R.I.P. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Rogge
I went ahead and mirrored this entire site, and his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/MichaelRogge
and then there is Olive Riley (b. 1899) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Riley
It also makes me wonder what the future of the form will be. Historically speaking we’re still at the very beginning of it.
Super 16 was one of the best formats. All the film schools had only 16 mm cameras, certainly not 35mm. And all the best revolutionary 70ies productions were shot on cheap 16mm in natural light. This changed with Spielberg and the new blockbuster approach, and then the depressing Reagan years when everybody went back into the studio with huge lighting efforts and psychological dramas.
Mumblecore and Dogma 95 brought back some pure 16mm with post blowup efforts (cinemas only had 35mm projectors then), but digital with the Arri Alexa and Red killed that. Next is better projector technology for cheap. The format and camera wars are over.
Films are mostly post processed digitally - but some, like Oppenheimer, are color graded the old optical way. While Dune was shot digitally, printed on film, then scanned back in again!
Im confused by this line, standards are meant to promote compatibility, not design. They're a way to, well... standardise processes and things. Its almost a given that you'll have to compromise on design to be able to include enough variance to appease the majority of use cases. It is also desirable, I think, of a standard to not give in to edge cases and niche uses and stay as simple as it can to the general use. There will be other niche standards for those and that is a good thing.
Standards survive and die for the same reason they're created, they make things cheaper, faster and easier. Once they fail at those, they give in to newer entrants. Physical standards can also make things safer, but safety must be enforced as people often are bad at judging risk and prefer the other features to a fault.