Archive for March 5th, 2021

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 339

Friday, March 5th, 2021

Today, a couple of takes from the industrial film genre.

“Aluminum on the March”, from 1956. I think a lot of the effects in this are really kind of trippy.

“What’s It To You?” from 1955. This one is a DuPont promotional film for the then new revolutionary product mylar. This doesn’t have the trippy artistic effects of the previous film, but it does have some neat demonstrations: see mylar stop a bowling ball! See mylar resist acid! (Props to the presenter, too, for putting on PPE before handling the acids. I’ve seen too many of these videos that leave me wondering: dude, where’s your eye protection?)

In 1955 Eastman Kodak used Mylar as a support for photographic film and called it “ESTAR Base”. The very thin and tough film allowed 6,000-foot (1,800 m) reels to be exposed on long-range U-2 reconnaissance flights.
In 1964, NASA launched Echo II, a 40-metre (131 ft) diameter balloon constructed from a 9-micrometre (0.00035 in) thick mylar film sandwiched between two layers of 4.5-micrometre (0.00018 in) thick aluminium foil bonded together.