Digging Out Old Tapes of Past Events

by Uncle Paulie

I’ve been filming at Larry Edmunds Book Shop for a few years.  I would like to film every guest author, but there’s often scheduling problems on my end.   Kicking around some marketing ideas with owner Jeff one day, he mentioned that he used to film some of the events himself.  It turns out he had an old VHS-C camera.

I told him it would be a good idea to get the old tapes and I would transfer them to DVDs and a digital file.  Old tapes can last for years, but eventually they will degrade, depending on a few factors, including how they are stored and how hot it is.  Of course his tapes were stored in an upper storage area where it does get hot.  In addition, he can’t find the original camera and never re-wound the tapes every year, which helps to preserve them.

Since a lot of my video equipment is old, it just so happened that I had a couple of old VHS-C cameras.  I would need one to transfer the tape to a DVD recorder.  Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t.  Running a tape from one camera to another can be a problem.  I was lucky and my old JVC seems to give a fairly good image, although some color loss has occurred on some of the tapes.

So here is the first tape, filmed way back in November 17, 2011.  It was author, actor, and director Sir Micchael Lindsay-Hogg.  His career in the music businesss is legendary.  He started off as a director for the famous British pop music program Ready, Steady, Go.  He had a huge career  in the music video business, working with The Rollling Stones and churning out music videos of almost all their albums.  He also did music videos for The Beatles, Wings, and Whitney Houston.

A small word of caution on these tapes.  Most are not perfect, and most only about 30 minutes or so.  Jeff, running the projector, the camera and the show, was always in motion, sometimes running back at the last moment to adjust the camera.  We are just going to put these out as they are, a fun gift from Jeff at Larry Edmunds to celebrate their 80th bookstore birthday. Jeff’s job is to root through the old storage area and find the tapes.  I will attempt to transfer them as I receive them, and YOUR job is to sit back and enjoy some lost Hollywood history.