Brief 1977 film about laserists and their craft. Dude.

From “The Night the Lights Went Out in Griffith Park,” an L.A. Times article about the first laser-light show for the masses, in 1973: “Before the lights go down, the creator of Laserium, Ivan Dryer, is introduced and receives a lengthy standing ovation. The 62-year-old filmmaker with an astronomy and engineering background saw his first ‘laser light show’ in November 1970, when he was invited to film a demonstration by a Caltech scientist who’d been using a laser in her off hours to create artwork. A month later, he approached officials at the Griffith Park Observatory, where he’d once worked as a guide, with the idea of putting on a show there. For three years, the answer was no, but a new administration warmed to the idea, and Laserium was born.

‘When we first started, there were a whole lot of mistakes to be made,’ recalls Dryer, a tall, wizened, Ichabod Crane of a man. ‘We found that if we made mistakes on cue, on the beat, that was OK with the audience.’There was ‘The John Effect’–if too many toilets were flushed in the bathroom, the water pressure in the water-cooled ion gas laser (which reaches a core temperature of 5,000 degrees) would fail. Dryer also recounts the time his then-partner accidentally touched a high-voltage wire and shocked himself during a show, the audience believing the screaming was part of the entertainment. Similarly, when a fly landed on the lumia lens and began crawling around it, casting a giant sci-fi insect form on the ceiling, the crowd cheered wildly at the clever effect. Rather than swat it away, Dryer says, ‘we wished we could train it and hire it for future shows.’

In the intervening 28 years, laser technology and techniques improved, glitches were removed and new versions came along–Laser Rock, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin, Lollapalaser and the final incarnation, Laser Visions, which features ambient/ techno/electronica a la Orb, Enya and Vangelis.”