Hello, I'm Craig and this is Crash Course Film History.
Gone are the days when the only way to experience
film was buying a ticket at your local theater.
Instead, you can watch almost anything you
want, whenever you want, wherever you want.
Film studios have made much of their back
catalogs available to the public, with things
like DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, or online streaming
services.
And you can screen movies on TVs, computers,
tablets, phones, and even some watches…
if you squint really hard.
Home video transformed the film industry,
and the ways we find and consume motion pictures.
[Opening Music Plays]
True home movies – films you can watch at
home – didn’t exist until the invention
of 8mm film in the mid-1930s.
The first standard 8mm film stock was actually
made from 16mm film with extra sprocket holes
down the side.
Filmmakers would run a 16mm film strip through
a camera once to expose one half of the frame,
and then run it in the other direction to
expose the other half.
Then, during processing, they split the strip
down the center, creating two 8mm film strips
that could be spliced together.
...it's just a lot of work.
Compared to traditional 35mm film, 8mm film
was more portable and much less expensive
to buy and develop.
But it had one major drawback: When 8mm film
was projected on a big screen, the image quality
couldn’t hold a candle to 35mm.
Most home movie makers weren’t projecting
their films onto giant screens, though.
Instead, they would just hang up a sheet or
use a plain wall.
And for that, 8mm film did the trick.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, as the American middle
class expanded after World War II, 8mm film
cameras became more common.
Chances are, there’s some grainy, unsteady
footage of your family’s old vacations,
birthdays, weddings, or other special occasions
tucked away in an attic somewhere.
Who's attic? My attic?
Now, what really brought home movies into
the mainstream was the advent of home video
technology.
And Betamax – or Beta for short – was
one of the world’s first.
Invented in Japan and introduced to the United
States in 1975, Beta could record audio and
video signals to a magnetic tape, much like
the ones in audio cassettes.
You see, video technologies record break up
recorded images into a whole bunch of horizontal
lines of visual information.
To save space and produce a clear picture,
early home video technologies used an interlaced
format to compress the signal.
In interlaced formats, when a video is played
back, it displays sets of every other horizontal
line in a given image, leaving the others
blank.
Each of these sets is called a field.
First, a field with the odd-numbered lines
is shown, then an even one.
Odd, even, odd even...
Odd, even, odd even oddevenoddeven.
If you speed up that process until you’re
flashing alternating fields 25 or 30 times
a second, your eye doesn’t distinguish between
the lines.
Instead – thanks to the Phi Phenomenon – you
see a moving image.
While interlaced video allowed for some pretty
clear pictures, it doesn’t handle fast motion
very well, and the image tends to blur or
strobe.
It also gets weird around plaid or striped
shirts.
Now, Beta’s main competition was another
Japanese technology called the Video Home
System or VHS.
It was essentially the same idea as Beta,
except it was lighter, cheaper, and one cassette
could hold a two-hour movie.
So in the ensuing “video format wars,”
Beta couldn’t compete.
By 1980, the VHS format dominated 60 percent
of the U.S. market.
I think my grandfather died in the video format wars.
And that market was getting bigger and bigger!
As more home video technologies were emerging
and dropping in price, an enormous, untapped
revenue stream opened up for the Hollywood
studios.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, more people
began buying Video Cassette Recorders or VCRs.
Not only could these devices play home movies
recorded with consumer video cameras, but
they could also record TV programs and play
videotapes of feature films.
Suddenly, people could watch Hollywood movies
at home whenever they wanted.
Kind of.
At first, it was way too expensive for the
average consumer to buy a video cassette
of a Hollywood film.
The studios charged between 80 and 90 dollars per tape! ...WHAT!?!?!
But rental chains could buy them in bulk,
and rent them out to the general public for
a few dollars a night.
Plus late fees.
These rental chains – places like Blockbuster
Video or Hollywood Video – along with independent
mom-and-pop stores, flourished throughout
the 1980s and ‘90s.
Film studios started going through their film
libraries and releasing old movies on home
video formats as well as new ones, making
money hand over fist.
As this new home video market matured in the
1980s, a number of film companies decided
they could bypass the theatrical distribution
system altogether and market their films straight
to the consumer.
The most successful direct-to-video films
fell into a few main categories: inexpensive
action movies, steamy thrillers, sequels to
successful theatrical films, and family films
– both animated and live-action.
Like low-budget B-movies, direct-to-video
films were often viewed as cheap knock-offs,
as opposed to “real” movies that played
in movie theaters.
Movies like Nail Gun Massacre, Death Spa,
or Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare were pretty
terrible, but offered a bit of good schlocky
fun.
Direct-to-video also gave film franchises
who were dragging a bit at the box office
a chance to stay alive with cheaper budgets.
Beethoven, I’m looking
at you.
Not the composer, the movie about a dog.
Now, back in the late ‘70s, as the first
consumer home video formats were coming out,
LaserDisc also emerged.
Rather than recording images on magnetic tape,
LaserDisc was an optical format, which encodes
binary data with a laser.
It’s a technology that eventually led to
CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs.
Even though the picture quality was superior
to either Beta or VHS, LaserDisc
was ultimately doomed.
The discs themselves were cumbersome and fragile,
the players were expensive, and you couldn’t
record TV shows on them.
But by the time Digital Video Discs, or DVDs,
arrived in 1995, consumers were primed for
a technological revolution.
See, in 1987, Paramount Pictures tried an
experiment.
They offered the VHS cassette of Top Gun for
just 30 dollars instead of 80 or 90.
And it was a runaway hit.
...who knew people liked to pay less for things?
Almost immediately, other studios followed
Paramount’s lead.
And by the early 1990s, people could afford
to build their very own home video libraries.
One issue with VHS tapes is that they degrade
over time.
The more you watch them, the more the actual
tape wears down,
eventually rendering them un-viewable.
...like me!
In part, that's because VHS is an analog
technology, while DVD is digital.
Both analog and digital technologies transmit
information, usually through electric signals.
One of the main differences is that analog
technologies translate information into electric
pulses of varying amplitudes, while digital
technologies translate information into a
binary format made of ones and zeros, which
represent discrete amplitudes.
DVDs, like most digital technologies, don’t
degrade like VHS tapes.
The ones are always ones, and the zeroes are
always zeroes.
So, the signal will always look the same.
Unless you’re at your parents’ house where
it will always look green and squished.
C’mon mom and dad, fix your tv settings!
The durability of DVDs, mixed with an impressive
increase in storage capacity, made them an
extremely attractive upgrade from video cassettes.
With all that extra storage space, home video releases could come with all kinds of fun extras.
Like: trailers for other movies, alternate
cuts and deleted scenes, isolated scores,
commentary tracks where the filmmakers could
talk about making the film, and closed captioning
that could be turned on or off.
Along with new releases, distribution companies
could repackage their old libraries with DVD
special features and make even more money!
These days, newer technologies have started
to replace DVDs.
Like Blu-ray Discs and Blu-ray Players, which were first made available to the public in 2006.
Like DVDs, Blu-rays are a digital optical
storage device.
But unlike DVDs, they can hold full high-definition
– and ultra-high-definition – video signals.
Now, when we talk about standard-, high-,
and ultra-high-definition video, we’re talking
about those horizontal lines that make up
the image.
The more lines, the clearer the image – up
to a point.
We label the level of definition each signal
has with the number of horizontal lines, like
720 or 1080.
That number is then followed by an ‘i’
or a ‘p’, indicating if the video fields
are interlaced or progressive.
Developed as an alternative to interlaced
video, the progressive scan format flashes
all the horizontal lines of picture information,
instead of alternating sets of lines.
Everything from the camera to the television
requires a much larger bandwidth to handle
progressive scan, but any motion on screen
appears smoother and more realistic.
...Like this.
So, standard-definition video has 480 horizontal
lines per image and is interlaced, so you’ll
see it written as 480i.
Broadcast high-definition refers to video
signals that have 720 lines per image, either
interlaced or progressive.
High-definition, or HD, has 1080 lines, either
interlaced or progressive.
And ultra-high definition, also sometimes
known as 4K, boasts a whopping 2160 lines!
That's a lot of lines!
Most Hollywood films shot digitally are being
filmed in 6k and and even 8k…
that’s a lot of k!
And when we're talking about 'k' we're talking about these lines... vertical lines.
Today, we think of Blu-rays as the main high
definition discs on the markelt.
When they were first being sold in 2006, though,
they came in second to their competition:
the HD-DVD.
The home video industry split between the
two formats, with companies like Sony, Panasonic,
Samsung, and Dell advocating for Blu-rays,
while Toshiba, Microsoft, and Intel supported
HD-DVDs.
For two years the conflict hamstrung the industry,
until Sony decided to incorporate a Blu-ray
Player into the Playstation 3. Very clever, Sony.
That was seen as the turning point in the
“HD format wars,” and by 2008 we stopped
making HD-DVDs altogether.
My Grandmother died in the HD Format Wars.
And the newest frontier in home video formats
is the 4K Ultra-HD Disc.
You just need a new player and a 4K TV to
watch one.
But if you're watching this video 5 years from now, we sound very old.
Now, the other technological and cultural
revolution in home video was streaming services,
which did away with physical discs entirely.
Today, streaming services like Netflix, Hulu,
Amazon, YouTube, iTunes, and Vimeo distribute
films and television programs directly to
consumers.
YouTube? Never heard of it.
They’re even making their own original content.
Netflix and Amazon produced and distributed
TV series and films that have won the highest
awards at the Emmys, Golden Globes, and Oscars!
These services also provide non-traditional
and independent filmmakers with a more level
playing field when it comes to distributing
their unique visions.
There are some drawbacks to streaming distribution.
You need a robust, consistent Internet connection to watch anything.
Not to mention, the content you’re looking
for may not always be available, unless you’ve
purchased and downloaded it.
And even then, you still don’t have a physical
copy to keep on your bookshelf.
Or sell later on Craigslist to make some money.
That said, there have never been so many
ways for films to find an audience.
You just have to look beyond the multiplex!
Don't look behind the multiplex. There's dumpsters back there.
And where the future of home video will take
us is anyone’s guess.
This is Crash Course Film History not Film
Future… so we’re not going to try.
But I bet it’ll be awesome.
Today we talked about 8mm film as the origin
of home video distribution.
We traced the development of the home video
market from Beta and VHS all the way to 4K
Ultra-HD.
And we looked at the impact of streaming services
on the production and distribution of films,
television, and other audio-visual content.
Next time, we’ll take a step back and look
at some unusual and captivating film movements
from around the world.
Crash Course Film History is produced in association
with PBS Digital Studios.
You can head over to their channel to check
out a playlist of their latest amazing shows,
like Infinite Series, Art Assignment, and Above the Noise.
This episode of Crash Course was filmed in
the Doctor Cheryl C. Kinney Crash Course Studio
with the help of these video format warriors, and our
amazing graphics team is Thought Cafe.
