A list of standard film formats, be it film or digital. Note that this talks about motion picture film, not still film.
8mm/Super 8
The most common format for home movies up until videotape and digital video came along. 8mm film was developed by Kodak in 1932 as a less expensive alternative to 16mm during The Great Depression. It was still loaded conventionally like a 16mm camera, on a small spool.Super 8 came along in 1965 and was far easier to use. A Super 8 cartridge could be easily inserted into a camera and shot on. It could also accommodate a magnetic sound track, something standard 8mm was not designed for.
Although it was designed for home movies, some lower budget TV stations used it for news reports.
9.5mm
A format invented by Pathé in 1922 for amateur home use. The sprocket holes are distinctively in the middle and it had a unique feature where a notch disengages the sprocket for title cards, meaning 1 frame could be shown on screen for 10 seconds, saving plenty of film.It was the primary amateur format in Europe until the end of World War II, when 8mm came to Europe and replaced it. There are still some groups devoted to this format such as Group 9.5
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16mm
16mm was the first amateur film format, developed by Kodak in 1923. The cameras were smaller than regular 35mm cameras and the standard spools could be loaded without the need for a darkroom.Early 16mm reels had two perforations, but the right side was removed to accommodate an optical soundtrack.
TV stations extensively used 16mm in the days before portable videotape cameras as they were lightweight, hence the Video Inside, Film Outside trope. An early user was David Attenborough, who found 35mm cameras bulky and requested he use a 16mm camera for filming Zoo Quest. The BBC agreed, on one condition: it had to be filmed in colour, as colour film picked up more detail. In the 2010s, the colour negatives were discovered and the show was broadcast for the first time in colour.
Most pre-digital indie films were on this format, such as Clerks. 16mm was also commonly used in TV anime, though 35mm was sometimes brought out on rare occasions, most commonly for opening and ending sequences (since the better picture quality reduced the effects of generation loss when editing in credits for each episode).
17.5mm
A format that could be made by splitting 35mm film in half. It was popular until 16mm and 8mm were released, but was used during World War II to more economically use 35mm film.28mm
The first film format from Pathé, introduced in 1912. The unusual gauge was so 35mm films (which were on extremely flammable nitrate film until the 1950s) could not be economically split.35mm
The most common analog format for studio films and western TV animation, 35mm was introduced in 1892 and is the oldest standard film format. It is very versatile, as it has accommodated optical sound without removing one of the perforations, supported many widescreen formats and even had several digital sound formats.Although most 35mm widescreen formats are designed to fit inside the area of a 4-perf 35mm film cell or smaller, Paramount made the VistaVision format. VistaVision pulled 35mm film horizontally with 8 perforations per frame (the same area as 35mm still cameras). The process is designed to end up as a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, though it became obsolete when 35mm film stock with finer grain was produced.
Although digital has been mostly phased out as a capture format by the 2010s, some filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Christopher Nolan still exclusively shoot on film. Euphoria made headlines in 2022 when cinematographer Marcell Rév chose to shoot the show's second season on 35mm Kodak Ektachrome film instead of digital video, citing a desire to move away from season 1's bright, neon aesthetic in favor of approximating the look of old Polaroid photos.
As a screening format for theaters, all major film studios ceased producing 35mm prints in favor of Digital Cinema Packages (DCPs) by 2014.
65mm/70mm
70mm is a large-scale format that produces a clear and high definition image, as it's twice the size of 35mm. 65mm refers to the camera negative; the extra width is provided by the magnetic soundtrack.70mm was used on large-scale epics in the 1950s and 1960s like Lawrence of Arabia and several 35mm movies were blown up to 70mm, mostly for the 6-track magnetic soundtrack. Once digital sound came to 35mm, this method died out, but there are some blowups even in the digital age, such as Joker (2019), only this time using a Datasat digital soundtrack.
A variant on 70mm is IMAX, in which the film is mounted horizontally instead of vertically. It also uses 3 times the exposure area (15 perforations long instead of the normal 5), giving an even clearer image. Although this variant is normally reserved for 45 minute documentaries and art films, Christopher Nolan makes major motion pictures with it. The format is designed for massive theater screens that can be as tall as 75 feet. It wasn't until The New '20s that digital cinematography and animation would attempt to fill those same screens with films like Dune (2021) and Lightyear.
Digital
Digital cinema has been the most common method for both the capture and screening of films since the early 2010s. Early adopters of this format were George Lucas, who filmed Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith exclusively on digital video, and Robert Rodriguez, whose low-budget, one-man crew style of filmmaking meant film was difficult to use, making digital a lifesaver for him. Its popularity grew when Avatar came out, as its revolutionary 3D technology meant many cinemas had to ditch their old 35mm projectors in order to screen it. A major turning point came in 2010 when major camera developers Arri and Panavision announced they would no longer manufacture film cameras and move all of their R&D to digital cameras. From 2010 to 2014, the percentage of major studio films shot on digital climbed from under 30% to over 80%.Digital video is also cheaper to shoot on than film stock. Digital files have a much shorter turnaround than film and are usually shipped to cinemas in hard drives or downloaded over the internet, meaning they save hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to making film prints. It also presents a clean and consistent picture every time it is screened, versus a film print which degrades slightly with each screening, and it can accommodate advanced surround sound formats like Dolby Atmos. Event cinema, like opera and ballet, use satellite transmission for their events.
Attack of the Clones was one of the first major films to screen digitally when it was released in 2002; by the mid-2010s virtually all new films were screened digitally. Some filmmakers have criticised the format, with Quentin Tarantino saying it's "television in public". He even stated he may retire after his tenth film because most cinemas don't screen film prints anymore.
