Ever since I saw “Man on Wire” and was like “WTF, after all that, all you have are still photos?!?” I have wondered about this. It’s so strange that he brought someone along to film it, but the guy didn’t get a single second of footage because he was “too exhausted”. Stranger still that TV news stations didn’t get any. :dubious:
I’m not wanting to get into conspiracy theories along the “moon landing was a hoax!” variety, and I understand that if it really was a hoax, the contemporaneous newspaper stories about it would have inspired a lot of New Yorkers to react with “I was in that neighborhood and nothing like that happened”. I just want to know, where is the footage–and if there really is none, how could that possibly happen?
He did it without any advance warning so it would have taken time to get TV cameras down there or in the air. The news channels may not have even saved it. For example, very little footage of Walter Cronkite doing the CBS evening News in the 1960s or lots of sporting events…the tape was often re used. Much footage from the 1973 World Series between the New York Mets and Oakland A’s doesn’t exist so Petit’s walk could have suffered the same fate, if it even got filmed.
Huh. That’s messed up. I referenced Apollo earlier, and I have read that high-quality footage of the moon landing was erased because NASA reused the tapes. The shortsightedness and stupidity is incomprehensible but not unprecedented.
Nothing was really “lost”. The original data tapes of the TV broadcast were wiped, but the equipment to read that format doesn’t exist any more. The TV broadcasts were produced by filming the monitor that displayed the images, and we still have all that footage, as well as the 16mm film footage and all the still photos.
In other words, we haven’t lost anything, but we don’t have the first-generation data that would probably have enabled us to see a better quality version of the TV pictures.
Now, we return you to your regularly scheduled discussion.
I’m a documentary filmmaker and this is one bane of our existence. But you have to remember that the tapes were expensive and took up a lot of room. For a local TV station today it’s a room of hard drives, then it could be a building with all the costs that that entails. I remember talking to a Wyoming TV station about footage from the 1970s. I was told they’d sent it all to the dump in the 90s.
In 1990, I was at a post facility and talked to a guy who was in charge of trashing ABC’s 1972 Olympics footage. I’m sure they kept highlights and finals, and everything to do with the Israeli athletes, but early heats of the canoe competition? Lost to history.
Colophon, I’m not so sure the equipment to play the tapes doesn’t exist–these types of tape do still exist, and unless there’s a demand they may not have been transferred to another format. I see this with archive houses where, for example, they have 16mm film of something, but they don’t digitize it unless a customer wants it.
ETA, I take it back–looking at the story, I can’t tell what format was used. I thought it would have been 2-inch video. So I don’t know whether there’s still gear around to read that kind of tape.
It also happened in 1974. News crews were still using film more than videotape back then. Portable video cameras and recorders were large, bulky, cumbersome and expensive. They also used a lot of electricity and battery tech back then was not good either. And they would have had to haul all that gear up to the roof. Even using the elevators (if they were even allowed inside) it would still have been impractical. The news crews were probably expecting him to fall and therefore felt being on the street would be a better vantage point anyway.
There may have been some video footage shot from the street but it wouldn’t have been very exciting to watch and most likely was not saved.
The question that immediately arises is if the tightrope walk was illegal. Most of these are. And if it is illegal you don’t want the authorities to show up and arrest you before you can do it. Thus you are very careful about early notifications.
Because video tape outdoors looks “wrong”. It is very obvious. Must be something about the frame rate and camera movements outside vs in the studio, because sitcoms (shot indoors) don’t look wrong on VT, but take that same show outside with the same camera and it looks odd.
Footage from the street is actually what I had been hoping to see. Just something that gave an impression of what it looked like to onlookers down below.
I don’t think footage shot from the street would show anything. I think you wouldn’t be able to see the wire at all and the man would be just a speck in the image.
Sorry to ruin your day.
