I like this from the carter stevens article:



Long before super 8 we did regular 8mm loops. 8mm loops were our bread and butter. We shot them whenever we weren't doing anything else. They were shot on 16mm, MOS (silent). We would shoot about 400 ft of reversal film per loop and cut the original down to 280 ft for a finished loop. Each loop would usually call for two cum shots per loop. One in the middle and one at the end. We would shoot about 6 (six) loops in a day and get $400 per loop. Actors got $50 per loop and there were usually 3 to 4 people in each loop so all told we would make about $100-150 profit per loop. In the early days it was an all cash business and it was more than once I was paid in bags of quarters.