Movies in the Sky

 

When I was a movie projectionist, the highest-paid union brothers in Local 306 threaded up reels of film, like I did, but they never entered a movie theater. They worked on airplanes, but they never left the ground. Not on the job, anyway. They were technicians for Inflight Motion Pictures, entrepreneurial pioneers and, briefly, a factor in Hollywood. In an age when regulated air tickets were much costlier, a non-stop coast-to-coast or international jetliner ride was a symbol of elite status. In 1961, TWA was first to offer the added luxury of passing the flight time watching a movie.

Inflight Motion Pictures controlled the proprietary technology. IMP technicians were the only ones permitted to handle the films, which had to be taken out, rewound, and reset for each flight. IMP was also an intermediary between the airlines and the studios. The compromises they worked out shaped the tone of most airline movies for decades to come; above all, inoffensive. Not unreasonable. Though it’s easy to make fun of censor cuts and blandness, most travelers prefer soothing to edgy. Dramas and historical films can fit the formula, but romcoms have become airline movies par excellence.

Edits, even heavy-handed ones, of censored scenes or simply to fit a timeslot were an accepted Hollywood practice in the era when Inflight took to the air because editing for TV had already set the precedent, and the basic standards for airline film presentation. Like TV, the assumption was that children may be present. Over the decades, as public acceptance of looser standards took hold, filmmakers with any industry clout became increasingly indignant about being edited by anyone. Unless they’re a Nolan, they seldom have the right to prevent studio re-cutting for TV or airline use.

But directors do have the contractual right to take their name off a film they don’t approve, which is why so many movies on planes claim to be directed by the mysterious Alan Smithee. He’s the agreed-on pseudonym used by the Directors Guild of America.

A timeless ritual began, of cabin attendants renting and then retrieving the headsets–acoustic ones used nowhere else, just hollow plastic tubes chosen to be incompatible with home earplugs or headphones. The rental was how airlines defrayed their costs.

For a generation, films in the air meant just that: a flat reel, about the diameter of a large pizza, that dispensed a ribbon of 16mm film threaded through a slot in the ceiling, running along almost the entire length of the cabin. Each cabin class had its own screen, each with its own miniature, ceiling-mounted automatic projector. The film ran through them consecutively, with minutes of lag time. It’s amazing this Rube Goldberg setup worked at all, yet it did for twenty years, until video took over inflight screen entertainment around the dawn of the Eighties.

Eventually, as IMP’s tech edge faded, the studios and airlines absorbed many of the middleman functions of Inflight themselves. Both industries are image-conscious, make and lose unfathomable amounts of money, and hence are understandably obsessed with the daily challenge of filling those seats.

Near the end of the Seventies, the cheapest flight between Los Angeles and New York was a $99 redeye on World Airways. World’s all-DC-10 fleet were the first planes I’d ever been on with video projection instead of film, but I’d already read that somewhat more respectable airlines had already made the jump or were just about to. There were still three screens in a “jumbo” but now they were simultaneous. Just punch in the VHS cassette and you were done, no muss, no fuss.

Studios made special VHS copies for airline use only, for use as much as a half year (back then) before a film’s general release to home video, although some inevitably leaked into the black market. There were still certified technicians working on airline video systems, but the decades-long gold rush enjoyed by my Local 306 film union brothers, on the industrial side of coastal airports on overnight shifts, quietly ended.

What really caught my eye was a camera in the nose of the aircraft, giving passengers a cockpit view of takeoff and landing. 47 years ago, that seemed almost magical. Then from 1982 on, the moving maps of Airshow became a mass tranquilizer in between the movies. Airshow had a subtle reassuring effect: in the skies above a limitless ocean, or crossing awesome mountain ranges, everything was under control. You were en route.

For years, the holy grail of inflight entertainment was individual choice and a personal screen. They finally arrived as chunky little LCD screens that folded between business-class seats. (First class got individual video players and a choice of DV cassettes, as seen in 1996’s Mission: Impossible.)

But what everyone wanted, and what we finally got later in the Nineties, was a good-sized seatback screen, the kind we glimpsed decades ago, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, aboard the Orion orbital spaceplane and the Aries lunar shuttle. Those props looked right because Stanley Kubrick didn’t go to Hollywood set decorators, but to industrial designers who worked for top electronics and aerospace companies. In 1966, when most of 2001 was filmed, there was no viable way to put a television in every airline seat, due to the depth of the picture tube and demand for wattage. But Kubrick correctly bet that flat-screen technologies would take over. He expertly faked the displays with concealed film projectors.

Once there was a screen at every seat, satellite TV was another advance, giving a comforting illusion of still being in the flow of a normal day, although you might be flying among dozing strangers at 500 mph through the Arctic night, six miles in the air.

Amid the ever-rising expense of upgrading entertainment systems, and their power consumption (which contributed to a Swissair disaster in 1998), there’s a new twist in the 21st century: personal devices—phones, mostly—are enabling some airlines to phase out passenger displays altogether, replacing it with a Wi-Fi link to an onboard digital library. Still, the long-haul routes, especially in Business and First, will stick with seatbacks. Most people don’t want to hold their phone all day.

When writing any kind of media technology history, you make some threshold judgments. What constitutes “the first”? I try not to count one-shots and publicity stunts, like a silent film shown in-flight between London and Paris in 1921, or Philo Farnsworth demonstrating a crude TV set for reporters aboard a DC-2. Most of the time I’m looking for the historical moment when something suddenly crystallized, when it became recognizable as we know it now. Often that’s not a story of pure invention, but of invention and marketing.

The old projectionists used to warn, in their thick Old World accents, “Just you wait. Someday we’ll all be replaced by the machinery.” They were right, of course.

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  1. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    We all know where it really started.

     

    • #1
  2. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    I suppose Jerry needed a union card to do that?

    • #2
  3. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    I suppose Jerry needed a union card to do that?

    Yep, I bet he did! That scene is a great find, very relevant to the post–and when was the last time a Jerry Lewis scene has been called “very relevant”? I have to say, although it’s a simple gag he did it well. 

    Although…later on…he fronted a business that licensed his name, Jerry Lewis Family Theaters. They came along in the 1968-70-ish era, promising never to run offensive films. Patton, okay. No Midnight Cowboy. What made the company unique was the set up, the tech package. The JL theaters all twins, still a new thing, and they were among the first to have automated projection; no union operator. The manager just pushed a button, the lights would dim and the curtain opened. It wasn’t a crazy idea at all; automated theaters spread across the sunbelt. 

    • #3
  4. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    If we stretch a point, Hollywood’s first futuristic film featuring inflight entertainment might be 1955’s Conquest of Space, whose Earth-orbiting military crews (loudly) appreciated nightly broadcasts of stateside variety shows, starring leggy dancing girls. Only thirteen years later we get markedly more realistic versions of the look of future airline seats and screens in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

    Still, I’m not looking down my nose at Conquest of Space. Look at the framing of that shot and implied enormity of the space station (which in the actual shot is rotating slowly). It ain’t the Blue Danube, but it’s damn impressive. 

    • #4
  5. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Could we get Airplane as the in-flight movie?

    • #5
  6. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    We all know where it really started.

     

    A Ford Trimotor! The Tin Goose! Corrugated for your amusement.

    • #6
  7. Brickhouse Hank Contributor
    Brickhouse Hank
    @HankRhody

    Gary McVey: In 1966, when most of 2001 was filmed, there was no viable way to put a television in every airline seat, due to the depth of the picture tube and demand for wattage. But Kubrick correctly bet that flat screen technologies would take over. He expertly faked the displays with concealed film projectors.

    On the other end of the scale I’m thinking here of the video phones from Space 1999. To get a roughly 2 inch square screen they’ve got a foot of depth to them, because of course you need the space to bend that electron beam. I suppose the idea that you could shrink everything else but you needed space for those cathode rays was reasonable.

    • #7
  8. Susan Quinn Member
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    It’s fascinating how we take in-flight movies for granted. But they actually had an evolution! Thanks, Gary.

    • #8
  9. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    “entertainment systems, and their power consumption (which contributed to a Swissair disaster in 1998)”

    What happened?

     

    • #9
  10. Doctor Robert Member
    Doctor Robert
    @DoctorRobert

    David Foster (View Comment):

    “entertainment systems, and their power consumption (which contributed to a Swissair disaster in 1998)”

    What happened?

     

    There’s a very informative Wikipedia article,a quick search will connect you.  Briefly, an inflight entertainment system caused a fire which brought down a plane full of souls.

     

    • #10
  11. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Percival (View Comment):

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    We all know where it really started.

     

    A Ford Trimotor! The Tin Goose! Corrugated for your amusement.

    Not sure if the wicker seat is standard.  But I think that’s the same steering wheel they used on the tractors.

    • #11
  12. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    David Foster (View Comment):

    “entertainment systems, and their power consumption (which contributed to a Swissair disaster in 1998)”

    What happened?

     

    Nobody quite knows. The Flight Data Recorder and the Cockpit Voice Recorder cut out a about six minutes before the plane flew into the ocean. The crew smelled smoke from the air conditioning system, which was shut down. The smoke got worse, at which point the crew declared an emergency and started to maneuver to make an emergency landing at Halifax Stanfield International Airport by dumping fuel and positioning themselves. About a minute after that, the aircraft lost power. Examination of the wreckage indicated that the entertainment system experienced arcing which did not trigger the circuit breakers and may have led to the fire. Or may not have; the arcing could have occurred after the fire had started.

    One of the recommendations was that the FDR and CVR not be directly reliant on aircraft power.

    • #12
  13. Gossamer Cat Coolidge
    Gossamer Cat
    @GossamerCat

    Gary McVey: Amid the ever-rising expense of upgrading entertainment systems, and their power consumption (which contributed to a Swissair disaster in 1998),

    !!!

    Great post!  I started flying regularly in 1984 and your post reminded me of how many different in flight entertainment options I’ve lived through. 

    Gary McVey: most travelers prefer soothing to edgy. Dramas and historical films can fit the formula, but romcoms have become airline movies par excellence.

    That is my go to category on planes.   Every now and then I try for something more challenging, but invariably, I end up in the Love is In the Air category on American. On my flight last night I watched Under the Tuscan Sun and The Holiday.  

    • #13
  14. Clavius Thatcher
    Clavius
    @Clavius

    I read that the entertainment system on an intercontinental 777 is the second most expensive component on the plane after the engines. Perhaps that’s why domestic flights are leaving it to our personal devices.

    • #14
  15. Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. Coolidge
    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr.
    @BartholomewXerxesOgilvieJr

    I find it interesting that technological advancement is erasing some of the distinctions that used to exist between various ways of watching movies. It used to be that a movie would typically go through three stages of availability, each defined by its delivery technology: first, film projected on a screen in a theater; second, home-video availability on tape or disc; finally, broadcast. I never really thought of in-flight movies as being another such delivery channel, but clearly it was. I imagine each one had its own very different business and legal framework.

    But now the distinctions seem to be falling away. A movie you see in a theater is just digital video projected on a very large screen. Sometimes the exact same video is available at the same time for pay-per-view home viewing. Eventually it becomes available for cheaper rental and eventually for streaming on a subscription service. And then on an ad-supported free service. But it’s the same digital video, delivered in essentially the same way. Showing movies on a plane used to require a complicated system with its own specialized engineers; now it’s basically just an adaptation of the same technology we all use to watch movies at home.

    • #15
  16. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    I couldn’t find a clip, but isn’t there a bit in the first “Airplane” movie where the in-flight movie is showing a plane crash?

    • #16
  17. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    kedavis (View Comment):

    I couldn’t find a clip, but isn’t there a bit in the first “Airplane” movie where the in-flight movie is showing a plane crash?

    Yes. For obvious reasons, plane crashes are one of the most strictly censored of inflight scenes. But when video replaced film, about 40-45 years ago, low cost airlines (like charter operator World) just used consumer VHS prerecords. They weren’t as careful, so I recall seeing Moonraker on a cheapo flight. The first scene involves hijacking a space shuttle that’s being ferried on the back of a 747, destroying the carrier plane. An old guy in the next row said “That’s a hell of a thing to show on an airplane”, and he was right. 

    • #17
  18. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Clavius (View Comment):

    I read that the entertainment system on an intercontinental 777 is the second most expensive component on the plane after the engines. Perhaps that’s why domestic flights are leaving it to our personal devices.

    Plus people have higher expectations now, especially on luxury airlines like Emirates and Singapore. 

    • #18
  19. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Brickhouse Hank (View Comment):

    Gary McVey: In 1966, when most of 2001 was filmed, there was no viable way to put a television in every airline seat, due to the depth of the picture tube and demand for wattage. But Kubrick correctly bet that flat screen technologies would take over. He expertly faked the displays with concealed film projectors.

    On the other end of the scale I’m thinking here of the video phones from Space 1999. To get a roughly 2 inch square screen they’ve got a foot of depth to them, because of course you need the space to bend that electron beam. I suppose the idea that you could shrink everything else but you needed space for those cathode rays was reasonable.

    Sometime around 1972 the National Lampoon had a list of perennially promised things that never seemed to emerge, and one was flat screen TVs. There were laboratory models with extreme magnetic deflection that weren’t quite flat, but were roughly the form factor of a thick phone book. But they couldn’t get that design to work for color television, which was becoming standard. 

    • #19
  20. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. (View Comment):

    I find it interesting that technological advancement is erasing some of the distinctions that used to exist between various ways of watching movies. It used to be that a movie would typically go through three stages of availability, each defined by its delivery technology: first, film projected on a screen in a theater; second, home-video availability on tape or disc; finally, broadcast. I never really thought of in-flight movies as being another such delivery channel, but clearly it was. I imagine each one had its own very different business and legal framework.

    But now the distinctions seem to be falling away. A movie you see in a theater is just digital video projected on a very large screen. Sometimes the exact same video is available at the same time for pay-per-view home viewing. Eventually it becomes available for cheaper rental and eventually for streaming on a subscription service. And then on an ad-supported free service. But it’s the same digital video, delivered in essentially the same way. Showing movies on a plane used to require a complicated system with its own specialized engineers; now it’s basically just an adaptation of the same technology we all use to watch movies at home.

    Right you are! Film and TV weren’t siblings, but cousins, at best; their core technologies were very different. Now the differences are small.

    In theory, you could take a studio camera off the set of Gutfeld and use it to make a feature film. (In practice, you wouldn’t; the studio camera isn’t built for weather exposure, portable power supply, or equipped with attachment points for filters and other accessories used for films.)

    “Inflight” (the company name, like Kleenex, Xerox, and FedEx, became shorthand for the whole industry) had a distinct place in the film releasing timeline, as you point out. It generally fell after cable, but before home video. That fluctuated over the years. 

    • #20
  21. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Thanks, Gary, for bringing back some memories. After leaving college I worked for TWA as a flight attendant. I worked the European flights, or as it was called a line of time. On one 747 flight back to Boston we only had about 3o passengers. We decided that we would offer the passengers a double feature night. It was a time when the cabins featured different movies.

    We started one movie in the forward cabin and then invited the passengers to move to another cabin and started the second feature after the first one had ended. It was the most relaxed flight I ever worked.

    The worst flight was leaving Rome on a 747 with a full passenger load. Baggage handlers decided to stage a work-slow- down. They loaded that cargo hold one suitcase at a time. The pilot had to shut down the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) because it was burning up too much fuel. That meant no AC as we sat on the hardstand in Rome during the summer. We ran out of water somewhere over the Atlantic long before we landed at JFK.

    • #21
  22. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Doug Watt (View Comment):

    Thanks, Gary, for bringing back some memories. After leaving college I worked for TWA as a flight attendant. I worked the European flights, or as it was called a line of time. On one 747 flight back to Boston we only had about 3o passengers. We decided that we would offer the passengers a double feature night. It was a time when the cabins featured different movies.

    We started one movie in the forward cabin and then invited the passengers to move to another cabin and started the second feature after the first one had ended. It was the most relaxed flight I ever worked.

    The worst flight was leaving Rome on a 747 with a full passenger load. Baggage handlers decided to stage a work-slow- down. They loaded that cargo hold one suitcase at a time. The pilot had to shut down the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) because it was burning up too much fuel. That meant no AC as we sat on the hardstand in Rome during the summer. We ran out of water somewhere over the Atlantic long before we landed at JFK.

    A great story, Doug. Thanks for bringing us an insider perspective. 

    • #22
  23. Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr. Coolidge
    Bartholomew Xerxes Ogilvie, Jr.
    @BartholomewXerxesOgilvieJr

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    An old guy in the next row said “That’s a hell of a thing to show on an airplane”, and he was right.

    This is off-topic, but I can’t help thinking of the headline I saw in the United Airlines in-flight magazine in 2015. I don’t know how this got past the editors.

    • #23
  24. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    I recall an article in Lufthansa’s inflight magazine about weather and radar. “Tonight, Europe’s cities are concealed in fog. But we know how to find them!” Yeah, I think we’ve established that

    • #24
  25. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    A business note: Inflight had a domestic competitor in American Airlines’ Astrocolor, a slightly different 16mm film system, developed by Bell and Howell. I remember it from at least one PanAm flight in the Eighties. Unlike IMP’s system, which projected on to one large screen at the front of each cabin, Astrocolor had overhead “monitors” every few rows that looked like TV sets, but were film screens. The cabin didn’t need to be as dimly lit. 

    In its heyday, IMP had more than technology going for it; it had key relationships with film sellers in Hollywood and aviation regulators in Washington. Overseas competitors, like Germany’s Zeiss and Japan’s Eiki, were slowed by needing FAA approval, as well as plug-in compatibility with US-built Boeing, Douglas, and Lockheed aircraft.

    • #25
  26. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Near the end of the film era, Super 8 cartridges did the same job as 16mm, but in an easier-to-use format. An entire film fit on one cartridge, about the size of one of today’s laptops. Like an 8-track audio cartridge, it didn’t have to be rewound. Built for compactness, they were originally designed for use on naval vessels and had to be small enough for use in submarines. 

    Commercial aircraft turned out to be a much more lucrative market. But like every other aspect of Super 8 sound, this promising tech had too few years to shine. It came along too late, with video waiting to take its place.

    • #26
  27. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    Gary McVey: there’s a new twist in the 21st century: personal devices—phones, mostly—are enabling some airlines to phase out passenger displays altogether, replacing it with a Wi-Fi link to an onboard digital library. Still, the long-haul routes, especially in Business and First, will stick with seatbacks. Most people don’t want to hold their phone all day.

    I usually only fly a couple times a year – But on multiple occasions in the last year or two [and I want to say one of them was a long-haul to Hawaii] I’ve encountered a setup where instead of a screen the seatback in front of me has a clamp system capable of holding anything from a phone up to an ipad, so you can put your device up there and not have to have it on your lap or tray table.

     

    • #27
  28. Gossamer Cat Coolidge
    Gossamer Cat
    @GossamerCat

    I’m also remembering the time when you only got to see movies on American if the flight was over 4 hours long.  The flights between San Diego and Chicago were about 4 hours and it was 50:50 whether a film was shown.  I got a lot more reading done on planes in those days.

    • #28
  29. Judge Mental Member
    Judge Mental
    @JudgeMental

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    A business note: Inflight had a domestic competitor in American Airlines’ Astrocolor, a slightly different 16mm film system, developed by Bell and Howell. I remember it from at least one PanAm flight in the Eighties. Unlike IMP’s system, which projected on to one large screen at the front of each cabin, Astrocolor had overhead “monitors” every few rows that looked like TV sets, but were film screens. The cabin didn’t need to be as dimly lit. 

     

    I remember this one, most likely from when I was living in Dallas and flying nothing but AA.

    • #29
  30. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Judge Mental (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    A business note: Inflight had a domestic competitor in American Airlines’ Astrocolor, a slightly different 16mm film system, developed by Bell and Howell. I remember it from at least one PanAm flight in the Eighties. Unlike IMP’s system, which projected on to one large screen at the front of each cabin, Astrocolor had overhead “monitors” every few rows that looked like TV sets, but were film screens. The cabin didn’t need to be as dimly lit.

     

    I remember this one, most likely from when I was living in Dallas and flying nothing but AA.

    It lent itself well to twin-aisle planes. The TV set look made it seem a little more futuristic. The threading path was even more torturous than Inflight’s. I had to Google it, which I normally don’t have to do, and never knew about Bell and Howell. Makes sense: all Inflight did was buy and disassemble Kodak Pageant projectors for parts. So American Airlines went to the other big 16mm manufacturer. 

    • #30
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