Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: In-flight Entertainment

This is topic In-flight Entertainment in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Patricia Phalen (Member # 6427) on 07-28-2011, 10:50 AM:

Hi all. I am researching the history of in-flight entertainment...welcoming all memories, ideas, hints on where to find archives of organizations like David Flexer's Inflight Motion Pictures...etc.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 07-28-2011, 11:08 AM:

I never worked them myself, but IATSE Local 224 in DC used to handle them back in the 16mm days. If you can find who has their records there may be useful information and names.

Posted by Patricia Phalen (Member # 6427) on 07-28-2011, 02:22 PM:

Thanks - that's a great thought!

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 07-28-2011, 03:58 PM:

Local 224 is no more. The remaining members were taken into Local 22. You may want to check with them.

11247 Lockwood Dr # C
Silver Spring, MD 20901-4561
(301) 593-1265

Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 07-28-2011, 08:09 PM:

In-Flight Entertainment was handled by Local 150 in Los Angeles area.
But remember the Union operators were employed by In-Flight Entertainment. So there was only X amount of people doing the job. Most of those people have long retired from the business.
Talk to the Old Timers [thumbsup]

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 07-29-2011, 05:25 PM:

My father worked for Pan Am, and showed me a couple of different systems at different times. The first was a 16MM system they were trying to make work. I remember seeing this set up on saw hourses in the shop. There were two sets of projectors, and two movies wound together on a large reel. One set of projectors would run foward, and be on screen, the other set would run backward. I don't think that they ever got this to work. I can see one problem, the two films would be slightly different diamaters the way they were wound together. I was told that they had to just splice the movies back to back, and had rewinder systems at the airport.

Then they went to a video tape playback system that used Sony 2" helical machines that used 7" or 8" reels.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 07-30-2011, 05:07 PM:

There has been one academic paper I know of published on the subject: Stephen Groening, 'Film in Air: Airspace, In-Flight Entertainment, and Nontheatrical Distirbution' in The Velvet Light Trap, no. 62 (Fall 2008), pp. 4-14. Frustratingly, though, there is virtually no information on the technical details of the projection systems used on the early airliners, especially the super 8 and 16mm endless loop machines that I gather were installed widely on 707s, VC-10s, DC-8s etc. etc. in the early days. Pretty much the entire essay focuses on the economic side.

Wasn't Super 8 optical sound developed more or less entirely for this market?

The technological history of this has absolutely yet to be written, and I'm glad that someone is taking an interest.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-30-2011, 09:28 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
Wasn't Super 8 optical sound developed more or less entirely for this market?

That is correct and I've yet to see a picture of a setup from a plane. I would love to see some shots of the film being interlocked through 2 or more projectors and the film track running from front to rear of the plane.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-31-2011, 12:26 AM:

I'd rather see a print interlocked between two or three planes.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-31-2011, 12:51 AM:

You saw Executive Decision, right? If they can fly 2 planes near each other at the same speed enough to dock them, interlocking is a no-brainer. [Razz]

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 07-31-2011, 10:55 AM:

Oh, I love a challenge.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 07-31-2011, 12:11 PM:

quote: Brad Miller
You saw Executive Decision, right? If they can fly 2 planes near each other at the same speed enough to dock them, interlocking is a no-brainer.

And as a bonus, Steven Segall dies!

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-31-2011, 02:49 PM:

Yeah, the funny thing about that movie was NOBODY wanted to screen it because Steven Segall was in it. We had 2 prints to deal with too. We ended up all agreeing to suffer through it together as a team and about 20 minutes into it we all cheered (as did some audiences). The rest of the movie was fantastic. [Cool]

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 07-31-2011, 05:21 PM:

quote: Brad Miller
That is correct and I've yet to see a picture of a setup from a plane. I would love to see some shots of the film being interlocked through 2 or more projectors and the film track running from front to rear of the plane.

I guess these setups must have used an endless loop system of some description - there's no way a flight attendant could have rethreaded an interlock system mounted above hundreds of seated passengers between screenings.

On the DC-10s that Northwest got rid of about 4-5 years ago I caught a glimpse of an S-VHS deck in a compartment next to the main entrance while boarding once. I guess that this was the source for the in-flight entertainment system, which consisted of CRT projectors in the front of each block of overhead bins above the centre aisle, projected onto a white-painted bulkhead.

Posted by Jeff Kane (Member # 6372) on 08-02-2011, 03:56 PM:

Another place you might ask this question is Airliners.net. Tons of people there who're aviation fanatics and know commercial aviation details to a fault, as well as quite a few that were working in the industry way back when.

Speaking of:

IFE on the DC-8/707

Historical Firsts of IFE

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 08-08-2011, 08:54 PM:

Newsreel footage of screening of "Bachelor in Paradise" on TWA flight in 1961.

Also, for whatever it's worth, the MARC-300 bulb was designed for airline use.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-09-2011, 01:00 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
Wasn't Super 8 optical sound developed more or less entirely for this market?

I don't know; several of the 16mm libraries started offering some titles on 8mm as well about 25 years ago though the number of titles was rather limited. At least one of them, I think it was Columbia-Warner, started out with magnetic, but then switched to optical. The airlines certainly used it; I've got a 200 foot airline advertising reel somewhere, and the sound quality is not as bad as I thought it would be. The track is a single bi-lateral type, and is dye, cyan and magenta, with no re-developed silver. I've also got a feature film, but the track is mis-printed, and won't scan properly. With such a narrow track any mis-allignment either of track printing, or of soundhead, sounds pretty bad.

I've also got a faded Pathé Pictorial about the opening of a drive-in cinema in Italy.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-10-2011, 02:08 AM:

Interesting video Scott. I noticed 1961 did not have screaming babies on board. [Razz]

Leo, I've seen 8mm video decks used in American Airlines flights today on those little drop-down screens that are about every 2-3 rows.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-12-2011, 04:52 PM:

I don't know if that was 8mm Hope was carrying. That't looks like a lot more than 109min of 8mm film. The width of the case looks more like it could be 16mm.