Background Info:
You know that thing where you descide that you want to understand how something works.

I dont strictly need to know how a video player or video tape works to use it . But I like the idea that the recording medium is basically hygrade cellotape sprinkled with iron powder. So I thought i'd make a short documentary on homemade tape and do all the fancy edits with a scalpel .


 I wanted to deny what I had absorbed as a consumer of electrical goods.You kno , sort of demistify the technology, get that super 8 feel ,all hands on,cut and paste. I like that point that you can get the basic ingredients of video tape, cellulose(scotch tape) and Iron fillings(FeO^2)
 from a local shop and cook up your own brand of Lowfi.Back in 1992 I got an old betamax recorder from Paddy's market in Glasgow for £5 and began to dabble in home rercordings .
 The first experiments didnt go well. A choice of cheap own brand cellotape caused breakages and loose particles destroyed the player pretty quickly. I liked that however.
It was my own retrograde science project discovering the design excentricites of helical scanning technology and magnetic transfer. My product was not for the mass market.
 Since these early experiments I have gone back to the drawing board and upgraded to VHS, although Betamax was pretty good and come up with a new process and movie .

Documentary Info :

The 5min video HOMEVIDEO (8m of tape) was created using a small surveylance camera input straight into an old VHS video player and edited on my coffee table .The documentary features footage of me making the tape,which I recon was appropriate since folk are always inquisative to know how things are done.
I'll be putting some video footage up soon. You could have a look at Long player to see documentation of my 3 foot record and player, another Heath Robinson bit of home 'edutainment' .

Editing process:

 I liked the of being able to make creative descisions within the final tape by phyically cutting section in and out and making some fancy fade transitions and picture in picture edits by cutting into the tape with a knife and then sticking layers of tape on top of each other to get alternative edits within segments of the movie.I guess I was inspired after using the Adobe software ,AfterEffects at a friends and wondered if similar, but not digital technics might work on cellotape . I wanted happy accidents , where tape particles would spread across onto other edited shots and leave a sort of trace .
cartoon test strip
testmovie 		Inspiration from Tim Hunkin's T.V.programme.