SCANLINE: The Power of VHS

This one was VERY cool. :D Only just now binge-watched a pile of your videos but oops it turns out we're all super here for you doing elaborate and excellent media criticism. :D Also, I SEE HANNIBAL FOOTAGE. And it was probably just because the filmic quality of that show made it PERFECT for the argument you were making in that segment, but I find myself burning with curiosity and would do things I'm absolutely not proud of to hear your thoughts on that show. :D

Jon Cantwell

Hey, I hate to be the person who whines about not being in the credits, but I've missed the last couple. I usually wouldn't complain about not being associated with a prequellian, but I am anyway. ;)

MBT Yu-Gi-Oh!

I'm surprised you didn't bring up Beyond the Black Rainbow when you actually used the soundtrack at 1:55 Director Panos Cosmatos said this about it: "When I was a kid I wasn’t allowed to watch R-rated films but I would spend hours at the video store just looking at the box covers of the horror and the science fiction films and imagining my own versions of them without seeing them. Remembering that time was the inspiration of the film — the idea of making a remembered or imagined film."

This is a beautiful analysis of why VHS made me love movies. Thank you for finally putting this into words, Bomberguy. Also, hell yeah to all the Prisoner footage. That show still seems like it was made on a different planet and beamed to us to try and deal with.

If you've never seen "This House Has People in It" by Alan Resnick, I think you might find it interesting. I heard in an interview with the people who made it that they specifically used the VHS aesthetic to invoke a feeling of nostalgia and trust, similar to home videos. Since the video starts out very normal and eventually gets quite disturbing and bizarre, the fact that they invoked the sentiment of home videos makes the later scenes much more creepy than they otherwise would have been. Good video all around, though. I never thought about VHS' impact on pop culture before, and I enjoyed learning about it.

Nice. This only reinforces my long standing suspicion that you are, in fact, Kidd Video from the 80s. (intro here, note the cutting edge technology: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnKCGMaA3pg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnKCGMaA3pg</a> ) Be less obvious about it, maybe.

(Hbomb: Is the horizontal/vertical resolution graphics mix-up at 2:20 one of the tiny things on your list?) :) Never been a fan of the VHS aesthetic, though the effect is undeniable, and no doubt this is the reason why Danny Boyle filmed "28 Days Later..." on VHS (even if I really wish he hadn't). I am reminded of David Simon describing the challenges of making a HD version of "The Wire": "Choices are made at the point of composing every shot and filming every shot that do not merely involve the width and length of the frame, but the depth and definition of the image." Even before changing the aspect ratio, just going to HD suddenly revealed everything from the black ink on Andre Royo's teeth to dead people breathing; all things that mattered less in the SD version. (All of <a href="http://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos</a> is recommended reading, including Simon's comments in the comment section.) On a related tangent: As a _distribution_ format for _movies_, 2K is honestly enough for everybody. The current 4K (or even 8K) push from electronics manufacturers and content providers is just a ridiculous money grab: To this day, the vast majority of movies are only mastered in 2K, meaning that when consumers buy "4K" equipment or content, they're just be paying for digitally upscaled video without any added detail. Even "Spider-Man: Homecoming", which Apple used as an example when announcing their new 4K initiative is only mastered in 2K. Ridiculous.

Søren

Interesting stuff!

Dave

I really enjoyed this change of pace. It's surprisingly rare to find YouTube videos that take the time to explain film history and concepts instead of just bashing on bad films so I'm glad you two are putting so much time and effort into it :)

I don't know if anyone else has pointed this out but 'Mallrats' was produced and distributed by Gramercy Pictures, not Miramax. Probably not worth editing the video to correct. Great video by the way!

Jobe

You're not gonna lose ME by way of contrarian opinions. I am here FOR your contrarian opinions. Also for your pretty face &lt;3

A friend of mine from my old job in Atlanta was actually in the horror movie you mentioned V-H-S.

Gabriel Costa (Hired Sword)

actually, the Aliens thing is even funnier because despite that commercial being on the commercial release, I only had like a Channel 4 TV edit of Aliens where they took out all the no-no words as well!

Samael

You're always full of surprises and this was a very welcome one. I mean, sometimes the surprises are "300 was satire and good" but this is one of the nice surprises, at least! Also holy shit, I remember exactly that "WIDE SCREEN" ad on tapes in the 90s. Somehow I hadn't seen Diehard any way but that trailer and inexplicably playing Nakatomi Plaza until I realized I'd never seen it in my 20s.

Samael

Great work. Covers a lot of themes I've been thinking about lately regarding VHS tape. I thought it was funny that you contrast glitchy VHS tapes with a "clean" viewing experience in a theater, since I remember film projection in the 80s/90s being pretty glitchy too: dust, hairs in the projector, out of focus, etc. Love the mention of how TV used to be a great medium for closeups. I miss that.

I had initially put clips of that in but we cut them in favor of our own thing with Rebel Without a Cause. But it's a great doc!

Shannon Strucci

Haha oh dang! Great minds think alike!!

Shannon Strucci

I remember watching the mini-documentary on TCM all the time about Pan and Scan and how it turned movies like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Ben-Hur into psychotically cut pieces of footage, and how it always influenced me to buy widescreen versions of everything.

Katherine Wild

Well shit. I have a video coming out this week that mentions something kinda similar to the horror movie bit. Ill have to bring your video up in my video as a sorta expanded version.

This is great! I've thought a lot about how those pan-and-scan cuts were THE versions of a film for most viewers. I feel like the unspoken thesis of this video is "the medium is the message," in a very literal sense. I'm so excited for more!

Needs less Kurt. Very Kurt-heavy episode, imo

Shannon Strucci

With two animators for parents VHS and the story telling through its visual language played a very prominent roll in my upbrining, so this video was like getting some light shed on an integral part of my childhood. Also, great ending.

Tam Elle

I really like this video! The only thing I'd change is that you state the impact of lower resolution VHS stuff on horror movies perhaps a bit too much in some places, it feels a bit redundant at times.

This felt like coming home, in the very best sense of the word.

Ruben Rydell-Sandgren

Excellent video. Only problem I had was the dismissal of 4K's advantages on smaller screens. You can make supersampled 1080p footage from a 4K source, which improves image quality as each 1080p pixel has 4x as many samples to average out for an image. Not only that, 4K allows great pan and scan quality at 1080p without degrading the image, allowing better shot composition in post. I think making a low effort joke of "4K on a phone" is a bit too damaging for that aside, as you are generally quite empathetic to the viewpoints of others.

KarmaKat

I genuinely love this.

Avery Penn

Holy crap, you featured "The Prisoner"!!