projector

Kids these days: they don’t remember education the way us thirty-somethings do. Back in our day, there wasn’t educational ’software’ or ‘video’ — there were two multimedia formats: movies and filmstrips. Movies were a rare pleasure — there were fewer of them, and they prevented class interaction. ‘Sit and watch’ was the process; we once had one obviously-bored teacher who, after watching a rather boring film in music class, let us watch the movie backwards rather than rewinding it the regular way. But, I digress…

While movies are a technology supplanted by a newer format — video — filmstrips have become an archaic format. Educational software somewhat resembles the filmstrip, but surpasses the filmstrip’s capability with alternate routes to the end. A filmstrip is essentially a slideshow accompanied by audio of some sort. If you’re of my age, you’re very familiar with the ‘when you hear this noise *beep* hit the advance button’ warning at the beginning of a strip’s audio. The more attentive or popular students were entrusted with the duty of controlling the filmstrip projector, although untrusting teachers may have chosen to run it themselves. Filmstrips, unlike movies, allowed the teacher to stop the process mid-stride and add comments, answer questions, and maybe discipline unruly audience-members. I admit, I never actually read A Wrinkle In Time, so my entire knowledge of the book comes from a 24-frame filmstrip we watched in the third grade. As you might guess, my understanding of the book is more hole-filled than had I read the Cliff’s Notes, and given the mind-bending qualities of the book I really had no idea what was going on. Still, I learned a lot — the Dewey Decimal system, the metric system, dialling with an area code — from filmstrips over the years.

Filmstrips are on my mind because of an amazing find today at a thrift shop: a DuKane Super Micromatic slide-film projector. When I was in school, filmstrips were projected out of small plastic projectors with a tape-player built into the back-end. This projector, when unpacked from its condensed case, has a full-sized record player attached. Filmstrips have been around a lot longer than the innovation of the compact cassette in the 1970s, so of course the media of the 1950s was distributed on record album. For example, my Esther Williams Swimming Pool filmstrip came as a filmstrip with a 45rpm record album (recorded only on one side). The salesman brought along his portable filmstrip viewer to the potential customer’s home, loaded the film, put on the record, and Esther Williams herself could present her pools’ virtues in her own voice.

Portable viewers were available when I was on school, too: they were available if you missed a day of school and – god forbid — missed an absolutely essential filmstrip. As with the plastic, cassette-enabled filmstrip projectors, these machines were plastic and flimsy. The Esther Williams Swimming Pool distributor carried around this behemoth — the DuKane Flip-Top Sound Slidefilm Projector. When I first picked it up at a flea market, I was certain it was a portable record player. It had all the hallmarks of a turntable: recessed knobs, heavy-duty hinges, a large cloth-covered speaker grill, ugly patterned leathette outside. However, upon opening it, I was surprised to find a screen underneath.

The projectors are difficult to find in good working condition, as with any older media, but I’ve found filmstrips many places. Library sales are of course a good source for filmstrips, but I’ve found them at rummage sales of ex-teachers, religious films at church sales, and at flea markets. As most libraries and educational sources have long since moved on to video, much of the filmstrip libraries have already been liquidated.

The filmstrip media is essentially the same 35mm slide film you use to document your travels to Knott’s Berry Farm. As such, it’s subject to the same sort of fading and color-shift you find in all slides from the sixties. Finding a good-quality film will prove difficult, since exposure to heat accelerates the reaction, and if the filmstrip saw regular use in school it will have felt a lion’s share of heat every time it was shown. Also, if the filmstrip is from the 1940s or later, you will have to find the accompanying recording, or the ‘narration sheet.’ Some strips had the narration on the frames, like a silent movie, but when sound was added quite often the frames carry no information and require the narration to understand. If you’re at a sale, some well-meaning salesperson may have properly organized by placing the record or tape in the box with their KISS and Skid Row cast-offs; if you find a lone filmstrip, always ask if the recording is still around.

While I don’t endorse it, if you absolutely must project a found filmstrip and are without the equipment, any photolab that develops slide film should be able to cut the filmstrip and mount it in slide frames for a nominal fee. The tape cassette or album with the narration can be played on any compatible player. The simplicity and compatibility of filmstrips made them an excellent tool for teaching, but the advances of technology have made them obsolete. If you haven’t noticed, the wifey and I love the obsolete — now that we have a full-fledged working filmstrip projector, we hatched a plan: Using a regular 35mm camera loaded with slide film and our Recordio record-album recorder, we can make our own filmstrips. Our kids will think we’re the coolest parents ever, right?

There’s no doubt that, hiding in some closet of an elderly relative, there’s a box of round & flat metal cans with the Old Home Movies inside: 8mm films were a common format for recording a family’s lives and events, up until the late 1970s and early 80s when video took the forefront.

You might also be surprised to see some non-family films in the box: there might be small reels that the family got as souveniers of DisneyWorld, or newsreels from the forties, or previews of first-run films. As a kid, I remember my parents checking out a projector and a bunch of movies from the public library, and we had Silent Movie Night — and this was in the early 1980s. For a time, 8mm and 16mm films fulfilled most everything that videos do today — including quite a bit of pornography, which is very collectible today, if your elderly relatives were naughty that way. The rest of the films are available all over the market, at a variety of prices, so a new collector can get started without a severe investment, while avoiding the frustration of not finding anything to buy. Films can be found at rummage sales, antique shops, and of course eBay, without too much hunting.
The problem is: once you’ve found the treasure-chest of old films, how do you use them anymore?

One positive is that the equipment is not too hard to track down; I see them at rummage sales and thrift shops on a regular basis. eBay is an excellent resource, with the basic projector going for around fifty dollars in useable condition. For most applications you’ll be looking for a ‘dual format’ projector. 8mm film came in two versions: the original version, which was a 16mm film stock split down the middle, and “Super8″, the later version, which is the same width but smaller sprockets in order to make the image bigger. The difference in sprocket holes means that projectors aren’t interchangeable…but, fortunately, numerous projectors from the sixties and seventies were designed to accept either frame size. 16mm projectors are a bit more expensive: this format is the kind we remember from gradeschool, when huge projection machines were wheeled in and out of classrooms on an A/V cart. The positive is that many school districts still have these projectors around, and you might be able to borrow, beg, or buy one from them.

One required piece of equipment you’ll need is a splicer and tape. Due to the age of the film and deterioration of any edits already in the film, you’re going to break a movie; it just happens. The old days of scraping film and gluing the ends together is long gone: Kodak made an amazing product called “Presstape” for quick splices of films. Purists might think this isn’t the ‘right’ way to do it, but if your purpose is to watch the movies and keep them in watchable condition, a presstape splice is better than nothing. This equipment is still available in new condition from professional camera stores, and isn’t particularly expensive. A special splicing machine is required — it, too, is available from pro stores — but the process is immensely simplified from the olden days. You place the two ends of the broken film in the splicer, overlapping slightly, and close the cutter to create an even splice. Add the tape — and, viola! — the film is repaired. This can be done without winding the film off the projector, if the break happens during a viewing, provided you can get the movie back on the sprockets.

Because the film is fragile and you might not want to risk repeated viewings, you may want to convert the films to video. Services do this for you, with a pretty good level of quality, but that quality comes at a hefty price if you’ve got a lot of film – and if it’s a copyrighted film, like Disney or a newsreel, they may refuse to duplicate it. If you’re feeling handy, there’s a few ways to do the conversion yourself. The film-to-video shakeup of the 1980s produced the kind of equipment needed to duplicate films. Sima (and a number of other manufacturers) produced a CopyKit: it is essentially a mirror and a piece of frosted plastic. The mirror reflects the projected image against the plastic, and the video camera films off the plastic screen. These can still be found, but it takes a little looking (again, eBay is the place to go).

Working just as well is a piece of bright white typing paper. Projecting at full-screen size dilutes a bunch of light, so set up the projector to fill a sheet of paper taped to the wall. Set up the video camera directly next to the projector, zoomed to frame the projected image. You might have to turn autofocus off, to avoid fuziness turning transfer. One drawback of doing your own conversion is lack of a Telecine conversion: movies have a different framerate from video, so there will be times when the camera is recording an image and the projector’s shutter is closed, projecting nothing. This will create a little ‘flicker’ that is noticeable, but often not any worse than the flicker of watching the film directly. If you’re computer-handy, there are utilities, like VirtualDub, which can change framerate and reduce the flicker as much as possible. Here is an example of an old film I converted with the typing-paper-VirtualDub method.

However, there’s no need for conversion if your intent is to watch them once in a while, popping popcorn and situating the whole family around the movie screen. This sort of ‘family-time’ is devoted to TV shows; give the family something a little different, especially if the movies include mom, dad, grandma, or grandpa in an earlier time. It’s a fun and different way to go through the family albums, and puts these old movies to the purpose they were designed for.