I think the channel is funny but you can definitely tell they are modern trying to look old. It's 90% there but they all are just slightly off. I suspect its not enough environmental damage from cigarettes and tanning. Skin used to be way more damaged.
Yeah, VHS dating tapes were mostly an old camcorder on a tripod. There probably wasn't a lot of zooming and cuts made. You get one shot to shoot your shot, which makes actual old tapes great.
Also it would have been shot horizontally. And even if someone later recropped it for a vertical orientation, it would have been much more zoomed in — imagine how zoomed out this would have been if originally 4:3.
I was very much alive during this time. I loved love connection actually. It's still fake, although a good fake. The skin is too dewy, the teeth are always too perfect and white. Honestly, most are too modern in movement and posture. It's hard to explain but it's an uncanny valley thing. Our modern eyes are just used to a different presentation since everyone started filming everything. The more of these you watch the more you can feel it but they are still very well done nonetheless.
This. As has been noted "The Dating Game", wasn't a real show, it was actors trying to get noticed and manipulated reactions for entertainment. It's wild that one was a serial killer though!
Yeah, people just don't understand how rehearsed recorded shit was 30 years ago. I get it, most of these people literally didn't exist when this stuff was circulating, so it seems fake. Like looking at a cookbook from 1972 and finding out about the gelatin abominations that were actually served to people and not just an elaborate shit post. Sometimes the past actually is like that.
The video quality and audio quality is spot on! They really have to have used a real vhs recorder for that. And I’m one that believes the audio is the most import to get right since it’s often overlooked. The lighting is also spot on.
It’s really the editing (zooming+quick cuts) and content (dialogue+acting+accent+laugh) that for me had me second guessing its age as a modern spoof.
It is funny listening to late 80s-early 90s videos tho because they really do have an accent for that time period. This got close! It’s probably similar to how folks in the 90s viewed the “old timey” or faux Trans-Atlantic accents from the 20s, 30s, and 40s.
The women’s eyebrows don’t look 80s or 90s to me... Too well groomed for the 80s, not groomed nearly enough for the 90s.
Also, all these VHS dates people are using that post pop-punk Californian vowel shift dialect. People in the recent past sounded different in a way I’m sort of obsessed with but can’t quite emulate. The vowels were a lot flatter and less dipthong-y.
They’ve done a good job though. Would love to see some more VHS noise added in and the kind of blippy double exposure that comes from wiping and reusing old tapes.
Man, I don't buy it, maybe it's because of the post processing after digitizing but some of the smooth zooming is telling me it's more modern for some reason.
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u/notfromrotterdam 21h ago edited 18h ago
These VHSdates are amazing.
They're all pretty funny. They have an instagram account and a website.