WOODLAND – A team of New York City filmmakers will produce a short documentary of the last night of film projection at the Super 322 Drive-In Theatre.
The film will feature Bill and Barb Frankhouser, the drive-in’s owners, as they thread up film for the last time. Bill Frankhouser has done this for many decades but for the last time in September.
The Frankhousers watched a “major community effort” unfold to raise money for a digital projector. Many area businesses and WPSU Radio raised awareness about the Frankhouser’s digital transition at the drive-in.
The film follows Bill Frankhouser’s dilemma in transitioning to digital projection. The couple’s endeavor requires more than a $100,000 investment, as Bill Frankhouser must also get new equipment.
Bill Frankhouser will bid his farewell to the tools he’s used for more than 40 years at the drive-in. “It’s a film about what we lose with technological advance and the unusually close friendship between a man and his machines,” stated David Ketterer of the Mount Lawrence Film Group LLC.
Ketterer and his crew members Connor Lynch and Andy Stein traveled to Woodland to capture Bill Frankhouser’s last night projecting film on Sept. 15. The film, Ketterer said, is currently in post-production and tentatively scheduled to screen at the start of the Super 322 Drive-In’s 2014 season on its brand new digital projector.