American Cinematographer 1960s Archives

 Recently I've been looking at more American Cinematographer articles, and eventually found the edition that I've been looking for online, the March 1968 edition with the article, Creating the "psychedelic" visual effects for The Trip, written by Bob Beck, who was in charge of the lighting and visual effects in the film. His approach to film originally came from working on lightships and his work on the short film Voyage Omega, and Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.

Here are the main notes I took for this article:

• 
  the light shows “Consisted of slide projections with color wheels rotating in front of them, and overhead projectors, which projected what are now called ‘liquid shows’ (a splashing of liquid between watch-crystal dishes’ - look into how to achieve this now (this is also mentioned as a technique in the Electric Kool Aid Acid test)
• Had two build new stone lights to be up to the specs of what the movie called for
• 
  8 strobes synced at slightly different rates
• “This solved the problem of synchronising the flash to the camera, for we then had a statistical chance of getting at least two or three flashed on any particular frame as the shutter was open
• For the visuals - “we used a color organ projecting the onto a small rear-projection screen.” Started with a two channel unit then expanded to a four channel unit “the tones, frequencies and intensities of musical notes served to modulate lamps that were mounted behind red, green, and blue filters - which were then reflected from a broken mirror segments onto a screen” - find out if there is any way to create an effect similar to this, or at least more examples. 
• Used dreams and symbols recored by carl Jung
• Images were photographed on high contrast black and white film
• His book: LIGHTSHOW MANUAL
• Photographed painting by Dr Henry Hill to project on the actors bodies during the love scene
• Main titles were made with 35mm slide of the title cards and superimposing them over the effects of the color organ + kaleidoscope projection
• The rapid images rush past the metal “censors” and go directly into the unconscious
• Beck
  believes that all of these light effects should be kept separate from the psychedelic label, because of the stigmatisation 
• “The term ‘psychedelic’ is almost meaningless now. More than that, it has overtones of mental involvements that cast a shadow over any field in which it is associated.”