolan. Such cinematic classics as White Christmas and Vertigo (Hitchcock used it a lot) were filmed using VistaVision. Another benefit to this format over some of its contemporaries was that it didn’t need the cinema to sacrifice seats to make space for it, it needed less specialist equipment to show and as always, making money was of paramount importance.
3D
Like an 80s horror villain 3D is the format that will not stay dead. The technology has been available since the early days of cinema but has come and gone in crazes – most famously in the 1950s (once again, brought out to defeat television). Most recently the 2000s saw a huge boom in 3D films – with one of the early adopters oddly enough being the Spy Kids franchise. These booms went through artistic peaks and troughs with highlights of films like Gravity and Hugo, which tried to do something with 3D and not just have something occasionally thrown at the camera. Avatar is one of the most financially successful films of all time with James Cameron putting huge amounts of time and effort into making it look amazing. And while at one point there was talk that 3D was going to be the future of filmmaking it has once again receded into obscurity.
Super 8
To filmmakers of a certain age Super 8 film is of incredible importance. It was a home movie film stock but due to its numerous advantages became a phenomenon of DIY filmmaking (this being memorably highlighted in the film Super 8, about kids making their own zombie movie and accidentally getting caught up in much bigger events). Super 8 was relatively cheap and one of the fastest loading recording systems ever made, it was incredibly simple and did not require the user to thread the film or even touch the actual film.
Digital
Actual tangible celluloid film is now a rare thing in filmmaking, instead, it is digital. There are many detractors of digital filmmaking and there are valid points to be made but there are huge advantages. It is cheaper, the film costs money and every take costs more. For editing purposes film is a nightmare, you literally cut it, and a cut is permanent. Distribution and copying are immensely easier, as is storage (with no Inglorious Basterds infernos). There is much that can be done digitally, it is flexible and easy to manipulate. Of course, many of these benefits are even more important for small filmmakers. Super 8 film was cheap and easy to use and led to an explosion in home filmmaking; Thomas Edison once said he would make electricity so cheap only the rich would burn candles and we have made digital filming so easy we have TikTok.
Also Read: Iconic Monsters In Film & Television
