Everything You Never Knew You Wanted to Know About Film

Take a look at a really interesting breakdown of film stock and how moving images are captured and processed.

The new web series What Is… tackles the history of film. Not the history of movies, but of the actual film stock used to capture movies. From the perforations along the side of the strip, to the individual frames themselves, take a closer look at the individual parts of film stock via TheWhatIsGuy.

The video does a great job at showing the intricate details in a simplistic way. You’ll see how film with an audio strip will have either a magnetic or optical waveform.

You’ll also get a really neat breakdown of frames and the different sizes of frames in the various film formats. Super-interesting stuff.

What Is… also tackled film negatives in a separate bonus video. You’ll get a breakdown of color theory, and how it’s applied to creating color film.

Did you find this in-depth look at the history of film interesting? Share your thoughts in the comments below.