What is Super35 (4-perf Super35)?

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Created on Monday, 10 September 2007 05:58
Last Updated on Friday, 14 December 2012 20:15
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Konvas with turret
super35 is also called Full Frame and Silent Aperture
Shooting to 4-perf Super35, then cropping the image and "blowing up" to Scope has become much more popular over the years, especially with the advent of Digital Intermediates. It is suggested to use as large a negative as possible, so Super-35, which has no sound strip and thusly is 24.892mm wide by 18.669mm tall, is preferred over Standard 35 (productions do, from time to time, choose to switch to Anamorphic Widescreen in hind-sight, after having shot the footage in Standard 35, but this is not the recommended way).

When the image is shot in Super35 and cropped for anamorphic projection, the area on the negative used is approximately 10mm x 24mm - this creates a 2.40:1 aspect ratio (projected it will be 2.35:1).

Occasionally Super35 is called Full Frame or Silent Aperture.

The positive reasons for using Super-35 4-perf are: Standard, nonanamorphic lenses are much less expensive, much more common, often much faster, and because they don't have as much glass, usually weigh less. They are also not as big, are less cumbersome, and quite often optically superior to anamorphic lenses. Thusly, when going with a Digital Intermediate, the quality of the image is considered equivalent and sometimes even better than footage shot with anamorphic lenses.

The problems with 4-perf Super35 going to Anamorphic Widescreen for projection are: Digital Intermediates are currently very expensive. A less expensive alternative is to use an optical printer, but the image quality suffers significantly more. Cropping also proves excessively wasteful, especially when barely more than 1/2 of a given roll of raw film stock shot on a 4-perf setting will actually be used in post-production. Another problem is that some cameras may not be easy to convert to Super 35, and may cause some form of vignetting to the image.