Why Rebuild after 30 Years?
Picking up from this point in the Origin Story…
I have already recounted the gaps of a decade followed by another fifteen years between transferring the videos from VHS to DVD, and then to computer hard drives and cloud backups.
More than two years after first ripping MPEGs from the DVDs, finally getting around to reviewing and cataloging the footage, I discovered two critical problems:
- The “master” transfers of all the films had audio problems. Instead of the intended edits, the audio is whatever the camera recorded while shooting.
- About half of original camera footage from La Suerte de los Dioses was omitted from any digital transfer, as confirmed by paper logs I made during production: Some tapes had not been transferred in full to DVD back in 2005.
The audio issue alone makes it impossible to follow what’s happening, and the digitized original masters have other problems too. There is often visible distortion around the cuts and everything is difficult to hear, even when synced to picture as intended.
Viewing them on a modern screen, the main problem I notice is the degradation of picture sharpness and color inherent to editing with tape. The diminished quality is due to the need to copy video clips from the camera original onto the “master” tape using analog electronics, similar to making a photocopy.
Besides the degraded picture and audio problems, the edits aren’t as tight as I’d wanted them to be, in spite of using relatively advanced AV equipment for the time.
The total effect is to require a good deal of effort just to watch the original Spanish Videos as transferred. Even imbued with nostalgia, the old masters fail to hold your attention.
It’s also true that our baselines of video viewabiliy have shifted amid the advance of technology and culture. Never will the Spanish Videos trend on Tik‑Tok, for example. Our aesthetic was that of “the MTV generation.”
So to share the films with the 21st century, there would be no reasonable option but to start over from the camera footage. But even with the application of newer tools, would all the work make a difference?
Testing the Feasibility
A test would decide whether to commit to the effort, so I chose to attempt the scene with the most complex, fast‑paced editing. If I could make that work, then all the rest was possible too.
Maybe you remember it — a comedic hand‑to‑hand combat staged in the kitchen of a country residence. A bumbling but effective law enforcement officer seeks a sandwich when villain Pepe pulls a surprise attack, with “Three Stooges”‑inspired moves and sound effects.
The first time I edited the scene was in a dedicated room called an “edit bay.”
This particular edit bay was in a converted walk‑in freezer in the basement of a former middle school in Burlington, offices of “Area Education Agency 16.”
Someone had cut a rectangular porthole in the door but it still had the original freezer door handle, so you’d let yourself out the edit bay by reaching outside through the window to operate the latch. Half of the old cafeteria was filled with library shelves storing the 16‑millimeter films you remember projected onto screens in your elementary school classroom, and then the teacher would reverse‑wind them back onto their reels.
For the three or four day‑long sessions it took me to complete the edit of Las Victimas de Malentendido, I would commute to Burlington, bringing along the source tapes and documentation, a stopwatch, audio mixer and analog reverb pedal, my Sony “Discman” and CDs, and a microphone and stand. On the day of editing the kitchen fight, my luggage included a slapstick and most of Mom’s pots & pans. I was left largely unsupervised by Bud Carruthers, and he even let me stay after hours to finish up.
Yesterday vs. Today
Now that purpose‑built tape editing machines are obsolete, the most beneficial enhancement of digital technology is “non‑linear” editing. When working with video tape, edits cannot be retroactively adjusted. You’re constrained to edit “linearly” from start to end, the first shot to the last, with no do‑overs.
A related effect: The tape‑based editing process involved a lot of tedious fast‑forwarding and rewinding, moving to the start position of the next shot. Andy and I produced two films apiece, and between our respective first and second films we became more adept at shooting linearly too, with the objective to simplify the editing.
It seems obvious that non‑linear digital editing would save time when repeating the job, but it really does not. Frame accuracy is easily achievable, but then so is trying a scene several different ways before settling on the best sequence and timing. Meanwhile I am cleaning up the audio, tweaking image quality and color, layering in new elements, and sometimes even creating mattes and composites.
These capabilities I only wished I could access at the time, though it’s probably best I could not, because limitations inspire creativity, and well, I wouldn’t have finished before the assignment was due.
All the same, it’s a strange paradox that though I now am more skilled and have better tools, I’ll spend many more hours than I did the first time. Heck, just tinkering with the one test scene has taken more hours, but it has proven that it could be done!
If you want to know more about the hardware and tools used in the reconstruction, check the technical info page.
Or go back to the Origin Story.