Photo: Fer Gregory (Shutterstock)
These days we use the words “film” and “video” interchangeably, but film is properly the long, shiny strips that cameras use to capture an image. The film is exposed to light while it’s in the camera, and must be developed with chemicals before you can see the images. You may have seen film cameras, or the negatives from film cameras.
Movies were also filmed with, well, film. With one image for each frame, and 24 frames per second of footage, the strips of film used were very long, and would be spooled to and from reels. (You’d also “wrap” the film when it was done; hence, “that’s a wrap” when you’re done shooting.)
How much film would you end up with? Well, with each frame a bit shorter than an inch, a single second of film at 16 frames per second (common in the silent movie days) would measure about a foot. And so the term “footage” was used to talk about how much exposed film you had made.
