Acheive 'VHS' Look
 

Heyhey,

I don't suppose any of you fine folk have seen the Saturday Night Live sketch for 'Body Fuzion'?
Here's a link to it:
Hulu - Saturday Night Live: Body Fuzion

Anyway, how does one achieve the same tape degradation, interlace and even the warping of VHS tape without shooting it on VHS tapes? How did SNL do it?

Thanks!

Wow, that's pretty funny. Most of it is easy but how they did the tracking errors and analog tape "crease" is open to debate. Most of that look I suppose you could get by downscaling to 4:3, 320 x 240 or so and then playing with the color.

I bet at least a few people make plug-ins you could use, depending on your editor.

Wow... I've heard of 35mm look, film look, Super8 look... but never have I heard of the "VHS look"! Never did I think I would see the day that people would try to achieve this look!

I agree with adam, make it 4:3 and mess with colors. Maybe reduce the saturation a bit, add grain and soften the whole video (seems like making the shadows darker would help)

Thats funny, good luck!

I'm wondering if you couldn't achieve this by simply dubbing to an old VHS machine via composite, and then messing with the "tracking" knob if your VHS deck has one.

Don't forget Daiquiri Girl, also a SNL VHS look sketch.

The end of the tape says Copyright 1986... that might be a real VHS tape then, and no simulation.

Yo. . .feel me on this:

I did a short where I where I wanted my XL1s footage to look like VHS. AFter giving up on filters and everything else, I was turned onto a trick from someone here: basically you take your source and dub it to VHS, and then digitize the VHS, and then dub that BACK to VHS. The more times you do this, the more degradation you will get. ONe generation might not cut it. . .two will start to look pretty crappy.

And that's definitely a simulation one way or another. That episode's only a few years old.

Impossible. SNL's sketches were funny in the '80s.

Don't be a hater. JUst like in every decade since it started, it is sometimes very good, sometimes very bad, and more likely mostly bad with two good sketches. Samberg's stuff is usually the bright spot on most shows.

Unlikely, as Drew Barrymore would have been about 10 or 11.

The sketch features current SNL cast members.Wow, just goes to show what I assume is a generational difference; I think Samberg is the least funny human being since Adam Sandler, completely incapable of anything even remotely humorous. Even Carvey was funnier, and that's not saying much.

Jeez, when did I turn into my Dad?

I don't suppose the obvious, that they just used an old VHS camcorder from ebay or the goodwill and just shot it? :) /Battle Vaughan

Or that, yeah. Wouldn't that be funny, if we were all scratching our heads over this and that's all they did?

Sometimes you just don't see the gorilla in the room...

Maybe you could just, you know record to VHS then recapture...