Has anyone seen Spike Lee's "Bamboozled"? Quite an extraordinary *film*
-- or so I thought when I first saw it on VHS.
It turns out that the film - like many, today - was shot on
high-definition video, then edited and transcribed to film. The VHS tape
I rented was made from the film version.
Well, I just acquired a 'screening copy' of the so-called film - a VHS
copy provided as a sample to potential distributors and critics; to my
great surprise, this VHS tape was transcribed *not* from the film, but
from the original, edited high-definition tape.
So what's the big deal? The medium of tape totally transformed the piece
into *television* - utterly different in quality (both visual and
psychological) from the film. Question (for you VISLAB folks): why? Is
it the scanning rate (24 fps vs. 30 fps)? Is it light coming through
mylar? I think these were issues discussed somewhere by McLuhan, maybe
in "Medium is the Massage." Anyone remember?
--
Michael Kaplan
-- or so I thought when I first saw it on VHS.
It turns out that the film - like many, today - was shot on
high-definition video, then edited and transcribed to film. The VHS tape
I rented was made from the film version.
Well, I just acquired a 'screening copy' of the so-called film - a VHS
copy provided as a sample to potential distributors and critics; to my
great surprise, this VHS tape was transcribed *not* from the film, but
from the original, edited high-definition tape.
So what's the big deal? The medium of tape totally transformed the piece
into *television* - utterly different in quality (both visual and
psychological) from the film. Question (for you VISLAB folks): why? Is
it the scanning rate (24 fps vs. 30 fps)? Is it light coming through
mylar? I think these were issues discussed somewhere by McLuhan, maybe
in "Medium is the Massage." Anyone remember?
--
Michael Kaplan