Super 8 Processing: the Hollywood treatment

We have partnered with the Kodak Film Lab at Pinewood Studios to bring you simple and high quality Super 8 movie film processing!

This means that your home movies will get the full Hollywood treatment, handled by the exact same team who have worked on movie and TV productions including: Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient express, Old Oak (Ken Loach), Doc Martin, Bird (Palm d'or Nominee 2024 - Cannes), September Says (Certain Regard Nominee Cannes 2024) and many more.

Where the magic happens 🪄

How does it work?

Super 8 film processing can look complicated - when you speak directly to the pros they will give you countless options for colour balancing, file format, pushing or pulling, resolution, and many more - but fundamentally the basics are the same as with still photography. We develop the film, we scan it, and we send it back for immediate enjoyment on your phone or laptop.

And we've worked with the Kodak Lab to make life as easy as possible for you.  We have agreed a clear set of choices that give you different options for your film - depending on how you want it to look and how big you need the output! - but without becoming overwhelming.

Put simply you just need to decide two things:

1. Do you want it to be scanned as 'full frame' or 'overscan'?

A full-frame scan gives you the full image at the native Super 8 resolution of 4:3 without anything around the edge to distract from your movie.

Full Frame

An overscan gives you the full image PLUS the sprocket on the side and a bit of each frame before/after at the top/bottom. It is widescreen resolution of 16:9 and has the authentic Super 8 look! Personally I love how Super 8 looks in this way: with the physical quirks and artefacts adding to the appeal.

Overscan

2. How large do you need the file?

 We've cut the multitude of possibilities here down to the three 'best-sellers':

Premium quality is going to be 'good enough' for 99% of non-professional cases, and you can always have it rescanned at a later date if a higher resolution is needed in the future.

What equipment do you use?

The Pinewood Kodak Film Lab is a professional movie lab - so they have all the shiny toys 😅

Your Super 8 movie film will be processed in their industrial tanks, with fresh chemistry in a climate-controlled environment.

It will then be scanned by a ScanStation65, individually calibrated for frames and colours before each film.

The ScanStation in action with 16mm

The scanned files are individually reviewed and colour-balanced. They will be output in the Kodak-official 'neutral' colour balance.

This means that you will get videos back that are exactly how Kodak designed the emulsion to look. Whether you then choose to increase the saturation, convert to monochrome, cut into smaller clips, or express yourself creatively in any other way is entirely up to you! And you'll know that you're working from the best possible base file.

How do I order?

You can place your Super 8 film processing just like any other lab service. Head to the lab, scroll down to Super 8, and you'll see the same choices as above!

You can order other format development at the same time - along with any other film from our shop - and send it into our lab with a FREE tracked shipping label as normal.

Please note that at this stage we are only offering colour film processing: we can NOT process Black and White (Tri-X) or slide (Ektachrome) for you.

We are expecting turnaround times to be ~2 weeks at the beginning, while we check and tweak the full logistics chain - and you'll get the finished video file sent to the email address you used to place the order.

So many gadgets!

Where do I buy Super 8 film?

You can buy it directly from us! We have the best-selling Kodak 500T for atmospheric indoor shoots, Kodak 50D for outdoor sun and summer photography, and Kodak 200T for brighter artificially-lit scenes.

Enjoy and Happy Shooting!