Archiving these wouldn't be at all technically difficult - just
remarkably tedious.

If one had the original multitrack tape and the slides and film, along
with a script, you could set up multiple video tracks in Final Cut or
a similar video editing package and key the video track to an audio
control track for each projector, placing the slides with cuts or fade
in or fade out as a guide.

It could be output in 4K or 6K format for projection at a festival or
museum showing or down-coverted to hi-def for reference viewing by
researchers.

Of course, if the original slides and tapes were available, the
original equipment could be reassembled for a showing, but that would
probably be impractical and expensive.

rand

On Fri, Aug 3, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Richard L. Hess
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi, Randy,
>
> I was involved in making shows a step down from this for St. John's
> University (my alma mater) which we did for several years for Freshman
> Orientation--and even developed a small business out of this named "LM
> Productions". It stood for "Last-Minute Productions" as one of the team
> members experienced in personally developing Ektachrome slide film in his
> own darkroom and the Freshmen could actually see themselves in the slide
> show (which was given on the final day of orientation). We also did some of
> these for parents as well, as the business expanded and did a few for other
> schools.
>
> We either arranged four projectors in a quad or three in a row and had only
> a single cue tone that changed all projectors at once, but we could continue
> some images by putting multiple copies in. We couldn't afford the AVL
> sequencers. We used mono sound with cue tones on the other channel.
>
> I also made five of these shows personally between 1975 and 1989. The 1975
> show was for an art project on St. George and the Dragon for a friend. The
> 1976 and 1978 ones commemorated trips to England and the 1978 "Cathedrals
> and Abbeys of England" received about 25 showings around the NY City area
> and several in the Aurora, Ontario area in the early 1980s, plus a few
> showings in the Glendale, California area. Mary Beth and I did a slide-tape
> show from our Expo 86 and 1989 Alaska trips. I don't think I've shown any of
> these more than once or twice since the kids were born in the early 1990s.
>
> I have been struggling with how to preserve and show them today. All the
> elements are preserved--all the slides have been scanned at 12 MP and the
> sound tracks are all on hard drive in our storage servers. The reassembly is
> not an easy task. Finding a format and application to do it has not been a
> major priority, but I tried it once and kept crashing Adobe Premier about
> ten years ago. One of the joys of this show is that many of the exterior
> images were shot on Kodachrome 25 and I want to maintain some semblance of
> that level of resolution. Also, the images are a mix of vertical and
> horizontal which makes life a joy.
>
> My five shows were only two projectors/one image with dissolve.
>
> So, extrapolating from what I know and have done to preserve my meagre
> creativity in this area, I would hate to see the budget for properly
> preserving some of the more massive shows. In a sense, its a bit like the
> massive painting of The Crucifixion at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in
> Glendale, California.
> http://www.forestlawn.com/Special-Events-And-Facilities/Hall-Of-The-Crucifixion-Resurrection.asp?id=2
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Lawn_Memorial_Park,_Glendale
> It is a 195 x 45 foot painting, displayed with a programmed narration that
> drives lighting spotlighting areas of the painting as they are discussed.
>
> This, too, was from another era, as was Todd-AO and especially Cinerama
> which is difficult to reproduce properly. Showscan and IMAX are two other
> difficult-to-archive formats that are still current.
>
> The difficulties and costs of archiving "Grandeur" formats (using the 20s
> Fox Studio short-lived format's name) and large multi-media presentations
> are huge. Anything other than playing back at "full scale" diminishes the
> experience--in the same way as looking at a lock-down camera video recording
> of an opera would.
>
> Is there any archive focusing on these, I wonder???
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
> On 2012-08-03 9:22 AM, Randy A. Riddle wrote:
>>
>> When I was in college at App State in North Carolina, Kodak brought a
>> show to campus that I still remember today.
>>
>> It consisted of hundreds of 35mm slides and 8mm or 16mm movie footage
>> shot by two guys that went on an adventure trip somewhere in the
>> western US.
>>
>> The whole thing was automated with a recorded sound track and racks of
>> projectors.
>>
>> It's a shame that shows like this aren't archived in ways they can be
>> periodically brought out and redone.
>>
>>
>
> --
> Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada           (905) 713 6733     1-877-TAPE-FIX
> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.