Super 35

Super 35 is a motion picture film format that uses exactly the same 35 mm film stock as standard 35mm, but puts a larger image frame on that stock.

Super 35 became popular in the mid 1990s. It is often associated with director James Cameron who has made frequent and effective use of the format.

Super 35 is a production format. Theatres do not receive or project Super 35 prints. Rather, movies are shot in a Super 35 format but are then processed optically into one of the standard formats to make release prints.

The Super 35 image size is .980" x .735", compared to the standard Academy 35 mm size of .864" x .630" and thus provides 32% more image area than standard 35. Ironically, Super 35 is simply the original frame size that was used in 35mm silent films. That is, it is a return to the way the film stock was used before the frame size was shrunk to allow room for a soundtrack.

Super 35 competes with the use of standard 35mm film with an anamorphic lens. st savings and flexibility.

Super 35 uses standard "spherical" camera lenses, providing some cost savings and flexibility. The chief advantage of Super 35 is adaptability to different release formats. Super 35 negativse can be used to produce high-quality releases in any of several currently popular formats: standard theatre 1:2.35 anamorphic film, 16:9 video, or pan-and-scan 4:3 video.

Compared to anamorphic 35, there is some loss in quality because part of the Super 35 image is thrown away when printing to a 1:2.35 format, but this is partially offset by using a larger film area to begin with. Theoretically, films produced in Super 35 should have slightly lower technical quality than films produced directly in the anamorphic format. Films produced in Super 35 include Terminator 2, Top Gun, and Titanic. Films like these demonstrate that in skilled hands excellent quality can be achieved and that any loss in quality is not appreciable to the untrained eye.