The length of old cine film was (and still is) measured in feet. Hence the commonly used term “footage” still used today to describe recorded video. The old super 8 film cameras would have been loaded with a small cartridge that shot 50 feet of film. This allowed for approximately 3.5 minutes of recording time. Once completed, the cartridges were sent to Kodak (or similar) to be processed. You would then receive back your 50 foot film spool ready to play on your movie projector. Home enthusiasts would then ‘splice’ together these 50 foot reels and load them onto bigger reels to make longer running movies. The most common sizes were 13cm diameter (200 feet) and 15cm diameter (400 feet) reel sizes. Sometimes the reels were not totally full. You can see how much footage you have by reading the measuring gauge on the side of plastic reel itself.
