The Re8mil Reusable Cartridge Makes Super 8 Way Less Wasteful

British motion picture lab On8mil is bringing Super 8 film to the 21st century with a new daylight-loading, reusable Super 8 cartridge system called Re8mil, a first of its kind that promises to make Super 8 filmmaking much less wasteful.

Super 8 remains a popular choice among filmmakers, thanks to its distinct character and nostalgic flavor. Created by Kodak in the 1960s, this format made it much more accessible and affordable to capture home movies. It was then a common early tool for generations of up-and-coming filmmakers. Oscar-winning directors Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Steve McQueen, and Christopher Nolan have all used the format, for example, among many others.

“Super 8 taught me how to be a filmmaker. It taught me how precious an image is and can be. It taught me how to refine my technique in editing and, ultimately, how beautiful film is. To this day I still shoot on Super 8,” said Academy Award-winning director, writer, and producer Steve McQueen.

“For me, 8mm was the beginning of everything. When I think of 8mm, I think of the movies,” Steven Spielberg said.

The point is that Super 8 was extremely influential to filmmaking and remains a popular choice today, thanks in part to famous filmmakers espousing its excellence and modern tools like the relatively new Kodak Super 8 camera released in 2024.

However, for how great the Super 8 format and how exciting Kodak’s new Super 8 camera are, the format has its drawbacks, not the least of which is expense and waste. Kodak Super 8 film is sold in 50-foot rolls of film packed in pre-loaded, single-use cartridges for $40 to $65. Once these rolls are shot and processed, the spool and cartridge is gone, destined to become another piece of plastic waste.

As Newsshooter reports, Re8mil is a CNC-machined metal and UV-cured resin cartridge for Super 8 film, built to reduce plastic waste and make Super 8 filmmaking a much more sustainable option for today’s filmmakers. Movie-makers buy a sealed supply magazine preloaded with 50 feet of film, as usual, and then they thread the film from the cartridge through the Re8mil’s transport path, which can be done in daylight, no darkroom required.

There have been reusable Super 8 cartridges before, like the Soviet-era KS-8, but these required a darkroom to reload, or at least a very dark space, which is limiting for people shooting on Super 8, since a 50-foot roll of film is only a few minutes of shooting. Nobody wants to find a dark area to reload film every other scene.

After shooting their roll, the user removes the spool and used magazine and sends it to On8mil’s lab for processing. The lab then refurbishes and recycles the magazine and spool for continued use and the user keeps their Re8mil cartridge to use over and over. Then filmmakers buy recycled, repurposed refills from On8mil to use in the Re8mil cartridge.

“Traditional single-use cartridges are often discarded after processing. That design made sense decades ago — but in today’s climate, it generates significant plastic waste. Re8mil offers a new path: sustainability without sacrificing the tactile, analogue beauty of Super 8,” On8mil explains.

The company’s approach, which has been in development for over three years, promises to be a more cost-effective and significantly greener way for modern filmmakers to continue to shoot on Super 8. The Re8mil is “coming soon,” per On8mil.

Image credits: On8mil