Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: How much would you pay for 17,300 movies?

my profile | my password | search | faq & rules | forum home

»	Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE » Community » Film-Yak » How much would you pay for 17,300 movies? (Page 2)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2

Author

Topic: How much would you pay for 17,300 movies?

Randy Stankey
Film God

Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-04-2017 08:42 AM

Anything on VHS or Betamax is worthless or less than worthless.

Video tape is a dinosaur format. Unless you have a professional quality player for those tapes, they are unwatchable. Even then, the shelf life of video tape is short.

What is the shelf life of video tape stored under non-archival conditions? Something like 10 or 20 years? I forget, exactly.

Even if you had a good player, the quality of video tape never was very good, especially compared to digital formats. Once the video tape has degraded, which it likely has, the quality is likely even crappier.

I don't even know if the plastic that video tapes are made from is recyclable. Even then, how are you going to sell them as scrap plastic? Nobody would buy it. You'd probably have a tough time paying somebody to take it off your hands.

I'd say that the only place to put these tapes would be the landfill but, these days, depending on your locale, you might not even be allowed to put that much plastic into a landfill.

These days, a collection like that might be considered to be worth less than junk.

| IP: Logged

Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-04-2017 03:59 PM

I'm sure there's someone somewhere that wants them for an art project [evil]

| IP: Logged

Jesse Skeen
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1517
From: Sacramento, CA
Registered: Aug 2000

posted 11-10-2017 01:02 AM

My oldest tapes are approaching 40 years and the ones I've checked still play like new!

| IP: Logged

Leo Enticknap
Film God

Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000

posted 11-10-2017 08:02 AM

quote: Randy Stankey
Anything on VHS or Betamax is worthless or less than worthless.

Likely, but not definitely.

Off air recordings, especially as old as from the '70s or '80s, where the machine was allowed to run for the entire length of a two or three-hour tape, are actually quite sought after by some archivists, especially if they are of smaller and lesser known broadcasters (e.g. local and regional). They're not so much interested in the programs themselves (most well known TV shows that were recorded at all are now properly preserved), but the adverts, idents, continuity announcements, previews, and all the other components that actually give you a feel of what watching the TV was like in a given time or place.

Very little of that has been preserved. The British Film Institute used to have a program (I don't know if they still run it), whereby they recorded the entire output of every terrestrial station for 24 hours on a few days chosen at random each year. I don't know if anything like that is done here, but am guessing that some private collectors or amateur archivists may have done something similar.

Also, very occasionally, a broadcaster will air a version of a feature film that is substantially different, more complete or less censored than the one in common circulation. As an example, a far longer version of The Wicker Man than the theatrical cut was aired by the BBC a few times during the 1980s. Off-air VHS copies was the only way to see it, until the 2" quad tapes were used to produce a DVD rerelease about ten years ago. No film elements of the deleted scenes are known to survive.

I wonder if, in 30 years' time, a screener DVD of All the Money in the World might be all that survives of the Kevin Spacey version? If so, then despite the quality flaws, it would be worth preserving: a researcher writing a book on the 2017 Hollywood sex scandals would likely be very interested in it.

| IP: Logged

Allan Young
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 125
From: EGHAM, Surrey UK
Registered: Jun 2011

posted 11-14-2017 10:17 AM

quote: Leo Enticknap
a far longer version of The Wicker Man than the theatrical cut was aired by the BBC a few times during the 1980s. Off-air VHS copies was the only way to see it, until the 2" quad tapes were used to produce a DVD rerelease about ten years ago. No film elements of the deleted scenes are known to survive.

The version aired by the BBC was a version shown theatrically in the States in 1977, which was longer than the original UK release.

An even longer version was available on home video in the States in the eighties. The source for the DVD rerelease wasn't the BBC copy, it was an NTSC one-inch copy of this longest version.

| IP: Logged

Martin McCaffery
Film God

Posts: 2481
From: Montgomery, AL
Registered: Jun 99

posted 11-14-2017 11:56 AM

quote: Leo Enticknap
Also, very occasionally, a broadcaster will air a version of a feature film that is substantially different, more complete or less censored than the one in common circulation.

Notoriously, there was he "Happy Ending" version of Brazil that aired on television, and as far as I know, there is no theatrical version. Maybe Universal has kept all three cuts (British, US, TV), but one never knows.

| IP: Logged

Frank Angel
Film God

Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 11-14-2017 05:01 PM

And confidence certainly isn't high that the studios have been very diligent keeping their libraries in ideal conditions. When a film as big as SPARTACUS (about $100,000 in today's economy) required sections of scenes to be recreated by the original actors (luckily still alive) because dialog stems were lost; imagine how lesser titles will fare.

If it weren't for film collectors MANY titles, or at least variant versions or missing elements of many titles would be lost forever, even tho we know with what kind of disdain collectors have beeb held by studio executives, except of course when they are called upon to screen a title and they can't find a decent print and what they have in "The Vaults" isn't in any condition to strike new prints. Then they are all about how wonderful collectors are, coaxing them to come forth and save the executives from being roundly embarrassed for having to admit how little respect they have for the work of the artists who actually create the movies that are our film heritage. Except for those times, they mostly spend their corporate energy hell bent on issuing lawsuits against collectors. Anyone remember the nonsense when they went after collectors who sold or bought TRAILERS on ebay? TRAILERS!!

| IP: Logged

Jesse Skeen
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1517
From: Sacramento, CA
Registered: Aug 2000

posted 11-15-2017 04:47 AM

quote: Leo Enticknap
Off air recordings, especially as old as from the '70s or '80s, where the machine was allowed to run for the entire length of a two or three-hour tape, are actually quite sought after by some archivists, especially if they are of smaller and lesser known broadcasters (e.g. local and regional).

I search far and wide for those sorts of things. One of my best scores was a set of tapes I got from an Ebay seller, which was mainly from someone in Cleveland who taped the Lawrence Welk Show in 1977-78 and let the VCR keep rolling til the end of the tape, preserving the local newscast that came on afterwards. The best one is the complete news from Christmas Eve 1977:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtgSBAZWnbU

Despite the lower resolution, analog TV back then out-classed the hi-def TV of today.

| IP: Logged

All times are Central (GMT -6:00)

This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2

Printer-friendly view of this topic

The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.