Great old memories revived. Our company produced audio for slide shows back
in the
70s. We were not involved in the programming per se, but the scripts were
delivered
with precise timing for special segments. We produced one for Coca-Cola in
Atlanta
that used a gaggle of projectors to animate the top of a Coke bottle as it
was popped by
an opener then spun and flipped through the air (with appropriate SFX). It
also included
period images that required appropriate period music and when we told the
client we had
old Coca Cola radio spots (from my checkered carreer in radio), they revised
the program
to include them...including the first spot for Sprite. I'd give a cookie to
have
a copy of that presentation!

Lou Houck
Rollin' Recording
Boerne, TX



----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Fine
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 1:00 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] archiving slide-tape shows (was voca-film
technology)


When I was in high school, the "new" (circa 1975) high school had a
planetarium (there was already a
nice pool at the old high school, which became the middle school). By the
time I was there, early
80's, the sky projector was already subject to being flooded and thus was
sometimes limited in
operation. But we managed to put together a couple of shows every year. The
shows were pre-packaged.
You'd get a kit with a script, slides, a 1/4" tape and sky projector
instructions. I handled
pre-production for a couple of years, converting the script's slide cues
into sequences our
projectors could do and then recording the appropriate tones for our two
banks of 3 or 4 projectors
each onto the two open tracks on the tape (2 and 4, I think the music/VO
track was the standard
quarter-track format of 1 and 3). Then we'd load up the slide trays and
overdub to fix any mistakes,
sometimes we'd run the script live and record the tones in simul-sync mode.
The tape machine was a
Teac A3340S deck, which I got to use with my garage band when it wasn't
needed by the planetarium.

Anyway, how is this done today? Banks of digital projectors or wide-firing
projectors with split
screens? Something entirely different? And, how would one convert these old
planetarium shows to a
modern exibition format? I don't recall anything in those shows being
scientifically wrong or
outdated today, except that the space program was still active.

As far as I know, the planetarium fell into disrepair and budget cuts
resulted in the space being
converted to storage with a leaky domed ceiling.

For the curious, the rest of the audio gear in that 1975 planetarium was:
Dynaco ST-120 power amp;
four Advent 1 speakers in the dome (only 2-channel playback, but the stereo
effect was quite cool
with the dome in the mix), a top-loading Advent cassette deck and I seem to
recall an external Dolby
B unit to go with it, also by Advent, and a custom mixing panel that
probably cost thousands of
dollars back then. The room lights were controlled by the sky-projector
panel. The way the scripts
worked, the person running the projector would stop the tape periodically
and improvise the
"teaching moments" while running the projector. Then there would be
interludes with tape-based audio
and slides, and sometimes the tape audio would accompany actions by the sky
projector. We also
sometimes spliced parts of different shows together to accomplish different
goals of the teacher.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Biel" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2012 1:39 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] archiving slide-tape shows (was voca-film
technology)


From: John Schroth <[log in to unmask]>

> I majored in Multi-image slide presentation at RIT over 25 years ago.
> They had a core-curriculum in Multi-Image slide production, the only one
> like it in country at the time.

Wow! In this thread we have really hit on a nearly forgotten format for
archiving, and your info and expertise is valuable. Is Eastman House
doing anything on this? I think this topic is worthy of an ARSC
Conference presentation -- not sure if the Moving Image organizations
are interested in these non-moving image presentations. I remember the
ones I've seen being very impressive -- but every time a movie was
inserted, the combination of the noticeably lower resolution and the
disruption of looking at lengthy-held still images reduced the effect.
These programs could be reproduced with the superior HDTV projection now
available, using multiple projectors and screens of course. There
should be an effort to do it NOW while we still have people like you
that remember the equipment and programming so it can be converted to
computer controlling.

Mike Biel [log in to unmask]