What HD media format was used to record 90's footage in THE LAST DANCE?

[digicube]

It's on Netflix. Some of the 90s footage are in HD. Was it 35mm film? I can't think of any HD magnetic video format in the late 90s except for DVHS. The HD scenes are very grainy, I didn't know 35mm was that grainy unless maybe because of low light.

[october262]

shows here 16:9 HD - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8420184/technical?ref_=tt_dt_spec

[lingyi]

16:9 is just an aspect ratio. The original could be from any source, cropped/masked to 16:9.

[Cornucopia]

@digicube, other hd video formats available by the late 90s: sony hdd-1000, panny d5-hd, sony hdcam, and the cinealta in 99 (phantom menace). Perhaps others.
The varicam followed in 2000/2001. Many others after.

Scott

[sophisticles]

It's on Netflix. Some of the 90s footage are in HD. Was it 35mm film? I can't think of any HD magnetic video format in the late 90s except for DVHS. The HD scenes are very grainy, I didn't know 35mm was that grainy unless maybe because of low light.

If only someone had invented google:

https://www.vulture.com/2020/04/the-last-dance-archival-footage-bulls-michael-jordan-docuseries.html

By the end of the season, NBAE had shot 500 hours of footage on some 3,200 reels of 16-millimeter film.

[digicube]

Thanks sophisticles. 16mm scanned at 4K looks very good even though it's grainy. Good thing they didn't try to remove it and lose details.

I'm surprised NBA thinks 16mm is expensive. Some family use it for home movies back in the 50s-70s. They could have afforded 35mm I assume.

[lingyi]

It probably not the expense, but the size of the required camera. 16MM movie cameras can be handheld. I've never seen a 35MM movie camera that wasn't mounted on a tripod. Just the film canister is huge.

[smrpix]

It probably not the expense, but the size of the required camera. 16MM movie cameras can be handheld. I've never seen a 35MM movie camera that wasn't mounted on a tripod. Just the film canister is huge.

Arriflex and Moviecam, to name two, had excellent hand-held 35mm cameras at the time. But 35mm was heavy and expensive compared to 16mm -- especially for material that was "only" going to be used for TV. Ask Dr. Who!

Based on the pictures in the article sophisticles linked to, it looks like the film may have been shot super-16 which allows for a larger, widescreen image on the negative as there are only perfs on one side of the film. It also looks like the primary camera(s) were Aatons, which were very lovely to hold and use -- and got very steady images.

[digicube]

How much film do portable 16mm cameras hold? 100ft? At 24fps, it's less than 5 mins of footage? I know 8mm camera typically hold only 50ft in a cartridge.

[Cornucopia]

Depends on the size of the reel. Likely somewhere between 200-500 feet (~5-14 min.). Size of the reel depends on the magazine capacity of the model of the cam.


Scott

[smrpix]

How much film do portable 16mm cameras hold? 100ft? At 24fps, it's less than 5 mins of footage? I know 8mm camera typically hold only 50ft in a cartridge.

The most common size for 16mm documentary/news cameras was 400 feet. You thought of it as 10 minutes but it was really closer to 11. The film came mounted not on a reel but on a core which would be loaded into the magazine in total darkness, usually in a changing bag. Other common lengths were 100' on daylight spools which had dark flanges and as the name implies could be loaded in the light. 1000', core mounted, was available, but rarer in the wild.