Faux Film Projector

This is a project I took on last year but I thought I’d post something about it now as I just found some (poor) photos of it. I was asked to make a digital projector look like a 16mm film projector and to create content to project that was treated to look like film. This post focuses on what turned out to be the most interesting part of the project – the reels themselves.

Since the projector was to project a circular image onto a circular screen I could turn the projector on it’s side without any issue. This was the starting point. I cut some sheet metal to match the base of the projector with some mounting holes. The sheet metal would act as a chassis of sorts, for attaching the reels and a mount to and also to hide the ugly plastic underbelly.

The reels were made of plastic reels used as packaging for rope lighting which I procured from a friend. The photos pretty much tell the rest of the story from here – they may be useful for someone trying to do something similar.

The combination of flickering light from the projector, a fake lens barrel and the turning reels made a pretty convincing film projector to the unobservant eye and the drunk (it was in a nightclub after all). I’ve not included final images as they are branded almost out of existence.