Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (1930-1949)

JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF MOTION PICTURE ENGINEERS Vol 47 July, 1946 No. 1 REPORT OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON 16-MM FILM SPLICES* Introduction. — A splice is a little thing; and being little, it has been given but little attention. If we are to take heed of the advice of our Scotch friends, we must remember that "many a mickle makes a muckle — " and pay more attention to our splices. Before World War II, little was published upon the subject of 16-mm splices. They were discussed in the Standards Committee of our Society, but the subject matter was then, as now, considered rather dull and of interest to only a very small group that was faced with splicing problems and was forced through circumstances to do something about them. But the volume of 16 mm has grown from a mere trickle of release prints to an imposing volume of some 400 million linear feet more or less, manufactured in the last year. This volume is now too large to be ignored ; the problem of splicing 16 mm is now going to affect too many people with many diverse interests. Definition. — What is a splice, and how does a splice come into being? John Andreas, that patient man who spent most of his odd moments during 2 years compiling a "Glossary of Terms Dealing with the Motion Picture Art"1 denned a splice as "Any type of cement or mechanical fastening by which two separate lengths of film are united end-to-end so as to function as a .single piece of film when passing through a camera, film processing machine, or projector." The Glossary of Technical Terms2 did not define a splice but did define splicing as "Joining the ends of film by cementing." Although Subcommittee C of Z52, the War Committee on Photography and Cinematography of the American Standards Association did not write a definition of a splice for the War Standard "Nomenclature for Motion Picture Film Used in Studios and Processing Labora *Presented May 10. 1946, at the Technical Conference in New York.