I am all ears for as long as a rant you've got. Because even when it comes to my basic ass understanding how television in the 70's worked, this was not it.
Not that this should be super important to how we receive the film. But when this is one of the elements that critics try and play as if the film was gangbusters on the era-specific details, it's just an immediate 'nope' if you have any observational or memory recall powers at all.
The so called experts don't have a clue what they are talking about.
Not sure how long this rant will turn out but…
Basically, pre-60s, broadcast tv was shot on 35mm and around the time of Carson, which this film poses as the competing late show, shifted to Quadruplex videotape, which is a 2” tape format. The limitations of this format are that it cannot pause or do variable speed playback (which screws up a big sequence of this film) and it only has a resolution of 300p (less than VHS).
Due to the format dying out in the 80s, a metric ton of the show (including most of Carson) is lost, which would’ve made the salvaging of the film an even bigger deal than it just being a cursed episode. Additionally, these necessitated huge machines for playback and only exist now for archival purposes, so that’s a pretty big hurdle for your low budget indie film to get over if you wanted to film it properly.
However, I feel there are two choices that were financially viable and would’ve pulled off the era’s aesthetic: film digitally (as they did), then either replicate the aesthetic of 35mm, which can easily be done in Da Vinci Resolve with proper halation and grain, or transfer the digital video to tape then back to digital.
The latter would probably be most effective as faking tape aesthetics usually looks wrong (see the VHS franchise) and pros that really want that look use the transfer technique because it works and it’s relatively inexpensive. Plus, the difference to the eye between 2” quadruplex and 1” tape is negligible.
Both solutions would’ve been preferable to taking 4K images and digitally softening them, which doesn’t look anything like either format that it could’ve been shot in at the time.
This issue becomes compounded by the backstage footage which apparently just exists? With no real justification as to why a separate crew was filming them in what I can only presume is handheld 16mm, despite it lacking the proper grain and texture of film shot handheld in that era.
I admit, this is technical nitpicking but when your premise relies on the belief of this being some kind of documentary or found footage, this type of fidelity to the format becomes a necessity.
Had they gone the transfer to tape and back approach, perhaps some of the slipshod digital effects like the vomit (which clearly should’ve been practical) would’ve been effectively obscured and felt outlandish yet “real?”
But the employ of AI in the construction of the bumpers, the poorly rendered CG effects, and the complete disinterest in attempting an accurate look imply and general disinterest in the finer details and taking the easiest route possible. I get it. Filmmaking is hard as hell. But when I get the sense that the filmmakers thought less about their attempt than I have as a viewer (which is rare), I become a tad irritated.
So because they have not put forth the thought or effort for me to buy in, when they completely break away from the format in its final act (guess they couldn’t get Ironside back to explain what we were just looking at), the film begins to feel in bad faith. They broke the concept because they never really believed in it enough to begin with.
And it’s a shame because they had the premise, set design (outside of the AI posters) and performers to deliver.
But hey, I’m glad everyone else had so much fun.