Scopitone
Scopitone refers to a type of jukebox that, however, worked with 16-millimeter material in color with a magnetic track and is therefore in principle the forerunner of today's video clips . So you didn't just play pieces of music, but films that were set to music using a projector attachment.
The first Scopitone was produced in France by the company Cameca on Blvd Saint Denis from Courbevoie and spread in French restaurants from 1959 .
The individual pieces of music were about three minutes long, of which about 1500 variants were made. The production costs of the films were extremely low, but effects were achieved that were on a par with modern video clips. Often the performers did not have more than two hours of shooting time. For example, there was Serge Gainsbourg 's “Le poinçonneur des Lilas”, which was filmed in 1958 in the Porte des Lilas metro station . Johnny Hallyday sang a cover version of Los Bravos ; "Noir c'est noir" and Hully Gully performed a dance around a swimming pool .
Scopitones gradually spread in Germany , too, and played pieces by the Kessler twins there, for example ; including the piece "Quando, Quando".
The devices finally reached the United States of America via Great Britain . They were introduced there in 1964 by Alvin Ira Malnik and Maurice Uchitel in the bars of New York City , which would quickly reach 500 in the same year. By 1966, as many as 800 pieces were counted in bars and nightclubs across the country, costing around US $ 3,500 each.
As early as the late 1960s, the popularity of the Scopitones fell significantly in general, until the production of suitable films was discontinued in 1978.
The only remaining Scopitone that is still open to the public in the United States in 2006 is said to be in the Belcourt Theater in Nashville , Tennessee .
Web links
- Images of the Scopitone
- Scopitone: 16mm film for jukeboxes
- Scopitones - The noisy chests in one day
- Scopitone archive site scopitones.blogs.com - With Scopitone films, web links and information (in English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article on Forum des Images , February 2003 (French) ( Memento from November 20, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ David Galassie: Scoptione - The Visual Jukebox ( Memento of 7 August 2007 at the Internet Archive ). loti.com, accessed September 6, 2008
- ↑ Cinema Juke Box: Just a Novelty? . In: Billboard , July 10, 1965. Retrieved November 7, 2012.