When I was a kid, I noticed something about TV very early in the game: my mom's "stories," as she called the soap operas she watched on weekday afternoons, had a different look to them than other shows like Leave It to Beaver or Bonanza.
The look is hard to describe. But there are unmistakable differences.
Later in life, I learned that the soaps were filmed on videotape. The other TV shows were captured on cameras that utilized conventional film.
Go back to the early 50's, and all shows were caught on film. However, most were captured as kinescopes. The cameras capturing the action were piping their feeds straight to broadcast. The only way to record what they were filming was to point a film camera at a monitor screen. Thus, the quality of the captured show was only as good as the sharpness of the monitor and the focus of the camera. In other words, lousy most of the time.
During that decade, AMPEX, makers of sound tape recorders, was experimenting with putting video on tape. By 1957, they had perfected the process enough that a TV episode was shot for the first time entirely by videotape cameras. This was The Edsel Show, a Bing Crosby-hosted special that was considerably better than its namesake. Rumor has it that a door handle fell off of a car shortly after it was featured on the show.
While many TV shows were captured on film, the process didn't work well for shows that depended on live audiences. Scenes would often be shot out of sequence and pieced together in the spicing room. When you had three cameras filming live action, there wasn't any way to put their outputs into one package, short of filming the monitor image.
But if your camera could record to tape, and have its images instantly accessible (i.e. not requiring darkroom developing), that would open up all kinds of new possibilities.
"Terrific!" you might say. "So that means old broadcasts were saved for posterity!" Well, sadly, videotape didn't make much of an early contribution to the preserving of shows. The 2" reels cost about $300 in 1950's money. And coincidentally, they could be erased and reused. Thus, the same reel of videotape might have been used to capture many episodes of the same show only long enough to be rebroadcast three hours later for west coast viewers.
However, many episodes of early videotaped shows have survived. For example, in its second (1960-61) season, six episodes of The Twilight Zone were shot on videotape, in an effort to cut costs. Remember the one where the kid could talk to his deceased grandmother on a toy telephone? Notice how it has a different look and feel from most other offerings.
It was the soaps that embraced the new technology most quickly. They were filmed live on a daily basis, and videotape was perfect for the three-hour rebroadcasts that were essential due to the four time zones that span the US.
In the early 70's, an interesting trend took place in TV studios. Many sitcoms started to be shot on videotape, giving them a "soap opera" look. Norman Lear was one of the pioneers of the movement, and all of his vast storehouse of comedies utilized videotape.
Lear's success, driven by ratings giant All in the Family, caused others to switch to the videotape format. Thus, many of our favorite 70's half-hour comedies, including Barney Miller and WKRP in Cincinnati, have the distinct videotape look.
Nowadays, digital has changed all of the rules. Digitally filmed shows do not have the videotape look, at least to me. Looking at the the current top twenty rated shows, I don't spot a single one shot on videotape. I'm not sure if the soaps still use them, I haven't seen one in thirty years. Perhaps a reader can enlighten us.
Videotaped TV episodes have largely been digitized, retaining their original look and feel, but now no longer subject to the deterioration of the tape itself. Many of us have likewise digitized the tapes we shot with our videocams in the 80's and 90's for the same reason. And if you haven't done so yet, you'd better hurry!
So now, when you spot one of the six Twilight Zone episodes that look different from the rest, you, as Paul Harvey would say, now know the rest of the story.
Comments (3)
I am glad you brought this up. I felt the exact same thing. Soap Operas and Talk shows all had that look and it was really bad in the 60s and 70s, too. I loved the film to broadcast look. The Brady Bunch and Partridge Family would not have been the same with it ;-) Movies always had it, too. So much more realistic looking, even in black and white, which was all we had to 1985. Resolution got better with time. Even the video look got a little bit better, relatively speaking.
Of course, cable made things a little better as well. Ghost images, vertical and horizontal flips, reception problems. What a drag. Antenna adjustments. When you switched a channel, sometimes you had to move the antennas as well. And no remote, either. You had to get up and switch the channel dial. And only 3 channels, too. That had good and bad aspects.
But video did reduce costs and labor and since videocams have become small, cheap, and effective, and so has editing equipment that now anyone can make a quality piece that is or can be very informative or entertaining. But it did hurt the porn industry, I hear on MSNBC, since many now make their own and show them for free or nearly so. But on Community Access, there have been a number of shows I have liked. And old copyright expired stuff as well.
Making good shows cheap and easy has challenged the broadcasting powers and programmers as well. They do not have as much control over what does or does not get shown. Nor are they the only game in town anymore and it is competition. I welcome it but I also know it won’t last. Marital law is a terrible thing.
But I am not sure film will ever be completely obsolete. It has an elegance and aesthetic beauty that can not be equaled. Its resolution as well. Digital has come a long way but yet, in order to parallel film and be able to fool the eye, it still has a way to go unless there is something in a secret lab somewhere that we don’t know about and is held in reserve till the right time. Who knows.
Production, recording and broadcasting sure have changed. And we saw it all during our lifetimes. I recall the Twilight episode where I think time kept repeating a plane crash or something like that. Dark Shadows is on DVD and most episodes had the soap look. But a few are in that film sort of look in black and white. That it was all saved is rather remarkable in itself.
But now I got to say, I am really hating many cgi 3d render fake crap shows like the Syfy channel. So fake its not even funny. I’d rather watch a cartoon. I think claymation was more fun to watch and Aliens could never have been what it was without the greatest costumes and real effects. Same with horror. Its best with real make up and prosthetics. CGI crap really stinks. They get the speed all wrong, always far too fast, especially for big monsters.
But today, its no longer cinematic art they go for, its all about money. We hit our peak just before CGI. I think Jap style anime can be far better than CGI. Long live film!!!
Posted by Scott I | July 4, 2010 5:44 PM
Posted on July 4, 2010 17:44
As a definite non-boomer (I was starting high school when Gen X'ers were graduating college), my experience with this phenomenon comes mostly from the soaps, a few old Twilight Zone episodes, and British television. Personally, I prefer the look of film. The images are always crisp, even if they aren't always perfect. Video, on the other hand, always has a slight blurring, especially during motion shots, that I've always found unsettling.
I was excited recently to watch a new miniseries on British TV based on Neil Gaiman's book, Neverwhere. I had hoped that British production was finally similar to US production. Sadly, I was let down by decidedly poor production, bad CG effects and the telltale look of videotape. I once read that, in the US, if you are involved with a television show that flops, you are a pariah in the industry and it's extremely difficult to re-establish your credentials. In the BBC system, however, when your television show flops the reaction is, "Sorry, old chap. Give it another go and we'll see if the next program doesn't do well for you." Although it seems like a better system, it appears to result in really crappy TV by our standards. Don't get me wrong, the writing, acting, and directing is often outstanding, but it often looks like the whole thing was produced and recorded by a high school drama department with a talented cast and a $50 budget.
Posted by topher | July 14, 2010 10:55 AM
Posted on July 14, 2010 10:55
I agree Topher. I think of Dr. Who. I actually was amused by it and watched it a number of times, in part, due to pretty hot chicks, actually. But it was surely a very low budget film of cheap effects. Mickey Mouse would have been proud.
Posted by Scott I | July 15, 2010 2:02 AM
Posted on July 15, 2010 02:02