SCANLINE: The Power of VHS
Hey folks!
Like I mentioned, I've been working with Shannon Strucci on a new series of video essays exploring film stuff! Here's the first one, covering the lingering effects of the VHS format on film culture. I'd quite like for this series to be regular every month, so let me know what you think!
I get asked quite often to do more stuff covering film analysis, so I think this series will be a way of doing that while being a little more academic. Shannon and both like the idea of sharing new ways of approaching films over simply telling people what we thought of them. The next vid in the series will probably cover that most contentious of artistic concepts, the death of the author, in relation to movies. Hopefully by the end of this series people will be lulled into enough of sense of security that no-one will notice we're tricking people into becoming pretentious film nerds.
The next completed video might be the next Serious Lore Analysis, but it might be something else! Depends on if I can get my car fixed tomorrow, lol.
Comments (18)
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
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. ;)
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.
Interesting stuff!
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!
You're not gonna lose ME by way of contrarian opinions. I am here FOR your contrarian opinions. Also for your pretty face <3
A friend of mine from my old job in Atlanta was actually in the horror movie you mentioned V-H-S.
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!
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
I genuinely love this.
Holy crap, you featured "The Prisoner"!!