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Video Ephemera and the FFF

Like I stated in my Video Packratism post, I do have a certain knack for accumulating video. Not just any video, however: the hard-to-find, the rarest of rare, and the crappiest of crap. What I’m getting at is video ephemera, a wordy term for video that was not mean to be saved. So think about store training tapes, out-of-print film, amateur audition videos, home movies, store giveaways, instructional videos, safety videos- the list goes on. Anything weird and wacky that nobody would ever think somebody would save and watch more than once in their own lifetime.

To me, these videos are more than just something to be discarded. Every video has its own personality and story that could all be lost with the compacting of a trash truck. So call me crazy, but I strive to save these types of videos and share them with others. I’m not alone in my efforts, as others are doing the same thing. Right now, there are people capturing trashed VHS tapes to a digital format in an attempt to put old blood in an otherwise glossed-over body of modern video. It isn’t an easy task doing something like this, and while knowing how to hook up a VCR might take you through some of the ride, there is still more to consider.

You need to know your hardware and your software, how to make old components talk to newer ones, and how to be patient when a recording goes wrong two hours in. Different players are always needed and sought, such as Laserdisc, Betamax, CED, Hi8, and VHS. Then you need to break this down even further. VHS decks with quasi s-vhs playback, or an s-vhs deck all in itself, 4-heads, flying erase heards, etc. Combine that with Macrovision defeating gear, time base correctors, video processors, and detailers to get the best picture, and then pipe it all into a DVD recorder, a capture card, or a camcorder. After a while your head will start to spin.

I’d have to say that part of video ephemera is the challenge. From hunting down a diamond in the rough to fighting tooth and nail to get a good quality rip in digital form. There is also the excitement of watching a video that few have seen, and was not meant for your eyes.

Having said that, I’d like to bring your attention to something called The Found Footage Festival which is an event hosted by two filmmakers who share all sorts of strange videos they have found at garage sales and thrift shops. They show little bits of tapes edited together for the best video (who wants to watch an hour long video for one interesting scene?) and provide commentaries during and in between the segments. These commentaries go from purely informative to observational humor. In a way, FFF is keeping ephemera alive. Many people simply chalk it up as a common video mixtape (a mix of video clips assembled into a video which is then released online) but I think that the commentary and research done for the different segments sets FFF apart. Other people are unhappy with the idea that many segments in FFF could actually other people’s uploads which have been spread online already and are simply taken without credit. Personal views aside I can put myself behind any mixtape, whether it be released freely or with a set price.

Video ephemera is not for everyone. Some people may not be interested in the thought of clunky VHS tapes winding up and down to produce a jittery image. For most people these days, if you cannot get a high definition digital download, a video is not worth seeing. For those of you who trip over Laserdisc players in the morning and trade war stories about circumventing copy protection, digitizing your analog media might be a fun and interesting project for you.

Please rewind this tape and remove it from the machine.

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Pioneer One

About a year ago there was a stir of a new movie on Bittorrent sites. This movie was called The Lionshare and got a lot of attention because it was only released via torrents. That’s right, no DVD release, no theater time, just a torrent download for anyone who wanted it. It was distributed by this interesting company (I guess you could call it a company) called VODO that distributes indie films via torrents. Now why you would need some sort of service like this, I do not know. I suppose that this kind of thing may help get your film out there, but I don’t even know how many people had heard of VODO before The Lionshare, and I wonder if The Lionshare helped out VODO more than vice versa. I do understand the need for a like-minded distribution site. It can be hard to track down more of the same genre of stuff when all you have to go on are torrent links and word of mouth.

So as for The Lionshare, I watched it a few months after I downloaded it. I was mostly deterred from the reviews. The minority seemed to like the film and praised it as an honest look into the life of a twenty-something in modern day, but the majority of reviews I read said the movie was nothing more than a bore, and showed the limits of releasing a film in this manor. I got around to watching it and have to say my opinion lies somewhere in the middle. I think that the movie starts out beautifully, but loses momentum before you really start to learn anything about the characters. Without ruining the story, I’ll tell you that a guy goes on a blind date with a girl, and she invites him to a torrent site, and it follows the guy. This might be as far as this reflects the life of someone today. Women and technology are always good subjects, but I feel that the movie starts to get too hip considering anything besides this.

About two months ago, I found another link in The Lionshare’s universe. There was a Kickstarter (see my previous post) project dealing with a new science fiction show released only on Bittorrent. At this time, internet only television has become an interest phenomena. I’ve seen billboards all over the sity for a show released only online called Reinvent The Wheels which looks to be more of a mainstream thing following a niche concept. This science fiction show, Pioneer One, is a television episode by the same crew that pulled off The Lionshare, and I have to say that I like this work much better. Without giving away too much, it has a watered-down X-Files vibe that I really enjoyed, and centers around a strange piece of debris that lands in the United States. The production value for this is also much higher and looks professional, there there are hiccups. After watching the first episode, I was sad that there were no more. The Kickstarter was only made to produce one episode, so who knows if more will ever be created.

So give these videos a try if you see something you like. Both are available freely on torrent sites and I’m sure there are direct download links up somewhere by now. You might just end up having some new favorite media.

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Kickstart Your Project

There is a site that has been drawing attention among a few groups of people called Kickstarter. Kickstarter works using a process called crowdfunding, which means a project is funded by a large group of people. So lets say I have some sort of project. It can be a video project like a movie, an audio project, art, food, an event, technological advancement- the list goes on. Now, I have my project but it requires a certain amount of money to get started. So I could go to Kickstarter, explain my project, provide some images, and say that I need a certain amount of money to make it all happen.

This is where Kickstarter gets cool. After you say how much money you need, people can pledge certain amounts, and Kickstater keeps track of how much more needs to be funded. This is all done over a predetermined time allotment. So I have my project up, I need $10,000 and have 80 days to get the donations I need. If at the 80 day mark I don’t have the funds, everyone gets to keep their money. But, if at the 80 day mark I have hit the goal or even gone over, I get the money to finish my project.

But why would people donate, and how does Kickstarter make money? Aside from people wanting to fund a project because of their own interest in it, they can also be offered incentives. So If you pledge $25 I could send you a t-shirt for my event, or if you pledge $50 your name gets to go in the credits of my movie. Kickstarter makes money by trimming off 5% of the funds for a successfully funded project. So if your project raises $20,000, Kickstarter still makes a significant amount to stay afloat.

I first found out about the site through Jason Scott’s Sabbatical to complete his new documentary, Get Lamp. I have been coming back to the site infrequently, and noted other projects that I am interested in such as The Waterman Movie, which is based on a popular web series and has been in development for years, as well as a Documentary on “The Thief and the Cobbler”, “The Thief and the Cobbler” being a film that was in development for three decades and eventually pulled away from the director and chopped up into different movie. Every once in a while, a new project pops up that grabs me, and it gets me thinking. Really, this service is truely amazing. There is no better way to reach people to create a niche project that reuires funding. I can just imagine how much more would have been accomplished had this site been around ten years ago, and how much it will accomplish over the next ten years. I also consider that I may one day be able to utilize it. I can fathom a few projects that could take advantage of this as a way to reach people, though they may be a long way off.

I hope to see Kickstarter thrive, and help out some truely unique projects as time goes by. I do have to mention that the site does not take pledges using Paypal because of how Paypal handles refunding. A credit card is needed for now, though other options are being looked into. Check out kickstarter yourself and see what you find, you might be surprised.

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IPTV Show?

I’ve been toying with the idea of making my own internet show. It would be about obsolete technology. What specifically? I’m not too sure. At first I considered just how to use some obscure hardware in the style of a showcase tutorial. However, I think it would be interesting to work new life into old tech. For example, I could talk about using a LaserDisc player, but it might also be interesting to figure out how to rip some titles that never made it to DVD. Maybe learning about rotary phones could be fun, but converting a handset into a standard microphone could also be something of interest.

I’ve had the idea of starting a show for a few years and I feel that I am close to being able to produce a prototype. I’ve attempted segments for other shows, as well as management for new ones with little success. Most of my projects get tied up as ideas and never solidify. This project, however, has some motivation behind it as well as the availability of tools and talent. Though I have two t‘s I lack time, and therefore may be limited in my conquest. I do hope to have something to show in the next few months.

Any ideas are welcome.

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Video Packratism

Some people know me as the IPTV guy. That is to say that I have a lot of independent media that has been distributed over the internet, which makes me something of a video packrat. I used to simply collect it. I kept RSS feeds, and downloaded episodes when they came out. I attended IRC release parties, befriended the hosts, and became part of the communities that revolved around these shows. Nowadays, things are not as active as they used to be. Shows have come and gone, and many have simply perished into the dark side of the internet.

These days, I share my collection of shows over the internet: the same way I received them. I continue to seek out lost shows and fill out holes in my archive in an attempt for completion. Many people may wonder why I even bother. The answer to that question may be more complicated than one would think.

It all must have started in the mid 90′s. I was maybe eight years old. I used to love watching cartoons, but my favorites always played when I was off at school. This is when I discovered the magic of VCRs. I never knew that you could use a VCR to record shows before, but it made things a lot easier after I found out. I learned how to tape shows while I was watching them, and advanced to master timed recording. I filled hour after hour of tape after tape, and re-watched episodes until I had to go to sleep. In affect, this marks my first archiving practice. I wanted to watch whatever I wanted when I wanted it, and found a way to do so.

Years later, I got into torrenting, which I still enjoy today. I’ve never been to keen on mainstream content. Those Hollywood blockbusters don’t do too much for me. The wonderful think about Bittorrent communities is that they are very diverse. I can find so many things that I would otherwise have missed. Have a favorite television show from the 80′s that was never released to DVD, or a movie that only could have been seen when you owned a Betamax player? Odds are I can find what you are looking for. I like to think of torrent communities as groups of friends you lend DVDs out to and talk about weird films with. When you put this group of friends online, it expands to include hundreds more like-minded individuals.

So why go through it all?

Part of it revolves around me having a certain mentality. If I don’t archive it, who will? The stuff that was out there years ago is becoming harder to find. This seems to be true for everything, but especially IPTV. As far as I can tell, I am one of two or three people that have been saving this stuff and trying to share it all back to the world. I think of websites like Jason Scott’s textfiles.com and think of how different things might be if he never decided to share a world of text files. What would have happened to our history of Bulletin Board Systems? Maybe a few Angelfire fan pages and a news group? Certainly not enough to make a statement.

Another part of it is simply the community aspect. Sharing the content makes for meeting people makes for conversation and more sharing. For example, with the IPTV Archive, I chat with a number of people who have an IPTV craze. We get to talking and searching for lost videos and have fun in the process. It opens whole new doors. Somebody may have ideas that throw you in new directions and change things for the better. Video packratism works far better in groups. Pooling resources, time, and effort helps maintain efficiency.

Through it all, video packratism has worked well for me. I locate, I leech, I share, all along with others. It might have taken a long time. I’ve been accumulating content for years, and am still nowhere near done. That is the thrill of it. Locating the un-locatable and watching the unwatched. It is a long process with a short reward. A month searching for thirty minutes of content? Good thing there are hundreds of files out there that are just waiting to be found, otherwise I might get bored.

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