Support film are usually:

Travelogue

Usually running from 8 minutes upwards, most of the studios at one time made them. Looking back some of them were quite quaint.

 

Look At Life

From the Rank Organization, these films were 8 to 10 minutes long and looked at almost every subject you could think of. As Rank owned the Odeon chain of cinemas the Look At Life's were shown mainly at their cinemas, although the smaller independents showed them as well.

 

Pathe Pictorial

From Pathe Pictorial later owned by the EMI group. These film were similar to Rank's Look At Life. shown mainly at the ABC chain of cinemas, and the smaller independents.

 

Movietone

Very similar to the above two, they also had sports reviews. 

 

Serials

As the name implies serials were shown weekly. Made by the studios most were black and white in 12 to 15 thrill packed chapters each with a cliff hanger ending. Production ceased in the late 50's. A few of the titles were "The Adventures Of Captain Marvel", "Radar Men From The Moon", "Pirates Treasure". All three have been released on Super 8mm over the years, although none are currently available new, so it's a look at the second-hand lists.

 

Cartoons.

Animated escapades from Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia Pictures, and others. Usually 8 minutes or so, these packed way-out antics, violence, laughs, you name it they did it. The violence was way over the top and so unreal. The PC mob got hold of it and tried to get them banned in the 70's 80's & 90's. who in their right mind can think a safe dropping on a character usually Tom, W E Coyote, or Yosemite Sam types, squashing them flat is real. Most characters are or have been available on 8mm. "Tom & Jerry" from MGM, "Bugs Bunny", "Yosemite Sam", "Elmer Fudd", from Warner's Merry Melodies.

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You can obtain any of the above type of films on most film gauges. A large number of distributors released films over the years on both 8mm gauges and 16mm for outright sale. 35mm films are usually ex cinema prints.

Another type of short film that was mainly released on Super 8mm, but a couple of companies did release on 16mm, were the digest film. This was a feature film from the major studios edited down to about 18 minutes. These are also reviewed in this section. No new digest are currently available.

This page was last updated 02 Dec 2002

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