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Topic: Yet another optical super 8 thread
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Osi Osgood
Film God
Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted February 18, 2015 12:55 PM
Yep, they were either in one or two forms ...
In separate "Technicolor" cassettes, which would hold approximately 25 minutes of optical sound film (these were for the libraries that allowed you to rent a feature. South Africa had this kind of thing) or ...
in very large cassettes, which were used for the inflight movies, from 1967 to 1988, (depending on the country, as I understand that Japan and a few other countries actually continued on with optical super 8 prints until approximately 1990.
When they were stored, they were wound onto somewhat large (depending on the feature) cores ... little yellow cores with a terrible very sticky tape that was a reel pain in the arse to remove. It left a lot of residue that took quite awhile to get rid of.
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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "
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Vincent Zabbia
Master Film Handler
Posts: 372
From: Montrose, NY
Registered: Feb 2011
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posted February 18, 2015 03:09 PM
From Wikipedia: Starting in 1971[13] In-flight movies (previously 16 mm) were shown in Super 8 format until video distribution became the norm. The films were printed with an optical sound track (amateur films use magnetic sound), and spooled into proprietary cassettes that often held a whole 2-hour movie.
From Super 8 Database:
"The inflight entertainment industry was about to be "scooped". Several entrepreneurs in California decided not to be intimidated by Mr. Flexer in New York. He had done an admirable job of introducing inflight movies onboard airplanes, but those cumbersome, large reels of 16mm film were a constant problem. Enter the much smaller format of Super 8mm ilm. A system of loading more compact 8mm film into a cassette was developed. Using it was easy and not too far removed from the ease of placing a VHS cassette into a slot and having a VCR play it. It was no longer necessary for aircraft mechanics or film technicians to come onboard an airplane at the conclusion of every flight and change those large film reels. The new California company worked out a much smaller projection system, and the simple, selffeeding, endless loop type cartridge revolutionized the industry. That company... known as Trans Com ... expanded greatly as a result of their innovative 8mm system introduced in 1971. With their 8mm system and, later, video systems, Trans Com became the largest suppliers of inflight entertainment hardware and programming to the world's airlines. In the early days of this company, Sundstrand Corporation had a major investment in Trans Com and, to protect that investment, they assigned one of their young bright corporate stars to lead that new enterprise. Enter onto the scene, a man who soon to become an icon in the young industry … John Landstrom. One of the earliest and most astute things that Landstrom did was to lure Bob Kitson from Bell & Howell to Trans Com. The Landstrom/Kitson team were soon to create a major change in the business." (Extratcs from A History of Inflight Entertainment, by John Norman White, 1994).
The manufacturers of inflight movies projectors were Bell & Howell, Fairchild, General Audio-Visual (GAVI), Inflight Motion Pictures and Trans Com.
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Vincent Zabbia
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