United Air Lines

VISITORS to the United Air Lines Exhibit in the Travel and Transportation Pavilion are ushered into a plush, compact little red and blue theater where the Saul Bass' film production, From Here to There, is shown by a special Reevesound motion picture projection system.

The system includes a 35mm Simplex XL projector equipped with a Strong Arc X-16 light source and single-track Ampex magnetic sound reproducer, a 50 watt Fairchild power amplifier and a 27 amp Strong Arc Rectifier.

The 35mm film uses the big Cinemascope image to relate the story of a United jet enroute from Los Angeles, soaring cross-country and arriving at an East Coast destination. The film begins in narrow-image format which gradually enlarges to the full wide-image dimension as the plane takes off from the Pacific Coast.

This transition from narrow to wide-image is an effect printed onto the film. It is accomplished by control tones, carried by the single sound track, which trigger curtains

at either side of the screen, causing them to move out as the plane ascends. Accurate timing permits the expanding screen image to precede by one second the opening of the traveling curtain, thus providing a continuous clean picture edge.

As the story nears its conclusion and the filmed image of the United plane begins its descent, the curtains begin to close, retuning the screen again to narrow-image format. As this action takes place, the printed image follows the curtain by approximately one second to maintain the clean picture edge.