Mission Impossible’s Tape Recorders #3
It’s been quite the wait, but finally, here’s Part 3 of my series looking at the tape recorders used to provide the briefings at the start of the original Mission Impossible TV series.
https://youtu.be/Uejdf_XTBT0
If anyone wants to see the earlier instalments…
Part 1 is here: https://youtu.be/6DNAmDYiu6k
Part 2 is here: https://youtu.be/8VQfhyDP6vw
While I’m here, my merchandise chap tells me that he is running a discount during the traditionally quiet sales months of February and March. If you enter the code TECHMOAN15 at checkout you get 15% off. Here’s the merch store link https://nerdkeyz.etsy.com/
That’s enough high pressure sales stuff from me, I hope you’re all doing fine. I’ve just found out that there are posts in the community chat room thingy here on Patreon. I didn’t have the notifications enabled as it would swamp my email inbox…however the flip-side of this is that I forgot the chat room was there. When I get the chance I’ll go back and read through what I’ve missed. Apologies if anyone was expecting a quick response.
Take care and enjoy the rest of your week.
UPDATE - Swapped the video out:
Added an overlay regarding the speed control capabilities, altered the pitch of my tape VO (something I’d always intended to do, but forgotten), trimmed the section of the child’s recording on the tape because I felt it was running a bit long. After uploading the second edit I found that a MI clip oddly content-matched on this re-up (but didn’t on the original upload). As a result I’ve trimmed this clip and re-upped the video again. Fingers crossed this one stays unmatched but I’ll have to keep my eye on it and if there are any other matches further re-edits will be needed before this video goes live.
UPDATE 2
Snipped out five seconds and added another overlay to eliminate confusion.
Re-upped the video.
Comments (61)
I loved that intro
Hilarious intro, Mat! I love how the discontinuity in your wig placement mimics the many discontinuities in MI! 😆
Only just been able to catch this one, and found it thoroughly entertaining, interesting and very enjoyable! I haven't seen many of the original MI episodes but I'll never be able to get Airplane out of my mind when I see the serious looking Peter Graves...
Even the Eames chair is in storage. 😱
That's the problem with living in a tiny house. I'm hoping at some point it can be repatriated - if for no other reason than it allows me to put more junk in the locker.
This is one of the best and funniest intros of all videos. Love the way the syrup only goes on in the privacy of the lockup. And talking of lockups, I bet we'd all love a private tour of that Aladdin's cave.
I freely acknowledge I would love a tour; but I would be even more keen to help organize or help Mat sell previously featured items for a profit.
That's quite an untanglement of "movie mistakes" :D Great video as always.
Oh, man. How did you know I've been binging M:I on Paramount+? What an interesting show. I'm in S3 currently and, having seen parts 1 and 2 of your M:I shows when they came out, I knew some of the things to watch for. It is truly amazing what studios will skimp on when they think viewers won't notice! From my location here in Pedantville, I see that same Checker Marathon (used mostly as taxicabs in the US, but not exclusively) repainted for several episodes. I see the re-used briefing sequences. etc. etc. Lest anyone think I am panning the show - far from it. It's great. Preposterous in many cases but great. The other part is the strong Desilu presence. Many of the non-main characters in Star Trek also make appearances here - the one I watched last night had "The City on the Edge of Forever"'s Edith Keeler and "Bread and Circuses"'s Claudius ... and as in the former, the "Jim" character falls for the character played by the same actress as "Edith Keeler" ... and has to watch her die. You know, it's weird - I can remember, grade school, learning from other kids how to do the dun-dun dah-dah dun-dun on the piano and know all the tropes and cliches but I sure don't remember these episodes. Must never have been in syndication or at least not picked up by the stations available to me in the later 1970s/early 1980s. Remember Mat, if you or any of the Techmoan team are captured or killed, the Secretary will .... be very upset as will the rest of us.
Let me also add that now that Paramount (who have owned Desilu for decades) also owns "Pluto TV", you can see M:I eps there. You need a streaming box (or via web? probably) but you can watch the eps there with ads but without a monthly fee. No idea if that works outside North America.
Just caught up with this. I find the aircraft name (without the "e") amusing as Lear Jet were behind the 8-track. Just awaiting the Boeing MiniDisc! 😁
Concord Electronics predated both 8-track tapes and the Concorde supersonic jet. Concord began selling rebranded Japanese tape recorders in 1962, while the 8-track was introduced in 1964, and the Concorde's first flight was in 1969.
Mat, I forgot to ask - does your storage facility still play background music? It's odd because storage units are visited very briefly.
Yes it does - it’s just the radio ‘Hits Radio’ but on top of that there are some really noisy neighbours in an adjoining workspace, so it’s definitely not somewhere to record anything.
On the floor, I see that Philips TV boombox that isn't a boombox.
Yes it’s too big to go on a shelf.
I love a bit of fun. I think my favourite was the McMullet chess game in the square off grand master set video.
Wow, I can't imagine how much work you must've put in to watch the intros of all those shows, and then edit them (which required multiple rewatchings) -- and you make it all seem seamless. Just out of curiosity, how do you deal with copyright issues when you're including all these snippets? And do you have to buy all the videos before you can edit from them? Sorry if that's obvious -- I just have no idea.
The copyright issues are in the lap of the gods - it helps to only use small snippets and add a few edits in for any longer sequences, but it's not an exact science, it could still match down the road. I do own the series on disc, but these clips were easier to source using other means as someone has already done the rips. I then re-converted them all to an easier to edit format.
The red firebox and the "two locations" - the shot at 8:58 is in a studio with a painted backdrop. Probably they did the long shots on location and opening the box and taking out the envelope in the studio. At least it wasn't like a British TV show from the 70's where they use film on location and video in the studio and you can spot the change in picture quality a mile away.
Dammit - I just knew someone would mention that. yes the close up is clearly a studio but all the walking through woods and alongside a river - that's a location shoot and it looks like the same 'park' location was used for both. Looks like I'll have to find a way to reword this.
Imagine making it all the way through Spy School and your first assignment is "Go to the basketball courts in this public park in Glenwood, California. Sit at this bench. Keep inflating basketballs until Peter Graves shows up. You might be there for days, weeks, or even a year. Your mission is complete when Peter Graves makes eye contact with you and you gesture silently at the little door at the base of the drinking fountain. Good luck, Agent CX-283."
I am awash in nostalgia. These have all been grand, and the production values!
Excellent video as always, and I love the intro. Dr DCC's wild stories about your storage unit are true! 8-) I wonder if you would have seen some proof of it being a National/Panasonic by taking the circuit board off and looking at capacitors and coils.
It's quite likely - eagle eyed Mark earlier spotted the Matsushita caps, I was 99.8% certain it was a National device before that - now it's 99.9%.
The way Mat contends with broken devices on this channel is like the reverse of the "self-destruct" sequence. I suspect some antagonistic organization to IMF would hire a forensics specialists to attempt reassembly of the recorders.
I've officially watched more of the Mission Impossible TV show via Techmoan than through normal channels (literally I guess!). The show, though clearly very popular, wasn't watched in syndication in my house growing up in the 70s. We got a lot of Star Trek, Rockford Files, Mannix, and the like. Current day tech is pretty charmless, isn't it? It's convenience, reliability, and performance consistency are inversely proportionate to how dull they are aesthetically.
David, a notable exception is modern-day (hardware) music synthesizers. It's a golden age of flashing lights, glowing buttons and (in my case) dreadful noises. They also stay in tune, nowadays.
I'd been looking forward to another TROMI episode. Glad to see it's arrived. I haven't watched it yet but the comments on this chat are enough to whet the appetite.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but the little boy interviewing himself could have been me in the late 60s. It was so typical: You had this cool piece of tech you just had to play with, but what to do? I know, I'll pretend I'm 'talking to someone in TV Land', only to spaz out immediately after I started. We Americans are such nerds! Thanks for the memories.
I had some tapes of myself at a similar age that made even less sense.
I didn't see the original series, only the 80's remake as I watched an unhealthy amount of tv in the 80s and the new series happened to be in my orbit. I know it will never measure up to the original to the first generation of viewers, but the remake at least still had Peter Graves looking as dapper as ever. I only started watching tv in the late 70's as a newly emigrated kid to the West, so just caught the tail end of that era of north american tv programming. The late 70's was such a crazy period for pop culture as I remember it, disco vibes and all. But I'm also fond of the more "clean-cut" look of early to mid 70s, in TV and movies. What a decade that was.
I suggest that you put all three videos into an hour long on. youtube seems to like those types of videos. you could even do a little cheeky bit about it being all in one place for the first time like an old TV ad. idk just throwing some ideas out there.
That’s not a bad idea.
$15 in 1969 is $125 today...helova upgrade.
I'm a sucker for re-watching old sun-drenched American stuff that was originally shown here (Scotland) in the grimy 1970s, when I was a kid. I'm currently re-watching all six seasons of 'The Rockford Files', which is blissful. Would anyone recommend a re-watch of 'Mission Impossible'? I only have vague memories of it, so it's not quite as big nostalgia thing for me, but I do love the 1970s network TV aesthetic. In the UK, television shows were either studio-based on overlit video, or badly-shot 16mm film for location shots. Or, in the case of Doctor Who and Blake's 7 - both, often in the same scene. So does anyone think I should accept this mission?
Go for it - amusingly, I was watching Blake's 7 and enjoying it in the late 90's instead of U.S. TV fare. Except Season 4 - it is much stinkier than the first 3. My current binge watch is MST 3K - a 80's-90's TV show that intentionally makes jokes about horrible low-budget films. 😁 I'm not as fond of its recent reboot, though.
It's hard to believe it's been that long. I have to say this is the coolest tape recorder of the 3 that you've shown from the series. I also immediately got Panasonic vibes from it.
It's definitely the most suitable prop, the others both had aesthetic issues. This one isn't a good tape player, but I feel it works best on-screen.
Great to return to an old classic Techmoan genre! Also enjoyed the long hallway sequence. I was wondering for a while what sort of gigantic, military-industrial, secret intelligence facility would allow you access, but then noticing all the doors along the hall gave it away as your storage facility. Also liked the sequence on continuity errors. Reminded me of your "takedown" of McQ--also known as "John Wayne's Dirty Harry." Actually I wonder if you'd be interested in doing more videos like that--just continuity errors in well-known films--would they qualify as cheese sandwich videos? I suppose there are already YT channels that do just that.
If I spot any more I’ll try and make a video about them. I do have a folder of clips from a French TV show that I really appreciated for the effort they made for some throwaway shots - I do plan on adding these in a Patreon update one day. It’s really the opposite of continuity errors, it’s examples of putting more effort into something than most viewers will have noticed
These tiny reel-to-reel recorders are cute :-D
Mat - maybe a clue for the manufacturer - just spied Matsushita on the silver caps you can see upside down on the circuit board behind the motor.
That backs up the National theory.
I really enjoyed this one. The combo of nerdy pop-culture pedantry and looking at old tech really appeals to me. I love the intro, the storage building with its security doors and featureless hallways is surprisingly cinematic. And, you went to the effort of getting multiple camera angles to make it more cinematic. Nicely done. 😀👍
I’ll go into a behind the scenes on that in the next update. It’s difficult doing these things on your own while also hiding the cameras.
Worth it for the first two minutes alone!
It’s all downhill from there.
• I like the Director's Cut with the superfluously long hallway walk to infinity. 😁 It reminds me of the opening sequence of 'Hot Fuzz.' • CA Cryobank theft prevention PSA 👍🏻 • 'Duck' logo - it reminds me of 'The Long Kiss Goodnight' quote, 'That's a duck, not a dick' 😂 • I really like how you split-screened the various recycled footage. • Your observations of the continuity problems are highly amusing - especially the hand differences. • I am surprised how well the R2R works after all this time. They don't build 'em like they used to - or build them at all, really. • That spy is a handsome fellow - I hope he didn't get caught in the excessive blast that clearly was meant to destruct HIM due to his MIA status. 😧 Thanks for your immense humor in this video. Dare I say it is the best installment yet? Take care 🤍.
I liked the symmetry of that corridor shot - it’s a tiny bit Kubrick-esque
An intro worthy of an Oscar!!
The storage locker intro is ace. Really like it.
Do you get a cut on the merchandise sales?
Yes - but they aren’t a big seller so it’s usually no more than a few quid in a month. Perhaps enough for a kebab.
I really like the storage locker cameo.
yaaaaaayyyyy can't wait to watch ^_^
I was just wondering the other evening if you were going to ever post another video in this series. I'm glad to see it! I was hoping it wasn't the case that the other two were YouTube bombs which may have killed the series prematurely.
At the time the drop in views between the first and the second one showed that a third would have done even worse. Nevertheless I decided it was time to finish it off.
Oooh nice, I really liked the first two!
Ooooooooooh! Video!
My evening has just been brightened up! 😄