Standard 8mm

I have had to explain this to lots of people, even people I would have expected to know more about this than me. (Especially them, because I seek them out to ask questions, and then end up explaining it to them.) But here goes:

Here are some common low-budget film formats. I will be focusing on Standard 8mm, which is different from Super 8mm.

8mm stock is 16mm wide, but has twice as many sprocket holes.

When filming, an 8mm camera records on one half of the film. When you reach the end of the roll, you turn it around backwards and run it the other way. This results in something like this:

After you develop the film, you can then split the film down the middle.

You could also run un-split 8mm film through a 16mm projector.

What interests me about this is that you can theoretically convert any silent 16mm stock into 8mm stock, if you have a method of punching the sprocket holes.