1920s

Why the 1920s look like this

The 1920s are when home movies became a hobby people could afford. Two narrow gauges made it possible. In 1922 a French company launched 9.5 mm film for the home, with a single perforation in the middle, between the frames, so almost the whole width carried picture. In 1923 an American company launched 16 mm. Both used a safety base that would not catch fire, and both used reversal film: the strip that ran through the camera came back from the laboratory as a positive, ready to project, with no separate negative and no print to pay for. The price of developing was often included when you bought the film.

The first amateur cine cameras were cranked by hand; spring motors soon took over. Either way they ran at about sixteen frames a second, the standard for silent amateur film, which kept a 100-foot reel going for around four minutes. The lenses were small and slow, so people filmed outdoors, in daylight, and the pictures are soft at the edges with a fine grain that sat on everything. 9.5 mm frames were a little smaller than 16 mm ones, so they were softer and grainier when projected large. Most amateur stock was still orthochromatic, blind to red. Panchromatic film, which saw the whole spectrum and rendered skin and skies more naturally, spread through Hollywood in the second half of the decade.

Color reached the home late in the decade. A 16 mm process of 1928 embossed the film with tiny vertical lenses and put a striped color filter over the camera lens; projected through a matching filter, the black-and-white film showed soft, muted color. In the cinema, a two-color subtractive process printed a pair of dyes, red-orange and blue-green, onto the film. It gave rosy skin and turquoise skies but could not make a true blue or purple.

Professional film moved faster, too. Silent features crept from about sixteen frames a second towards twenty-four, and when synchronized sound arrived, with The Jazz Singer in 1927, 24 fps became the fixed standard. Newsreels went over to panchromatic stock and sharper lenses.

The snapshot was now a habit. Folding cameras and vest-pocket cameras filled black-paged albums with small, warm-black contact prints edged in white. From 1925 a 35 mm miniature camera put cine film into a still camera and made enlarging normal. That same year an automatic photo booth opened on Broadway and made a strip of poses for a quarter. Studios lit stars with soft, glowing light for glamour portraits. Modernist photographers went the other way, towards hard contrast and sharp geometry. In 1929 a twin-lens reflex brought a square roll-film negative and a waist-level finder.

What the camera rebuilds

The 1920s base is 16 mm home cine: orthochromatic black and white at a 16 fps cadence, held inside the 24 fps file, with grain, a soft vignette, light flicker and a gentle handheld sway. It is noticeably steadier than the 1910s. 9.5 mm Home Cine is grainier and softer. 16mm Travel Film and Handheld Cine Camera shake more. Panchromatic 16mm shows red as a natural grey.

Lenticular Colour 16mm gives muted color with faint vertical stripes from the lenticules. Two-Strip Colour Process rebuilds blue from red and green, so skin goes pink and blue never quite arrives. It and Late Silent 35mm run at the full 24 fps, with little flicker or weave. Tinted Home Film dyes the highlights a soft amber.

In STILL, the base is a 7:5 folding-camera print with a white border in warm black. You also get a 3:2 miniature enlargement with more grain, a photo booth strip that repeats your shot four times in sepia, a glamour portrait with halation and shallow focus, a borderless modernist print with hard contrast, the twin-lens square with shallow focus, a late starch-grain plate, a hand-colored print and Faded Jazz Age Album.

With SOUND on PERIOD, your audio passes through a late acoustic or early electrical recording: about 150 to 4,500 Hz, a softer resonance, shellac crackle and hiss, and less wow than before. Electrical recording with microphones replaced the horn from 1925, and the band is wider. Home cine cameras still had no sound.

Shooting tips

• Film the family waving. 1920s home movies are full of people looking into the lens and waving. Use 16 mm Home Cine at DEGREE 7, in daylight, and ask them to do exactly that.
• Grainier for a smaller gauge. 9.5 mm Home Cine at DEGREE 9 gives the soft, busy grain of a small frame projected big. It suits a garden or a beach.
• Look for the stripes. Lenticular Colour 16mm works best with strong, simple colors in full sun. Keep DEGREE low, 4 or 5, if you want the color to read more than the grain.
• Squeeze into the booth. Photo Booth Strip crops close. Shoot a head and shoulders against a plain wall, with the FLASH on.
• Glamour by the window. Art Deco Glamour Portrait glows in the highlights. Put your sitter's face in soft side light and keep the background dark.

Go on to the 1930s for 8 mm film and the first saturated color for amateurs.