Post by Diet Kolos on Jan 4, 2020 10:39:54 GMT -5
Howdy all.
I just bought some first-gen tape transfers that were a part of BBI's vault from Tom Naunas, the sound designer on MST:TM and Jim Mallon's sound/music guy for Blood Hook. So far he's sold 4 sets of 28 episodes total, I bought the set starting with Catalina Caper:
Why'd he have them? Who knows. I'm guessing Jim gave them to him when they shut down. He says they were part of their vault and used "to send to interested parties before they were available commercially". They were probably also their personal review copies, like when they were making the ACEG. I've posted over on the big MST3K Facebook group and found info clarifying this:
1. Before episodes were commercially available, BBI apparently used to send tapes of episodes to fans. One user reports that BBI sent him and his college MST club a large amount of episodes that look similar to these in that they have the same labels, but the names on them were type-written.
2. A longtime fan that also bought a set of these off Tom posted a photo of these tapes from where they were kept: in the BBI writer's room, on a bookcase on the wall to the left of the big screen TV (next to the door with the photo of Mike Nelson as a pirate)
Note that the font/marker used on those is the same as some of these tapes.
But the important thing is that they were probably dubbed straight off the original DigiBeta or D2 masters shortly after mastering was done. So their quality is only rivaled by the DVD's, and maybe better considering the shape some of the later releases were in. I can't wait to get them and start digitizing/uploading them to YouTube. Being that these are on VHS, they won't be 100% DVD quality, but hopefully I can find high quality bits of things that were messed up on the DVD releases (slate cards, fades, bumpers, etc).
Luckily, I've already tracked down and contacted the 3 other buyers (thank god MSTies are such a tight-knit community) and we've started some preliminary plans to trade them back and forth so I can digitize them and upload them to Youtube, as I've already been doing this kind of thing in my MST3K-Broadcast Editions on YouTube and its worked out pretty well (See my Youtube profile). As far as who bought them, not shockingly, one was Tom Noel of Tom's MST3K Temple fame. He's a great guy, so even if plans with the other 2 fall apart, I can still count on Tom to come through on this.
This lines up well with another recent purchase of mine, a JVC Super VHS with built-in time base corrector and other image clean-up filters that'll go a long way in my future tape digitization projects.
I'm tagging Udvarnoky jocksinclair and @codyhimes as I know you guys are interested in the DVD issues and the original master tapes, etc. And mylungswereaching because I like to keep him in the loop on my tape transfer activities while I continue to work on his tapes.
PS - Tom Naunas may not yet be done selling these tapes. I'm going to continue bidding on them, but I understand that other MSTies may also bid and win them. If YOU win any of these in the future, let me know so we can set something up.
I just bought some first-gen tape transfers that were a part of BBI's vault from Tom Naunas, the sound designer on MST:TM and Jim Mallon's sound/music guy for Blood Hook. So far he's sold 4 sets of 28 episodes total, I bought the set starting with Catalina Caper:
Why'd he have them? Who knows. I'm guessing Jim gave them to him when they shut down. He says they were part of their vault and used "to send to interested parties before they were available commercially". They were probably also their personal review copies, like when they were making the ACEG. I've posted over on the big MST3K Facebook group and found info clarifying this:
1. Before episodes were commercially available, BBI apparently used to send tapes of episodes to fans. One user reports that BBI sent him and his college MST club a large amount of episodes that look similar to these in that they have the same labels, but the names on them were type-written.
2. A longtime fan that also bought a set of these off Tom posted a photo of these tapes from where they were kept: in the BBI writer's room, on a bookcase on the wall to the left of the big screen TV (next to the door with the photo of Mike Nelson as a pirate)
Note that the font/marker used on those is the same as some of these tapes.
But the important thing is that they were probably dubbed straight off the original DigiBeta or D2 masters shortly after mastering was done. So their quality is only rivaled by the DVD's, and maybe better considering the shape some of the later releases were in. I can't wait to get them and start digitizing/uploading them to YouTube. Being that these are on VHS, they won't be 100% DVD quality, but hopefully I can find high quality bits of things that were messed up on the DVD releases (slate cards, fades, bumpers, etc).
Luckily, I've already tracked down and contacted the 3 other buyers (thank god MSTies are such a tight-knit community) and we've started some preliminary plans to trade them back and forth so I can digitize them and upload them to Youtube, as I've already been doing this kind of thing in my MST3K-Broadcast Editions on YouTube and its worked out pretty well (See my Youtube profile). As far as who bought them, not shockingly, one was Tom Noel of Tom's MST3K Temple fame. He's a great guy, so even if plans with the other 2 fall apart, I can still count on Tom to come through on this.
This lines up well with another recent purchase of mine, a JVC Super VHS with built-in time base corrector and other image clean-up filters that'll go a long way in my future tape digitization projects.
I'm tagging Udvarnoky jocksinclair and @codyhimes as I know you guys are interested in the DVD issues and the original master tapes, etc. And mylungswereaching because I like to keep him in the loop on my tape transfer activities while I continue to work on his tapes.
PS - Tom Naunas may not yet be done selling these tapes. I'm going to continue bidding on them, but I understand that other MSTies may also bid and win them. If YOU win any of these in the future, let me know so we can set something up.