35mm Music Videos and Prints

[Lincoln Thorn]

Greetings friends!

I've been rewatching a lot of really old MTV recordings from the 80's/90's and it struck me how much of them were struck on 35mm film (and sometimes 16mm) prints. I was curious if anyone had any thoughts on were all these prints ended up or if they were mostly tossed after filming?

I was in particular watching old Huey Lewis songs like Doing It All For My Baby, but it seems most of them were shot on 35mm and then finished on Video Tapes.

Would love to hear your input!

Lincoln

[Steve Lee]

Hi Lincoln.

Having been involved in the making of several music videos back in the day in the U.K. And sometimes having to play a cameo role in them. It was to my surprise one night, while sitting in the Odeon leicester square cinema to find myself on the screen. With the lady sitting next to me looking at the screen then at me, and then back at the screen, and asking me "that's you isn't it".
There was a period when the Odeon cinema chain in the U.K showed several music videos as a part of their supporting program back in the late eighties.

It was only when I went over to the cinema side of the industry, that I realized that you could obtain music videos on 35mm from national screen, in the same way as ordering trailers for a supporting program.
There was a number of them made to be used as a promotion for movies which music was used in. For example, Phil Collins. Two hearts and a Groovy kind of love were made for the film Buster. Harry Connick Jr. It had to be you and Don't get around much anymore were for When harry met sally. These were distributed out to cinemas to be used in the supporting programs with these films.

All of the ones that worked on were shot on 35mm. It's the main reason why they can look so good today, with technology and 4k scanning they can look like they were made yesterday.
I wish I could say the same about myself.

Steve

[Osi Osgood]

A number of the great music videos made it onto 35mm, to be seen in movie theaters, though I personally don't remember seeing one. A 35mm music video that I really hate having passed on, was the George Thorogood video, "Get A Haircut, Get Yourself A Job".

[Brian Fretwell]

I believe, due to the budgets available, some noted directors were used for them. I seem to remember a TV programme on Ken Dussel having him say he directed a few.

[Patrick Walsh]

Down here in New Zealand they were screened quiet regularly I do have a number of 35mm prints of various titles, most have been make via CRT kinescopes so they dont look that sharp up on the big screen, they were sent out along with trailers, sometimes if there was abig upcoming title we would get as well as the trailer a music video which was usually of a popular song that is in the upcoming movie, the video would have clips of the feature film through out it. The last one I remember was MAMA MIA which was one of the Abba songs with clips from the feature film through out it.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

I don’t remember any „music video“ getting screened in any German cinema (when ignoring that Michael Jackson movie, the Elvis movies and all those musicals).
The trailers/teasers have always been shorter than a whole song, so e.g. the trailers with „Who you gonna call - Ghostbusters“, „Streets of Philadelphia“, „Disney’s Tarzan“ or the „Robin Hood“-title song don’t count.
Of course, there was the Pepsi advertisement with Michael Jackson in it or commercials for the new album of a-ha, … but all of them only showed some fractions of the songs.

The only exception was the Aardman collection that included Peter Gabriel‘s „sledge hammer“ on the big screen.

[Rob Young]

Ruben's recent super 8 release of 80's music videos springs to mind, using 35mm originals as source material.

If you have a look at these on YouTube, they all have cards at the end that indicate a theatrical release, complete with Dolby Stereo logo.

Derann released a 200ft music video of "Shakedown" from "Beverley Hills Cop II" about around 1988, complete with stereo sound. This was used in cinemas as a promo for the film. Sadly, even though it was made on 35mm, the print used looked like video, as Patrick has explained, like a movie copy from CRT.

And Derann later released "Another Brick in the Wall" and "Video Killed the Radio Star". I'm certain The Wall went out in cinemas as a promo for the film.

Hopefully Steve could clarify this but my understanding is that most "videos" (and TV ads for that matter) were filmed using 35mm or 16mm as it was still the best quality, certainly in the 80's and 90's and 00's.

You'd like to think that a lot of the negatives were kept. We know a lot were, as there have been many HD releases of classic videos, scanned from the film negative. I remember it was a trend in the 90's to film at a slightly higher film speed and have the playback also run at a faster speed, with the group lip syncing at the same fast speed. Take That did this a lot. The result was that the music and lip sync was normal on playback, but everything had a slightly slow motion feel, so coats would billow in slow motion, etc.

The unfortunate side to all this was that many directors of big budget successful videos were seen as the future of movie making and taken up by Hollywood and put in charge of big money movies. Some were great, such as David Fincher, but others seemed, shall we say, in over their heads.

[Steve Lee]

From the mid 70s to the mid 80s the majority of the promos were made on video, such as "Video Killed the Radio Star". And that is why they look so naff today, as there is no way of extracting any quality out of them. They were trapped within that video format of 625 lines.

Also with the world using different television standards didn't help, as there was no way of distributing them. So the need for transferring them over onto 35mm film for world wide distribution was done. That is why they look like they have been filmed off of a CRT. Because they were.

It was only when MTV really took off that the need of higher quality and standardization was needed, so they were shot directly on 35mm. It was more cost effective to do so and made the distribution world wide easy. As well as having a high quality archival master copy, that can be reproduced on whatever technology that comes along, with video, that's impossible to do.

When you consider that the same amount of effort and money went into the production of each of these music promos, as to that of a main scene in a blockbuster movie. Shooting on 35mm film was nothing to the music industry's pockets, just loose change. And the same goes for commercials.

Even within the productions I worked on. Two of the artists are sadly no longer with us. I guess these music promos were a way of preserving their talents in a controlled, detailed professional way, that you could not achieve with a filmed live performance.

[Rob Young]

Great info, Steve.

Anyone remember the cost of Guns & Roses November Rain video in the early 90’s?

$1.5 million…

[Brian Fretwell]

I'm sure the amount of analogue tape to tape editing of the 625 line videos in the 1970/80's (especially when on 1" helical scan tape) didn't help the picture quality either.

[Rob Young]

Slightly off topic, but related; in the 00’s TV companies here in the UK moved from shooting dramas on 16mm to digital beta-cam. It was purely to save money on film and labs but it was ok for standard definition TV at the time. Big budget productions like “Poirot” for example.

It never really looked anywhere near as good and DPs were frustrated by its contrast limitations. But it was cheaper and many viewers were oblivious.

But then came HD. Suddenly you can remaster Blu-ray versions of old dramas from 16mm negatives and they look amazing.

But what about digital Beta-cam masters…oh dear…

[Lincoln Thorn]

Thank you all so much for the insightful conversations about this topic. There are a ton of great music videos I wish that could get scanned and put online from the 35mm prints instead of YouTube TV recordings.

[Osi Osgood]

The director of "Highlander" and the series of Resident Evil films, broke in on the music videos. I wonder if they're video experiences, led them to a style of editing for they're theatrical feature releases?