Double Feature
O. Winston Link Brought to Life
Welcome to New Jersey, where the drive-in theater was born. Located near Camden, the first one opened in 1933 and had a capacity of 500 cars. Regrettably it wasn't profitable, and closed three years later. This diorama faces an uncertain future due mostly to the fact that I don't have enough vehicles to populate it, nor do I have the budget to get what I need.
At any rate, it's been
a longstanding dream of mine to create a proper drive-in, so when the idea hit me to do one as a diorama, the project got pushed to the top
of the to-do list. What's a "proper" drive-in? It's one where the image is actually projected onto the screen with a video projector
(right), instead of using a miniature LCD display, which is not at all convincing. Using actual projection, I can make a freestanding scale size screen.
The 12 inch square diorama might include a bit of railroad track, inspired by the famous O. Winston Link photograph from 1956, Night Train and Drive-In Movie Theater, although this isn't set in stone at this point.
Below is a scratchbuilt 20 x 30 scale foot screen—which is really small as drive-in screens go (they're usually 50-100 feet wide), but it looks "right":
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On 10 October 2021 I made a case for the diorama from Gatorfoam.
The box features a slot for a cheapie little DVD player ($20).
The box needs to be tall because of the projector optics, although it did make it convenient to manage the 110V wiring.
Reference
One advantage of this project over the prior iteration is that, back then, I was locked into a particular design for the drive-in; doing this as a diorama allows me to freelance everything. I can be as kitsch as I dare, although little out-in-the-sticks drive-ins like this one will be fairly low-key.
