History of the "Problem"
by Glenn Koenig
Once upon a time, ...
before the video camcorder (and the cell phone camera, etc.), there were ...
home movie cameras!
For those families that could afford them, you could buy a camera and a roll
of color film. If you wanted to spend as little as possible, you could shoot
three minutes on this roll, with no sound. Then you had to take it in for developing
to see what you got. I think it cost $10.00, at least, to buy that three minute
roll and have it processed so that you could take it home, thread it into a
projector, set up a screen, turn the lights down and see your movie.
That started in the 1920s, at least for the rich, with 16mm film. Then, in the
1930s, 8mm film came along, and slowly, more and more people could afford to
shoot with it.
Then, in the 1970s, we got home videotape. The first portable video recorders
for home use didn't really start to become at all common until the very early1980s.
They were expensive bulky affairs, costing well over $1000 and weighing about
20 pounds (recorder with a shoulder strap and hand held camera, connected by
a thick cable).
But once you made such an investment, you could buy a VHS cassette on which
you could record two hours of color pictures with sound, of better quality in
some respects than the movie film, all for the same $10.00!
At that point the damage was done.
You see, with movie film being so expensive and in such short lengths (as little
as 3 minutes per cartridge), most people were very stingy with the medium. To
shoot movie film you had to hold the little red button on the camera down for
the entire duration of your shot. Let go of the button and the camera stopped.
No, your thumb didn't get tired, because with only 3 minutes of film, you never
took very long shots.
But there was a big advantage to this. A huge advantage, as a matter of fact.
That advantage was a manageable amount of finished movie when you had it processed.
You could watch perhaps a decade's worth of home movies in one evening, even
if you included the time it took to thread the projector.
Here's the basic principle. The economics of film (it was expensive to use)
influenced its use, causing the user to think carefully (usually) before shooting,
because the film was a rare commodity and had to be used sparingly.
But video? Why videotape was so cheap, that people began to record all kinds
of things and often for extended durations. Now, you didn't have to hold down
the little red button, just give it a push and the tape rolled until you pushed
it again to stop it. Sometimes, you were even recording unintentionally! (Oops,
I must have pushed the little red button by accident. That's why I have a shot
of my feet in there.) Oh, well, you could just back up and erase and record
over that part, if you even bothered.
So, now, today, people will try to record all kinds of things on videotape,
producing a huge amount of recorded material in the process, much of which no
one will ever have time to watch. Still, it's pretty exciting to be "making
a movie" of something, no matter who will ever get to see it. Or, more
to the point, who will ever take the time to see it.
And that brings us to the main focus of this series of articles. When not to
'tape' something.