Ableton Forum

Suggestions for fun things to do with an old slide projector?

i.e. mood setters, visualz, etc.

tey getting a pair and overlap images. fun stuff.

That does sound like fun. Overlapping/blending cool.

thanks. hope to see one of your shows sometime.

any other budget tips?

You can make fantastic psychedelic projections. Try the following:

Get empty slides with glass-framing. Get some colour-filter foil-sheets, the one they use for stage lights. Get transparent glue that has lots of solvent (the one they use for sniffing).

Cut the colour-foils into pieces and put them into the slides. Add some drops of glue. Close the slide and put it into the projector.

Enjoy.

buy cheap slides from car boot sales, thrift stores

get a remote control for switching through a carousel while you're playing live

buy two, mount them on top of the turntables and get them spinning around the venue blinding people

make your own lenses out of toilet roll and cheap sunglasses

buy ohp pens and pre cut acetane squares, and get people to draw there illustrations on them

drops of colored oil and water (or kerosene) between glass frames. No idea if that would work, but it sounds like it could be cool.

Great suggestions! Any one else? I want to create a blurry field of stars kinda thing. Any suggestions there? I think I'll have to experiment.

first of all it is cheap to produce slides with an analog camera.
you can take pictures of everything you can display on your
lcd/laptop-screen.

i once saw an artist creating visuals for a band with 4 slide projectors.
the projectors were placed one on top of another, all projecting on the same
place. in front of the lenses he had different wheels with blends turning the slide on and off or with parts of old glasses rotating in front of the lens.
he turned the wheels on and off with a simple power plug switch, the slides
where changed using a (very) old laptop - don´t know how he did that.
afterwards he told me that he works like that with up to 16 projectors.

amazing !

continuous wrote:Great suggestions! Any one else? I want to create a blurry field of stars kinda thing. Any suggestions there? I think I'll have to experiment.

When I had a band a few years ago, we did slides, usually one or two per a song, depending on the music. I did a lot of photoshop work, all of our flyers and stickers, etc, and encorporated similar imagery on the slides. They were about $5 a slide. For one track, I found a really good resolution pic online of a nebula. It looked sweet in the dark.

Each slide was like a different backdrop. It felt continuous (hahah pun intended) throughout the show.

I'm getting some good ideas here... I have a show on december 20th, and I might (!) need to vj it myself too.

5$ each slide ?
it is quite expensive if you want to deliver digital data and get slides.
just take a mirror-reflex-camera (don´t know how to translate that from german) and take pictures of anything you like displayed on your lcd/laptop-screen using a slide-film. the film is about 3 euros and the development cost around 4 euros for 28 slides...

glu wrote:

continuous wrote:Great suggestions! Any one else? I want to create a blurry field of stars kinda thing. Any suggestions there? I think I'll have to experiment.

When I had a band a few years ago, we did slides, usually one or two per a song, depending on the music. I did a lot of photoshop work, all of our flyers and stickers, etc, and encorporated similar imagery on the slides. They were about $5 a slide. For one track, I found a really good resolution pic online of a nebula. It looked sweet in the dark.

Each slide was like a different backdrop. It felt continuous (hahah pun intended) throughout the show.

Mmmm the nebula idea is inspiring. That's what I'm trying to make...backdrops slowly changing etc.

Also love the suggestion of getting in there and making slides by hand/ spilling liquids on slides etc. Sounds fun.

I watched the movie CQ this week. There was this scene where a character is pouring colored liquids into an aquarium and filming them as they billow about. Kinda old school compared to vj stuff but cool anyhow.

I've seen people put mirrors around tv's and film the refracted results.

Cheap electric motor attached to a 2-bladed cardboard 'propeller' in front of the lens, couple of projectors overlaid, one w/ the prop, one without (oils maybe?)> strobo-flashback madness. Any kind of alteration ie speed changer on the motor=further mind damage. Love this shit, this+small dark room+good sound+lots of scratchy old acid house=the way back into the future. Damn I'm getting a semi just thinking about it

make animal and bird shapes with yours hands infront of the lense. nothing like a big hand eagle trying to attack.

Just print computer graphics on plastic film (the corporate slide show type) with a ink jet printer, cut and mount. Won't match the quality of the 5$ pictures above, but as long as you are going for abstract graphics it could work.