[transmission from... Tyler Sonnichsen]

These are exciting times for us at TDC Productions. Well, mostly me, but I’m sure the other people cited on this site are enjoying their summers, too. Take, for example, the legendary Adam Crowley, who has decided to rebel against the minutia of the Elk City, Oklahoma lifestyle with a blog of his own. He has no idea how often he’ll update it, but when he does, you’ll know it. I’m predicting one full-scale sociocultural revolution per entry. I know I’m never going to shop in a Homeland Grocery, and neither will you, unless, of course, you like to patronize LIARS and SLACKERS.

Now that the important news is out of the way, I figured I’d slide into throwback mode. I had another iconoclastic rant in store, but seeing as how the Ted Healy Suck Awards have been handed out, I’d let the bad blood simmer for a bit before I unload the Dave Coulier Awards for Abject Unfunniness.

I’ve been in a number of great conversations recently about the unnecessarily fast progression of technology and humanity’s inability to evolve along with it (though no one seems to have any problem with their shit becoming obsolete three months after spending $595 on it at the Best Buy). As someone who grew up in the 1990’s, I scant remember a time before home video cameras were fairly common. Even back in the 80’s my dad had a multi-faceted device that could capture a cavalcade of cute/awkward childhood moments for my sister and I. It’s almost complicated to describe this thing- the actual video recorder/player detached from the VCR system and had a port one could hook up this bizarre video capturing device to it. If I remembered the make and/or the model, you'd be looking at a picture of it in all of its glory right now.

I should probably explain why I’m talking about this. Back in June, I was perusing the neighborhood Goodwill store looking for props when something caught my eye. The case looked very familiar, and after a couple of seconds of inspection, I knew I had found it. The hallowed classic RCA CMR 300, better known in various circles as “The Box.”

The significance of this camera in the birth of TDC Productions cannot be overstated. During the crew’s early years, or as I may call them, the Analog Days, our options for filming were obviously limited, fairly suppressive, and far from cutting-edge. The very first TDC films ever made were fake newscasts, shot off-the-cuff in our grandparents’ basement in West Hartford, CT. Only mere frames of these have survived (which is probably a good thing), but between those and the first proper TDC skits we filmed (also in our grandparents’ house) we used the Kains’ VHS-C camera, along with this marvel of VHS filmmaking the CMR 300. At the time, using the VHS-C was like being allowed to stay up extra late. I mean, the cassette was so small! Crazy!

But it was the CMR300 that truly jumpstarted TDC Productions. We filmed most of what can be found on the TDC: Early Years (1995-1998) with The Box, and the crew in Great Barrington took it upon themselves to create a number of classics with it as well after I bequeathed it to Alex in 1997. I think it was because my family obtained an RCA Small Wonder. (Sidenote: That thing was the shit, and still is. In fact, when I was between Digital Camcorders this past fall, I revived it to film Episodes 1 and 2 of the Mike Show). Alex was grateful to have it since he didn’t have his family’s camcorder at his disposal whenever he and his friends needed it. But now that they did, they took full advantage of it. Ted Hornick’s first TDC appearance was captured on The Box and I eventually enveloped it into The Drawer Connection Episode 2: The Games (and the idiots who played in them). One third of the footage from that episode was filmed on the CMR 300, one third on my VHS-C Small Wonder (that product nickname gets gayer every time I type it), and one third in S-VHS on Panasonic 456 professional camcorder we borrowed in a day at CTSB in Lee, MA in August of 1998. Remember S-VHS? No? Don't worry.



Watching that episode, it’s fairly easy to discern which camera shot what:

The CMR300 footage is particularly grainy and the sound quality is unapologetically awful. When Jenny was filming Alex and Ted’s “Piano Competition,” she was rubbing the microphone for some reason that she never really explained. I think that may have compounded the problem.

The footage we shot with the Small Wonder (I practically hear the opening beats of the Scissor Sisters’ “Filthy/Gorgeous” right now) is somewhere in between. The color separation is, well, existent, and the audio isn’t bad.

The footage we shot with CTSB’s Panasonic 456 has remarkable depth and sharp color. Also, we left the date and time chillin' in the corner. I don’t think it was any of our faults. We were on a tear once we started rolling with “The National Standing Championships” and the guy who filmed it, didn’t know any better. Odd, since he ran the goddamn TV camp that Ryan Arnold, Alex, and Jenny were attending.

I use the term ‘golden age’ loosely when I describe the first major era of TDC Productions, 1998-2001, but there were some memorable movies in there. Not necessarily great, but memorable. The 300 capture the first couple of Retarded Evil movies, but by the time the crew made the third Retarded Evil movie and decided to play around with crazy things like plot and character development, Ryan Arnold’s Hi-8 camcorder had outmoded it. By the end of the century, the classic RCA camcorder was finding its greatest use as a prop in films like The Steve Show, in which it portrayed the TV Camera onscreen. Then it was gone. Well, from what I can assume, it retreated to its case and sat in a closet somewhere in the Berkshires for years.

So, yes, this all came surging back into my mind when I saw this broken down old camcorder sitting half-out of its case at the Goodwill. I’m damn proud to have grown up as a video nerd in this rapidly changing era. Analog had all the charm that digital never will, but I use digital anyway because that’s just the way things are, and I can’t afford actual film. The sequences of zeroes and ones that gestate on your hard drive and get spat onto a video disc is difficult to refer to as “art.” It hurts me to say that, since I know how much hard work it is to put together even a short project in non-linear editing. YouTube may be the coolest thing since sliced bread (and let's face it, sliced bread is totally gnarly), but it pisses me off how much completely pointless garbage gets uploaded onto it. Why do these people feel the need to show the world an 8-second clip of their nephew eating cheerio’s that they shot on their camera phone? This kid’s never going to know the pleasures of moving parts and the imperfections that make productions uniquely human when he’s shooting, saving, editing, and broadcasting his short film all from the same hard drive that happens to be a camera and a PC.

I wonder if anyone’s bought that classic RCA camcorder. I think it was only $30 for the whole thing; it probably still works, too. I don’t think it has a microphone or eyepiece, though. I’m not really considering buying it, but I can’t help but think there’s someone else out there that grew up with the CMR300 and has enough space to horde random shit they buy on a whim. I guess you could call that guy a winner AND a loser.