Whenever I see a movie or TV show from the '80s (and sometimes from the '70s), I’m struck by how the picture is rather washed-out, or slightly out of focuse or soft-focused. (There’s probably a cinematographic term for what I’m describing, but I don’t know it.) Any movie or show made in the '90s or later seems much sharper and crisper by comparison (unless the director was using soft-focus or whatever on purpose, for effect). Why is this? Is it because of a change of prevailing style in cinematography, or am I just watching stuff that originally looked much sharper and crisper but has suffered some degradation in its storage medium?
I know that NBC, for a while, used film as opposed to tape when recording their more popular shows, and I think other networks did that as well (I know MAS*H on CBS was filmed rather than taped). Film gave shows a slightly warmer, softer feel. That probably accounts for some of what you’re seeing.
Videotape from earlier decades never looks as good as current – probably a combination of lesser technology and perhaps the aging of the original tapes.
I also know that during the late 70s some filmed shows (notably The Odd Couple) experimented with ways of using less light for shooting. I’d guess some of those experiments were more successful than others.
Top-rated programs, by season:
September 1983—April 1984
- Dallas (film) CBS
- 60 Minutes (tape/film) CBS
- Dynasty (film) ABC
- The A-Team (film) NBC
- Simon & Simon (film) CBS
- Magnum, P.I. (film) CBS
- Falcon Crest (film) CBS
- Kate & Allie (tape) CBS
- Hotel (film) ABC
- Cagney & Lacey (film) CBS
- Knots Landing (film) CBS
- ABC Sunday Night Movie (tie) (film)
- ABC Monday Night Movie (tie) (film)
- TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes (tape) NBC
- AfterMASH (film) CBS
September 1993—April 1994
- 60 Minutes (tape) CBS
- Home Improvement (tape) ABC
- Seinfeld (film) NBC
- Roseanne (tape) ABC
- Grace Under Fire (tape) ABC
- Coach (film) ABC
- Frasier (film) NBC
- Monday Night Football (live) ABC
- Murphy Brown (film) CBS
- CBS Sunday Movie (film)
- Murder She Wrote (film) CBS
- Thunder Alley (tape) ABC
- Love & War (film) CBS
- Northern Exposure (film) CBS
- 20/20 (live/tape) ABC
The answers you’ve received so far contradict each other — it’s because of film; it’s because of videotape.
Funny you should mention this… a buddy and I watched Manhunter on the weekend. We both love the film, but haven’t seen it in quite a while. So I pulled out the DVD that I’d bought ages ago and popped it in.
The movie is still wonderful, but the fuzziness of the image was really noticeable, even on a nice DVD transfer.
We put it down to Michael Mann’s “Miami Vice” style of the time, and assumed it was a choice. Were we wrong?
thwartme
There was a trend in 1980s cinematography to use artificial smoke/dust as a diffusion device. Among other effects, this makes shafts of lights really look like shafts of light, but it also diffuses the key light and mutes the color (because the artificial smoke is basically adding a gray overlay). If you look at eighties music videos, you see this cinematography style all the time, especially with the hair metal bands. You see it a lot in the Star Wars movies. But it was also faddish on filmed television programs. No eighties courtroom set was complete without the effect.
It may depend on the quality of the playback material. For instance if you watch Hunter reruns on your local UHF station at 2am the quality may be noticeably worse than the episodes run on the better-financed TV Land.
Time of day should make no difference. If anything, broadcast television reception is better at night. Likewise, in this digital age the same quality of medium would be available to a UHF channel as to TV Land.
Two likely possibilities:
The show was shot on 16mm film. In the 80s, we didn’t have digital cable / satellites, nor HTDV and other enhanced resolution TVs, so 16mm looked just fine. Today’s TVs and transmission methods can simply resolve more detail.
The show was shot on video tape. In that era, Sony’s U-Matic was king. It’s basically Beta, but on a 3/4" tape. To today’s standards of digital video tape, its resolution is laughable and comparable to S-VHS.
Adding to the problem is that whether it’s on film or tape, they’ve not necessarily been stored well. Film doesn’t degrade all that much, but 25 year old video tape has probably shed a significant amount of its magnetic coating.
Either way, “Broadcast quality” has changed over the years to the point that something state of the art in 1980 looks like it was shot on a cheap camcorder form Walmart.
I think **Torgo ** means that the UHF station would not have access to digital playback media, and would therefore have to rely on older tapes/playback media.
Neither is plausible. Virtually all prime time network programs shot on film were (and are) shot on 35mm. The exceptions shot on 16mm include some documentaries and some Saturday morning children’s programming (e.g. Shazam/Isis).
Likewise, U-Matic was not used for prime time network shows shot in a studio.
You can see videotapes that are 40+ years old and they are as sharp as if they were just shot. Takes a look at Roman & Martin’s Laugh-In from the late '60s and see what I mean. Likewise the Best of Carson, going back to the early 1970s.
I don’t think you understand how programming is distributed today.
Actually, no it hasn’t. If you’re talking about non-HDTV, virtually the same NTSC technical standards applied in 1980 as they do today.
No, I don’t, but that was not my intention. My intention should have been indicated by the phrase, “I think Torgo means…”
I was not intending to explain how programming is distributed. I was attempting to interpret Torgo’s post in such a way as to make what I thought his intentions were clear. Apparently I failed. My apologies.
Regarding the OP: Are you talking about when the movie or TV show is shown in its entirety, or when a snippet is show in something like VH1’s nostalgia shows? I know I’ve seen a vast difference in picture and sound quality.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that more recent videotape will have held up as well. Audiotape from the '70s is notorious for the unstable binding formulations used at that time. Recordings from that time tend to have deteriorated more than older tapes; hence the delicate procedure of baking master tapes before new copies can be made for purposes of CD transfer. I don’t see why the same might not be true of videotape stock.
My understanding WRT Rowan and Martin and similar shows like the Smothers Brothers were shot on 16mm film. Remember that almost everything back then was shot primarily on film and transferred to tape later. Film was a much better understood medium, and was also more affordable. (Local news always shot their street footage with film cameras and developed it by 11pm for the nightly news, hence the phrase “Film at 11”.) In fact, live shows weren’t even recorded at all, unless someone had a film camera pointed at the TV as the show was playing. (This was referred to as the ‘kinescope’ process. If you could call such a thing a ‘process’.)
The video tape recorders (VTRs) for color footage in the 60’s used tape that was several inches wide on reels that could be as big as four feet across. One of my former TV instructors, who worked in TV all the way back in the 50’s described to me what it was like working on a VTR whose reels were that size and ran at seventy miles per hour. He said that if the tape broke, everyone got up and ran out of the room as fast as they could, for fear one of being buried in the tape.
Anyway, video tape, especially from that era, doesn’t last more than five years. If you’re seeing now, you’re seeing it from film.
Leviosaurus — I can’t put this any more gently: you don’t know what you’re talking about. Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour were shot on 2-inch videotape. Those 2-inch masters exist today. The DVDs available of them are from video transfers. They have never, repeat never, used 16mm as an intermediary for those shows.
16mm was never used for prime time network programming shot in studios.
Also, sadly, many affiliates are resorting to “tape” delaying programming off servers which compresses the heck out of the original signal. The quality of Standard Definition television is diminishing and we as the viewing public are buying it. Not to mention TiVo or servers that some cable carriers get you to pay EXTRA for! We need HD in a hurry.
For the skeptical, may I recommend that you rent these DVDs of network television programs shot on videotape in the 1960s:
Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
The Red Skelton Show
Elvis: The '68 Comeback Special
Dark Shadows
I never said the NTSC specs changed. What has changed is the implementation of them and more importantly, the quality of the equipment.
I have a perfect example of this at home. In the living room is a 2 year old Sony. In the bedroom is a 7 year old GE. Both accept standard NTSC signals, but the Sony has significantly higher quality circuitry and is unforgiving of defects and will show them quite clearly - MPEG artifacts (mosaics and posterization) from digital cable or satellite feeds are quite obvious. The GE produces a slightly fuzzy and soft image with any signal, no matter if it’s perfect or not and you just won’t see the blockiness from a low bitrate MPEG signal. Same NTSC input, just different quality of execution.
Twenty years ago, if you told an engineer at NBC, CBS, etc. that in twenty years we would have these little plastic discs holding hours of perfect-quality video and the average consumer would be able to buy a TV that could resolve better than 400 lines, they’d have thought you were smoking the funny stuff out back.
On the flip side of that, twenty years ago, I was working at a TV station and when freshly tuned, our studio cameras produced images that were nearly holographic on the reference monitor. Properly tuned and calibrated, good ol’ NTSC can produce stunning images rivalling HDTV. Unfortunately, it’s rarely done.