RUNE ERICSON

Career: Started as lab technician. Became c.asst. Shot doc's for CBS-tv and NBC-tv in Africa. Was the founder of the Föreningen Sveriges Filmfotografer/Swedish Society of Cinematographers [fsf] in November 1961. Invented the Super 16 system as a feature film format. The system was called 'RuneScope'.

Awards: As doph: Guldbagge 'Special Jury Award/Juryns specialbagge' [1984]; fsf Årets Filmbana/Golden Aperture Plate Award [1987] for 'Amorosa'; 'Oscar' AA 'Award of Commendation' [special award plaque] [2001] for his pioneering development and 30 years of dedication to the Super 16mm format for motion pictures.

As dir: Berlin IFF 'Golden Bear Award' nom [1964] for 'Olle Olsson - Hagalund'.

Lets go back 41 years to April 1966. I was 42 years old and had been working in the film business for 24 of them.

In the spring of 1966, [director and former actress] Mai Zetterling contacted me and asked if I'd like to make a film with her. She told me that the project involved traveling around the world for six months with a very small crew. But most of the filming would be done in Iceland. We would have to do a lot of the work with a handhold camera, Mai told me. [Remember, the lightest, noiseless 35mm camera at the time was the ARRI 2C in a 120 blimp, which weighed 20 kilos.] "No problem," I said to Mai, "we can shoot handhold with a regular ARRI 2C, but you'll have to dub all of the dialogue." "No. No. No," said Mai, "I hate doing that."

So, of course, we thought that shooting in 16mm might be a way to do it. There were two noiseless 16mm cameras we could use for our film: the ARRI 16BL and the Éclair NPR.

Mai and I went to Iceland to check out locations. Just for testing, I brought a little spring-loaded Kodak Cine Special camera and some reels of Kodak Ektachrome Commercial. Back in Sweden, the lab made a blow-up to a 35mm internegative 1:1.66 wide screen by cropping the original Ektachrome. We looked at the 35mm print in the screening room and agreed that the quality was quite acceptable - particularly for the type of film we were planning to make.

But as I sat there in that screening room in the spring of 1966, an idea popped into my head. Something just went click. And - in a fragment of a second - Super 16 was born. A very simple idea!

A simple idea - yes! But the rest of the Super 16 story became rather complicated. But first, Mai Zetterling's film project was cancelled by the producer.

The idea of Super 16 was still firmly fixed in my mind. The first thing I did was to take a piece of a 16mm copy with sound track. I had a piece of paper, a pen, a slide caliper and a calculator. And I discovered that if I left 1mm of the side for supporting the film in the camera as well as for the lab, the widescreen area 1:1.66 was 40% larger than the cropped standard 16mm and with widescreen 1:1.85, it was 46%. Theoretically, I understood that the results on a screen ought to be good compared to a cropped standard 16mm. But how to prove it?

First, I called Kodak's man in Stockholm, Östen Söderlund, and asked him if it was possible to get single-perforation 16mm camera film. It was, he said, on special order.

But how to actually go about doing the tests? Before I went any further, I had to prove to myself that I was right. And what was the easiest way to do that? I didn't have a Super 16 camera. And the lab didn't have a Super 16 aperture plate for the Acme Optical printer.

So I took a 35mm ARRI 2C camera, removed the aperture plate and glued in a piece of black paper with the Super 16 format cut out in the center. I removed the ground glass and marked the Super 16 format with a pen. In the center of that, I marked the standard 16mm cropped to 1:1.66.

I filmed around ten shots, wide angles, mediums and close ups. I did the same scenes framed in exactly the same way with the cropped standard 16mm format. I used Eastman Color film.

Now, for the first time, we could blow up "Super 16" using the 35mm optical printer. We made a direct blow-up to a 35mm copy. Looking at the result on a big screen was wonderful to me, of course. The difference in quality was enormous. The test proved that Super 16 just might be the format of the future. You can laugh, but the first Super 16 camera ever was a converted 35mm ARRI 2C.

I'm glad to say that the Filmteknik lab, under the management of John Egermark, helped me considerably. Without the support of Filmteknik, I don't think Super 16 would ever have been born.

I showed the test to colleagues at the Swedish Society of Cinematographers and they were all impressed. I also spoke with some interested producers. But nothing really happened, though I did receive economic support for some more experiments from Lars Svanberg at the Swedish Film Institute.

We started trying to convert an ARRI 16BL, but the construction of the mirror shutter and the size of the ground glass made the conversion difficult and expensive. After examining the Éclair NPR, we came to the conclusion that it just might be possible to make a Super 16 adaptation with this camera. By we, I mean Carl Hellstrand and myself. In my opinion, Carl was the best camera technician in Sweden.

That was the situation around 1966-67. Over the next few years, I filmed as usual with 35mm,and the Super 16 idea was more or less asleep.

But in early 1969, a director called Vilgot Sjöman contacted me. He said, he'd heard about my idea for the "RuneScope" [That's what my colleagues had dubbed Super 16 in the early days, after my first name]. I showed him my early experiment and he told me that he wanted to do a semi-documentary film where around half the story took place aboard an old 50-60 foot boat. We'd have to spend around 20 days filming below decks in narrow, cramped areas. And many of the dialog scenes were to take place in the cab of a big truck as it was driving along. "I think 'RuneScope' is perfect," Vilgot said, "because my film can't be done with a 20-kilo blimped 35mm camera." [Remember, The ARRI 35BL hadn't been built at that time.]

Vilgot and I went to Sandrew Film and spoke with the producer Göran Lindgren. We described the Super 16 idea. Lindgren turned at me and said: "Rune, I know you as a very serious and skilled cameraman. Do you really believe in this?" What should I answer? "Yes, of course I do." Then he turned to Vilgot with the same question, and Vilgot answered, "Yes, of course". "OK," he said, "if you two really believe in this, then let's do it!"

Now the throttle was on full speed. We ordered an Éclair NPR. We bought a Siemens double-band projector to be converted. A 16mm Steenbeck table moved into our workshop. Filmteknik started to convert the processing machine and all the rollers, etc, which would be in contact with the larger image area.

I had an optics factory make a new ground glass for the viewing system. In addition, Carl Hellstrand partially removed surfaces from wheels and other places in the magazines and camera body where the sound-track side of single-perf 16mm film would ordinarily ride. These were milled down to the point where there was only one millimeter of surface left.

[Left] With the lens removed from the Éclair NPR, the extended 16mm frame aperture plate adaptation can be clearly seen. Also obvious is the lens mount modification made to shift the optical axis of the lens one millimeter to the side, so that the lens will cover the enlarged frame without vignetting.

[Right] A view inside the camera showing the Super 16 frame modification of the aperture plate and its position in relation to the film channel.

Of course, we had a certain amount of trouble with scratches at first , but we worked on this problem and managed to correct it. [During the filming of Vilgot Sjöman's picture we shot 50,000 feet of film, and we had to reshoot only three scenes due to scratches. I think that wasn't so bad.]

Then there was the matter of lenses. Most standard 16mm lenses will not cover the enlarged field of the Super 16 frame. I found Canon lenses made for television cameras - 13,5mm, 25mm, and 50mm - that were surprisingly good. Plus a Kineoptik 9mm and Schneider 18mm.

In the fall of 1969, the whole chain was ready to be tested - camera, processing, contact printing, sound syncing, screening the 16mm rushes, editing, negative cutting, blow-up to 35mm Color Reversal Intermediate Negative, and release print.

At last, all of us who had been involved for six months, more or less, brought our baby to a big movie theater in downtown Stockholm. I think the result was better than we had expected. In any case, the quality was good enough for the semi-documentary feature we were planning.

The film, called 'Lyckliga skitar/Blushing Charlie', was shot between February and April 1970 - a dark season in Sweden, so I had to use a fast film. Eastman Color Negative 7254 was really my only choice. I remember being very worried during the entire shooting period. Only one Super 16 camera existed in the whole world - what if something would happen to it! Accidents, dropping it on the floor, getting it stolen from the car, mechanical breakdowns, the list goes on. We were lucky though - nothing bad happened.

American Cinematographer Magazine has been my main source of information through the course of my carrier as a cinematographer. It was very natural for me to contact the editor Herb Lightman about our Super 16 experience. The story was published in the June 1970 issue of American Cinematographer. Of course, reactions were mixed. Initially, most of the negative ones came from conservative film people - "stupid idea", "better to go 35mm for a feature", and so on. Most of the big labs were rather negative too. "Dangerous", "it will scratch", "why rebuild a lot of equipment", etc. ARRI declared that is was a stupid idea. OK - it took them almost 20 years, but in the end they admitted that Super 16 was a nice idea.

A letter came from Paris soon after the June 1970 issue was out. It was from Mr. Coma, the manager of Éclair. He was neither positive nor negative - just invited me to visit him. He pointed out that I had done things to his camera. Honestly, I was quite nervous when I went to him. But I had no reason to be afraid. He shook my hand and patted my shoulder with a friendly smile and said: "Well done! I like your idea." He showed me around in the factory, and we went to a counter where a young man with enormous black hair was sitting. He was Jean-Pierre Beauviala, an electronics engineer working on the design of the first crystal-controlled motor for the NPR. Mr. Coma introduced us and asked him to take me to lunch.

In the restaurant, the table was covered with plain white paper, very common back then in Paris. I understood immediately that Jean-Pierre really liked my idea. Not only liked it. He was extremely enthusiastic. His English was as bad as mine, but with so much uniting us, we had no problems to communicate. He had a pen and started to make drawings on the table paper. Before long, there were aperture plates and pressure plates. There was a NPR camera completely redesigned. You could hardly recognize the old NPR. Two years later, I realized that these were the first sketchy drawings of the AATON camera.

Jean-Pierre and I met again at the Photokina in Cologne, in 1972. He was sitting at a desk showing me the prototype of the Super 16 AATON camera. He said to me: "Now that you've made me build a Super 16 camera, it's your duty to sell it up there in Scandinavia." Well, why not, I thought. Selling a camera and shooting pictures - what a great combination!

With first AATON Super 16 camera [1976]

In early 1976, Jean-Pierre Beauviala delivered the first AATON camera to me from the serial production. I started a company called Rune Ericson Film AB. Suddenly I was a business man. But my life-long profession first and foremost, was that of a cinematographer. Fortunately, after a year I had hired two very skilled technicians, which meant that I could still shoot at least one feature a year.

Remember, when I pioneered Super 16 exactly 40 years ago, I had just one goal. It was not to make film production cheaper, but to make better semi-documentary feature films for cinema release.

Over 31 years after Super 16 was first introduced, I received an Oscar [Award of Commendation, 2001]. I couldn't have been more proud and happy: my struggle - and the years of work I put in - for Super 16 hadn't been in vain.

In 1986, I shot the first feature film ever in 35mm 3-perf with the first two Golden Panaflex cameras which were converted for me by Panavision. But that is another story.

[From article (2007) by Rune Ericson on the KODAK website. Published with Mr. Ericson's permission.]

1947 Mästerdetektiven Blomkvist/The Master Detective Bill Bergson [Rolf Husberg] b&w

1947 Det vänliga fjället [Harald Victorin] b&w; doc/11m; cph: Hilding Bladh

1949 Sommarens inläggningar - vinters delikatesser [Bo Löfberg] b&w; doc/18m

1950 Anderssonskans Kalle/Mrs. Andersson's Kalle [Rolf Husberg] b&w; addph (Winter scenes); ph: Curt Jonsson

1950 Södrans revy - Farväl till 40-talet [Sven Paddock & Arthur Spjuth] b&w; cph: Hilding Bladh, Göran Strinberg, a.o.

1950 Tini-Kling - Drömresan till Fjärran Östern [Lennart Ehrenborg] b&w; doc/88m; + co-ed/co-sound

1953 All jordens fröjd/All the World's Delights [Rolf Husberg] b&w; cph: Hilding Bladh

1954 En natt på Glimmingehus - En historia om kärlek och spöken [Torgny Wickman] b&w

1956 Den tappre soldaten Jönsson/The Brave Soldier Jönsson [Håkan Bergström] b&w; cph: Sven Nykvist

1957 Bakomfilm Sjutton år [Alf Kjellin] ?; 'behind-the-scenes' of 'Sjutton år'/?m

1958 Trelleborg porten mot kontinenten [Håkan Bergström] ?; comm doc/575mtrs

1959 Vänner på vägen [Torgny Wickman] c; short/475mtrs; cph: Tage Göransson

1960 Änglar, finns dom?/Do You Believe in Angels?/Love Mates [Lars-Magnus Lindgren] c

1964 Bröllopsbesvär/Wedding: Swedish Style/Swedish Wedding Night [Åke Falck] b&w

1964 Stimulantia [seg 'Dygdens belöning' dir by Tage Danielsson & Hans Alfredson & 'Negressen i skåpet' dir by Vilgot Sjöman]

1965 Minnesstund vid Anders Sandrews grav den 13 mars 1965 - 80 årsdagen efter födelsen [Rune Ericson] b&w;

1965 Här börjar äventyret - Harriet Andersson perukprov [Jörn Donner] hair screen-test with actress H. Andersson; the

1966 Mai Zetterling - Island/Prov M.Z. [Mai Zetterling] test filmed in Iceland, Spring 1966, for unrealized film

1968 En dåres dagbok [Jan Bergquist] ?; short/555mtrs; cph: Rolf Wertheimer

1968 Bokhandlaren som slutade bada/The Bookseller Who Gave Up Bathing [Jarl Kulle] c

1970 Du Sparbanken... [Stig Ossian Ericson] 16mm/c; doc/?m; cph: Göran Strindberg

1972 The Day the Clown Cried/Le jour ou le clown pleura [Jerry Lewis] c; unreleased

1972 Visions of Eight/Olympic Visions [seg #2 'The Strongest' dir by Mai Zetterling] c; doc/110m; 8 seg; chief ph cons:

1974 Kom till Casino! [Gösta Bernhard & Mille Schmidt] c; perf/91m; cph: Jörgen Persson & John Olsson; addph: Hanno Fuchs,

1976 Man måste ju leva... [Margareta Vinterheden] 16mm-35bu/c; cph: Odd Geir Sæther (started film) & Petter Davidson

1976 Bröderna Lejonhjärta/The Brothers Lionheart [Olle Hellbom] c; filming started in May, but was interrupted several

1977 Stortjuven [Ingegerd Hellner] c; cph (finished prod in 1977); ph: Tony Forsberg (started film in 1976)

1979 Charlotte Löwensköld/Charlotte Lionshield [Jackie Söderman] c; also 5-part tv-miniseries (1981)

1980 Barna från Blåsjöfjället/The Children from Blue Lake Mountain [Jonas Sima] s16-35bu/c

1983 Ronja Rövardotter/Ronja Robbersdaughter/Ronja, The Robber's Daughter [Tage Danielsson] c

1960 Sweden: Trouble in Paradise? [Willard Van Dyke] 2-part doc (1961) for CBS-tv series 'The Twentieth Century'

1944 Tre söner gick till flyget [Rolf Husberg] c.asst; ph: Olle Nordemar & (finished prod in December) Sven Nykvist

1944 Barnen från Frostmofjället/The Children from Frostmo Mountain [Rolf Husberg] co-c.asst (+ uncred co-still ph);

1948 Stjärnsmäll i Frukostklubben [Gösta Bernhard] c.asst; ph: Göran Strindberg

1949 Bohus Bataljon/Bohus Battalion [Sölve Cederstrand] c.asst (+ still ph); ph: Sven Nykvist

1956 Sommarflickan [Thomas Engel & Håkan Bergström] c.op; ph: Göran Strindberg

1971 Georgia, Georgia [Stig Björkman; feature] Super 16 tech cons; ph: Andreas Bellis

1965 Minnesstund vid Anders Sandrews grav den 13 mars 1965 - 80 årsdagen efter födelsen [+ ph] see Films