Subliminal message

[VCRClock]

I know there's one in here, but I just can't put my finger on it... boy, am I ever hungry!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=i6zunuCWRPw

[Bigglesnoots]

Yeah, if stare at the hamburger carefully, you'll see bits and pieces of a movie!

[Blue]

Heh, they made fun of subliminal messaging, even back then when it was legal.

Unfortunately, this stuff is illegal nowadays.

Projectionists for small theaters back in the day would be asked to integrate a frame or two of snack bar ads at the changeover points. The theater owners would also pipe some of the exhaust from the popcorn poppers into the theater hall.

See back then it took 2 projectors to play a whole movie. This was because of 2 things: 1) movies came in reels (and still do in most places) of 10-20 min each, and 2) They sent massive voltage through carbon to create bright electrical arcs as a light source. This light source was so primitive back then that they often had to use new carbon through the movie to keep the image bright.

So, every 10 minutes or so there would be a "change over", as mentioned in Fight Club, where the scene changes, and then you are watching the next part of the film from a different projector and it all seems fairly seamless.

An interesting fact: Being a projectionist was a very dangerous career for a while, because of the heat created by the burning carbon, and the fact that all film back then was silver-nitrate based, meaning that it was so flammable that it would burn underwater if ignited. If the projector's motor failed for some reason, causing the film to stop moving for so much as a second, the film would begin burning with extreme heat, and like a fuse would run up into the reel setting the whole thing alight. Many projectors made of solid steel have melted due to this problem. Today, you can still have a 10k-watt quartz Xenon bulb explode in your face like a small grenade, but that's nothing compared to being burned alive.