Documentaries And Doing It For Real 

Apparently it's the current aesthetic. I was irked recently watching a show were they referred to old footage of an event but every time they did so it was overlaid with a damaged film effect, I guess just to show that it was old. I've seen the original footage before and I KNOW it's really a lot clearer than that. I just found their post-processing to be distractingn and irritating.

They probably wouldn't even know how to use a VCR. Surely they couldn't set the clock on one.

Yes, and shame on the video editors who are guilty of commiting the video atrocity of BBC (Blow-up, Blur, Crop) 4:3 videos and 4:3 films (or 4:3 films transferred to video) to fill the 16:9 frame. Doing "click to fill" may look OK on a computer screen (other than the unnaturally overly large image) but on a TV it frequently turns into blurry mush. They take standard definition video and reduce it to substandard definition. They are also altering/censoring the carefully composed and framed images by the historical photographers, cinematographers, and videographers.

i tried explaining to my dad about the "soap opera effect", and that movies look like shit on his tv, but he couldn't tell the difference. those things can drive me crazy!

VHS tape video? I think Ms Mad Lemon does that, then she digitizes it. Old school feel!

Love that story. As a post supervisor, I can tell you they were putting a lot of trust in your creative vision when they let you send in that footage that way. No going back from that. The advantage to highres capture and digital processing is you can always change it later. But your way has many benefits, including being able to tell the EP "that's a reshoot, we can't change it" when they ask for some little tweak on your footage :)

I just watched the (underrated IMO) film A Scanner Darkly which is done in a software version of rotoscope and I feel that many of the processed old films are approaching this aesthetic. The original Alien movie was ruined by post processing for me.

That's why I like the VWestlife channel, he actually shows the cassette being played in the actual cassette player you're listening to. Same for a VHS tape or whatever he's making a video about. That's the whole point, you've got the cassette and you want people to hear what's on the cassette, you've got to record it, so why not just plug it into the camera and record it with that? It actually saves you effort because you don't have to go find the appropriate stock footage, then spend time editing that sequence. Just record it in camera, dump the clip onto the timeline and you're done.

I must also say, I have noticed an entire generation of young people (younger than I) who design games and video with those “VHS filters” plastered all over it. Not only is it extremely distracting and takes valuable processing power, but it feels like a cheap imitation: they are nostalgic but doing this kind of cherry-picking about how they perceive the technology, without really understanding the nuances.

This kind of mischief has been going on for YEARS. I remember about 15 years ago of some show with skydiving, they included "vintage skydiving" from later 1980s and on the video they overlayed scratches like you would see in 16mm film. But yet I recognized the gear of those years and nobody used film, it was video. I also see this same thing on Facebook where they use techniques to make celebrities look pristine. Example appreciation group of Gina Lollobrigida post photos of her in her later years where all the blemishes are removed as if she has skin just like in her 20s. No, she was still very beautiful even with the wrinkles. And then it seems to get worse as "photos" of various people I don't know but there's something artificial and it looks creepy.

I find movie restoration fascinating. Over on Vimeo there's an interesting documentary called 'Gone With the Wind: Restoring a Legend' - the way in which the three-strip Technicolor film was brought back into realignment is amazing.

I completely agree. So cool that you could use VHS and amaze people with it :) The TV "improvements" issue is real. I once saw something familiar on TV and starting to see the familiar characters... what, is there a TV series made out of Notting Hill?? No. It was the movie. With cold white balance, framerate up... Yes the image was good, movements were really good, but it just looked cheap. There were so many settings and seems per input. I think eventually I got every enhancement turned off. There is this need to sell new things and also the thought of the promise of new technology. It has its place, but mixing old material and new technology may always be problematic. The same with music production. We're having outstanding tools even at home but for some reason most of the music is using less dynamic range than ever.

Also stock footage of VU meters, or even PPM meters (Not sure if they caught on in the US) Waveform or spectrum visualisations that do not correlate to the audio. Oh, and RU-vid videos with all the white space edited out. Just sayin' Fran!

There is definitely something to be said for doing it for real. I could get a plugin for audacity to add distortion or whatever, but it's just not the same as pressing the button on the pedal, or in photography, I could apply a radial blur in photoshop to get a similar effect to this cheap lens, but it's literally not the same. I saw a picture my friend had taken of some food they'd made, and it had fake depth of field on it. People notice these little details either consciously or subconsciously. I've forgotten where I was going with this... I guess, when it's a product, and they've used a shortcut like AI upscaling instead of rescanning the film, you feel like you've been ripped off, it's cheapened the experience.

There is a total gen gap now of people who have never used or had any exposure to tape, even cassettes or VHS, and they can't get their heads around it, and as more an more of it is thrown to the kerb, they mostly never will. Also, owning such things has become such an inconvenience for most people (because it's not a super thin computer of phablet touch-surface thing that will break in a year or two and be replaced), even in film and effects production houses - exactly the places that should be holding onto such things for authenticity sake. These machines always have way more possibilities than their intended usage as well. VHS has been used a lot in musical applications. Mostly they find extended life with electronics geeks and musicians / musical production studios that have the resources (which become fewer and fewer), I suppose.

the only automated "post processing" effect that really impressed me was in my current TV. It's one of the first affordable LED 3D TVs and has a "3D" button, even if the original footage is not 3D. It does surprisingly work very well to create a 3D view of the 2D TV signal. But right now, with the AI upscaling, I'm pretty sure the only reason they use it is that it is cheaper than any re-scan would be.

I agree about the creepiness in new documentaries, it makes me turn them off even if the topic is worthwhile. I have thought for years the harder better way would be to get duplicate optics for a digital camera and an older format so there is a useful training set to teach the robot what the proper result should be. The way the tools are used now it is trained to be more better makes for artificial hallucinogenic effects.

I agree on the needless/creepy upscaling and soap opera effect. But who cares about stock footage of a cassette? How could you possibly even know whether you're watching footage of the actual cassette being played back in sync with the sound?

Actually one time I saw a video of The Cowsills and it was some sort of AI rendering and it made them look like an oil painting and in reading the comments other people said similar. I find the old VHS resolution quite nice to look at for some reason like the footage you showed hear of the C64.

I have been going through and weeding out some of my old VHS and CDs . I am keeping my favorite but i always wonder if people are going to miss having hard copys for their self one day. Almost everyone i know has gotten rid of all of their's.

I could not agree more!

Smoothing and refining the reality out of filming a real life actor...

I'd be happy with a set of Bose speakers, a pioneer amp, and a technics turntable.

📺 👀👂

Upscaling with computers will get better.

Invisible hands typing on the C64?

Thank you for your perspective on this :)

My Hope Is that Fran lab continues into the future good luck.

LIke the Roto-Scoped movies...."A Scanner Darkly" for example (it was good)...AI is a big nope from me...I find so many AI generated RU-vid videos...easy to spot with the narration, repeating the same thing, using random pictures that don't even match the topic...it's all crap.

👍🏻 Great episode and points Fran. Dig the 63’ Vibroverb in the background 🏄🏻‍♂️ One of these days I would love to feature a surf song of your’s from back in the day on my RU-vid show “Beyond the Surf” please shoot me a message at your convenience. -Kyle

Thanks for talking about this Fran! More people need to know that more doesn't equal better with resolution and fps. I know it confused me until i was shown. The most jarring example of increased resolution making things somewhat off is modern sitcoms after the switch to HD, it actually detracts from the show. Now their at it with awful AI!

i watched my favourite film Alien on a 4K widescreen tv a year ago. I could see the paint brush strokes on the spaceship models. Ruined the film for me :(

I've been working in audio preservation, remastering rare back catalog music for over a decade. When I first started I was trying to upgrade everything, keeping the process as linear as possible but nevertheless trying to bring things up to a modern standard of audio quality. I learned a valuable lesson as some point, the more information you feed our minds, the less our imagination is excited. The experience of reading books is the best indicator of this. Upgrading recordings from another time and place is especially bad because it destroys a lot of value in the recording, the era it comes from, an important part of the experience. I've experienced this when I've watched recent re-issues of old movies I loved in the 80s, if they haven't applied this understanding, they're just not as enjoyable. Now that I have applied this understanding for years, I appreciate what a powerful concept it is even as a creative principal in the arts. Also, the capability of technology really messes with people's heads. Just because you can do something new and amazing, doesn't mean it's a good thing to do. BTW I appreciate the way you preserve old film on here, Fran, thanks.

Cool Kaossilator on the bench!

I can't stand watching movies on a TV with the soap opera effect. It's like your watching someone's live feed through their hi-def home video camera. Too real looking.

100% agree

Pretty in pink. 🙂

Yes ma'am, 100% agree.