35 mm Word Slides Technique (1980s)?

moranjr · Feb 3, 2020

Before PowerPoint science lectures were often given using "Black text on White background" or "White text on Blue background" 35mm slides.
Does anyone remember or have a reference how these slides were made? Film stock, developer, etc? Thank you.

Vaughn · Feb 3, 2020

I imagine they just photographed the printed words using color or B&W slide film. Keeping to the same film throughout would keep the 'look' (grain, color balance) the same. One can use something like litho film (it came is 35mm) and litho developer to get slides with either black or white (clear) with no greys. Just photograph the words the opposite way you want the end result...if you want black text on white background, photograph white text on a black background.

Edited to add; Just flashed back to one of my first shows (late '70s). I glued a 4x5 contact print onto a piece of 8x10 white matboard and used press-on letters (left over from Forestry Engineering classes -- same font, different sizes) for the show title, dates and other info. Then used my 4x5 to make a B&W negative of the results and used that to contact my show announcements (and a couple posters). Ahhhh, the student days!

tomkatf · Feb 3, 2020

The details are a bit hazy now but IIRC we used to make "blue slides" by photographing flat art text on a copy stand with 35mm Kodalith film, mounting those transparencies in 35mm slide mounts and then re-photographing the text slides in a color slide duplicator using the built in filter set to add color the the background... I think...lol

The color film in the duplicator would have been whatever the standard Kodak slide duping stock would have been at the time. Maybe 5071.

HTH, Tom

Larry Cloetta · Feb 3, 2020

When I was lecturing, and employed by a medical institution that had an audiovisual department, I would give them a list of title slides I wanted, and what colors I wanted the words to be. It might be a bullet point list where I wanted the heading to be one color and the following text to be in a different color. They would typeset whatever I wanted and photograph it. They would print the text out in black on a high gloss paper which was bright white. I don’t remember what the film was, but high enough contrast that the type/Letters came out as perfectly clear on a perfectly black background.
I might have chosen deep yellow for the heading and Prussian blue for the text, but it varied. Typeface could be anything I wanted.
Then they’d take a 000 brush and, on the now mounted slide, paint over the clear text with Dr. Martin’s transparent water color dye. Any dye which went outside the letter didn’t matter because the surrounding film was totally black and transmitted no light at all when projected. If I was in a hurry they’d just give me the slides and I’d color them in.
Results were beautiful.
And, yes, this was the Eighties.

MattKing · Feb 3, 2020

35mm Kodalith film, although regular slide film would do in a pinch.

David Brown · Feb 4, 2020

There was also Kodak's High Contrast Copy Film. It would give you white on black, but could be re-photographed for the reverse.

Doremus Scudder · Feb 4, 2020

I used to do this for film-strip projectors (remember those). They are half-frame, so you would need a half-frame camera, 35mm lith film (or high-contrast copy film... not sure what I actually used back then), a good copy stand and nice black-and-white text originals (black text on white). The film then reversed the tones giving high-contrast white text on a black background. Several 36-exposure rolls (72 exp. half-frame) were needed for the text for an opera or musical for projected supertitles. I never did the color thing, just projected white text.

Best,

Doremus

DREW WILEY · Feb 4, 2020

I did it. Copystand and hard black and white printed copy, label maker or rub-down type or whatever, often clumsy back then. Ordinary typewriters gave an El Cheapo look (why bother). Then you made a high contrast slide on Tech Pan, ideal in this case. This would yield negative clear white type against a black background. Sandwiched with a colored acetate gel, it gave colored type. Registered slide mounts and a matching little Gepe punch were often used unless you owned a relatively rare sprocket-hole-registered Nikon for high-volume commercial applications. Type appearing on projected images was also routine, but a little more complicated to do, but actually fun.

jtk · Feb 4, 2020

Fwiw Canon F1 were always sprocket registered and designed to make multiple exposures...that's why I dumped Nikon for Canon.

BrianShaw · Feb 4, 2020

MattKing said:
35mm Kodalith film, although regular slide film would do in a pinch.

This...

we used Ektachrome.

copy art was mostly rub-on lettering. You have no idea how much I appreciate PowerPoint after living through the olden days!

once I even used the a Polaroid instant 35mm polablue I think it was called. That was a fiddle system that didn’t seem to last long.

titrisol · Feb 4, 2020

moranjr said:
Before PowerPoint science lectures were often given using "Black text on White background" or "White text on Blue background" 35mm slides.
Does anyone remember or have a reference how these slides were made? Film stock, developer, etc? Thank you.

The black on white or white on black were BW film (clear base)
And sometimes copy of negatives (to obtain a positive)

For color I loved using slide film and x-processing to obtain many different colored backgrounds, AGFA slide film was pretty awesome to obtain nice color combinations
I made a lot of money making those!

White paper + Black letters = Blue background+white letters
Different filters resulted in different backgrounds and you could even have graudated backgrounds

msage · Feb 5, 2020

Blue text slides were made with slide film (E-6) and cross processing in C-41. We made a ton of those back in the day!

Neil Grant · Feb 6, 2020

moranjr said:
Before PowerPoint science lectures were often given using "Black text on White background" or "White text on Blue background" 35mm slides.
Does anyone remember or have a reference how these slides were made? Film stock, developer, etc? Thank you.

...a common technique for 'blue-on-white' was to photograph a black-on-white original onto Kodalith ortho 35mm. Then contact print the neg onto diazo film in a UV light box, then 'develop' in NH3 vapour.

KenS · Feb 6, 2020

moranjr said:
Before PowerPoint science lectures were often given using "Black text on White background" or "White text on Blue background" 35mm slides.
Does anyone remember or have a reference how these slides were made? Film stock, developer, etc? Thank you.

They were "Diazo"... contact printed onto a UV sensitive 'plastic' sheet and 'developed using 'ammomia' fumes .
I made thousands of them in the good old 'stinky' days

Ken

mshchem · Feb 6, 2020

Lasergraphics made film recorders that would write to slide film. I rescued trays for my Carousel, somewhere I have a box of these slides, I saved them for the fancy glass mounts. There must have been hundreds of millions of these slides made.
Our company had a amazing 6 projector setup for sales training, thankfully I had nothing to do with it..

35 mm Word Slides Technique (1980s)?

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