Strange version of the These Are The Days Of Our Lives video there that I've never seen before, with a faux letterbox effect and lots of animation . Was that done to show less footage of the clearly very ill Freddie? It had already been filmed in black and white to help hide how ill he was (and it ended up being the last thing he ever filmed). The only version of the video I've ever seen before has been entirely the live action footage.
A shame they didn't show that video on other weeks though to mix things up rather than just showing Bohemian Rhapsody every other week... and not even throwing in the alternate fire version of the video that TOTP did some weeks back in 75/76- which was made specifially to add variety to the video being shown every week. There's the Wayne's World version of the video too (which I think Mike Myers was quite upset about), but I'm not sure that had been made by this point.
mumu03 post_id=62149 time= user_id=2102 Wrote:In fairness the group did insist on almost never performing on television altogether (save for the one appearance on Dance Energy), but then obviously Queen couldn't be in the studio either. Surely some of the surplus time given to their final weeks at number one should have been instead spent on a longer clip of what was very clearly one of the most popular new singles around?
It's at times like this you wish Paul Ciani was still in charge, cutting the videos to ribbons.
Funnily enough in Harry Hill's new autobiography he talks about working with Robin Nash on his C4 show, as they deliberately wanted a director with experience of directing old-school light entertainment shows. He says he once asked him how they coped with a record as long as Bohemian Rhapsody at number one for so long, and he said "I played half one week, the other half the next!"
Steve Williams post_id=62178 time= user_id=1326 Wrote:It's at times like this you wish Paul Ciani was still in charge, cutting the videos to ribbons.
On the other hand it did mean we got the very end of the Genesis video, which I have to admit I wasn't expecting to conclude with a Jacko mickey-take!
James2001 post_id=62152 time= user_id=956 Wrote:Strange version of the These Are The Days Of Our Lives video there that I've never seen before, with a faux letterbox effect and lots of animation . Was that done to show less footage of the clearly very ill Freddie? It had already been filmed in black and white to help hide how ill he was (and it ended up being the last thing he ever filmed). The only version of the video I've ever seen before has been entirely the live action footage.
According to Wikipedia, it was the US version of the video with animation by Disney Studios.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/These_Are_...usic_video
I don't think this idea of "satellite performances" is going to take off. Neither is this "Mariah Carey" that they decided to beam in via satellite either, I think we've heard the last of her, she'll be stuck flogging Walker's crisps in future
6/2/1992's BBC VT
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/ccbb447...m1LRGmajmI
Notable (or unnotable) for all the wrong reasons, with the BRITs sequence and Jacko video collectively consuming well over 10 minutes of the show's runtime. Likewise, I thought the following edition also had similarly poor playlist choices that took up too much time - a Color Me Badd single from the US charts which didn't even become a hit here, 'Remember The Time' for the second consecutive week, etc.
Also noticed they've gone back to using scanned photos taken on set for TOTP on iPlayer instead of frames from the shows themselves, despite them all obviously being from shows before the 'Year Zero' revamp occurred.
For 13/2 for Color Me Badd it was actually All 4 Love that was in the Billboard Charts not Heartbreaker.
mumu03 post_id=63321 time= user_id=2102 Wrote:Notable (or unnotable) for all the wrong reasons, with the BRITs sequence and Jacko video collectively consuming well over 10 minutes of the show's runtime. Likewise, I thought the following edition also had similarly poor playlist choices that took up too much time - a Color Me Badd single from the US charts which didn't even become a hit here, 'Remember The Time' for the second consecutive week, etc.
Also noticed they've gone back to using scanned photos taken on set for TOTP on iPlayer instead of frames from the shows themselves, despite them all obviously being from shows before the 'Year Zero' revamp occurred.
A couple of people on Twitter suggested the second episode was the worst since the repeats started. Once more, it seems as if Adrian Rose might have done us a favour, given if we'd seen the previous episode we'd have seen pretty much all the Jacko video again, plus Goodnight Girl in full again, so almost ten minutes of that show would be the same as the previous one (different Wets performance, but same song), and with that ten-hour long Bryan Adams video too you had about half the show devoted to three songs, two of which had been on the previous week. Color Me Badd another example of the Pops Midas touch in action.
Of course that's the last we'll see of Steve Anderson, he hasn't been very slick but I think he's been quite likeable. In fact that second episode, bar the Smashie and Nicey one, is the last episode of Pops we'll see without either Dortie or Franklin for two years.
I must say, if you're trying to find any coherent policy in the pictures, you may be looking for a while. I have, briefly, been involved in this and I can say, sometimes it's a miracle there's any picture at all.
HEW2343 post_id=63322 time= user_id=1466 Wrote:For 13/2 for Color Me Badd it was actually All 4 Love that was in the Billboard Charts not Heartbreaker.
Which just makes it doubly odd that they presented it as a US chart single with an exact position, and zero indication that they were, as often, still on a hit that we'd already had months ago. Though not quite as large a gap between us like other examples (UB40 - 'Red Red Wine' springs to mind), I suppose.
Steve Williams post_id=63330 time= user_id=1326 Wrote:mumu03 post_id=63321 time= user_id=2102 Wrote:Notable (or unnotable) for all the wrong reasons, with the BRITs sequence and Jacko video collectively consuming well over 10 minutes of the show's runtime. Likewise, I thought the following edition also had similarly poor playlist choices that took up too much time - a Color Me Badd single from the US charts which didn't even become a hit here, 'Remember The Time' for the second consecutive week, etc.
Also noticed they've gone back to using scanned photos taken on set for TOTP on iPlayer instead of frames from the shows themselves, despite them all obviously being from shows before the 'Year Zero' revamp occurred.
I must say, if you're trying to find any coherent policy in the pictures, you may be looking for a while. I have, briefly, been involved in this and I can say, sometimes it's a miracle there's any picture at all.
Up until the latter half of 1990 at least, TOTP's generally were either on-set photos (which seemed to come from the specific show/period they were representing more frequently in some eras than others), or close enough examples from other music programmes,
e.g. this one of Marc Almond which actually comes from
a 1989 appearance on Wogan.
The picture quality on many of the zoomed-in screenshots they've used in more recent months has been predictably quite poor, which, alongside the fact that iPlayer thumbnails are indeed not a consistent stylistic priority across the board, probably explains the flip-flopping.
Benriggers post_id=62228 time= user_id=1198 Wrote:James2001 post_id=62152 time= user_id=956 Wrote:Strange version of the These Are The Days Of Our Lives video there that I've never seen before, with a faux letterbox effect and lots of animation . Was that done to show less footage of the clearly very ill Freddie? It had already been filmed in black and white to help hide how ill he was (and it ended up being the last thing he ever filmed). The only version of the video I've ever seen before has been entirely the live action footage.
According to Wikipedia, it was the US version of the video with animation by Disney Studios.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/These_Are_...usic_video
You're right. The previous year, Queen's US record company changed from Elektra to Hollywood, a Disney label.
If you're really interested in the alternative versions of this video, check out the below..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hhppdKud3s
In 1991, the year of Freddie's death, all studio albums were re-released by Hollwood, many with
1991 remixes. Some of these mixes were truly awful but some, like Freddie Bastone's Seven Seas of Rhye, were, IMO, wonderful.
Interesting, come across this which is the raw footage from the 25/8/94 episode, hosted by Malcolm McLaren.
The episode itself is interesting enough as it went out with a faux-widescreen look, a film effect over most of it (bar the opening link and the various inserts) and unusual colour grading on most of the performances. There's loads of retakes here (Malcolm seemed to struggle at times, bless him) and some performances that were done more than once. At the start after a couple of different takes of the top 10 rundown, there's what looks like the Let Loose performance being played in via satellite with "BBC New York" colour bars either side (and several bouts of rewinding and fast forwarding in between).
Afterwards we have all the various captions and the end credits from the show animating on and off over a black screen- is this how it was done, then, with the captions put on a black screen, then keyed over the actual footage during post production? Unlike in earlier editions where the captions were added "live" as the episode was filmed.
One thing noticable is the various inserts (the Let Loose and Wet Wet Wet performances, the Enigma video with the 40-11 chart rundown, and the top 10) are 4:3 full screen on the raw footage, but on the actual show they're letterboxed in the same way as the studio footage (though not filmised like the studio footage is)- the opening titles are the only thing not letterboxed in the final episode.
Also noticable is many of the inserts (including the opening titles) don't play in full and keep cutting back to Malcolm in the studio, which suggests they must have cut the full versions in during editing rather than run them "as live" during filming.
Another thing I've noticed is the raw footage has all the unusual colour grading (including the Chake Demus and Pliers performance entirely in black & white) that's part of the as broadcast episode, but on the final edition, the end credits montage has the footage without the filmising and colour grading (including showing Chaka Demus in colour)- which would suggest two different recordings were made of the raw studio footage- one with the colour grading, and one without (possibly there's a "mute links" version without, you can understand why they'd want a version without the embellishments if they repeated the performances) Sadly as it was a 25p video file, I don't know if the raw footage was filmised or not or if that was something that was done in editing.
I've uploaded both the raw footage and the final edition (the latter in 50fps which lets you see which bits have been filmised and which haven't) here:
https://we.tl/t-5vScwsZ3p9
There are a number of editions with full studio rushes that have came to light recently, thanks to the usual BBC Archive files getting shared around and fed through AI upscale software. 18/6/87's survives, and so does a June 1992 edition that Adrian Rose hosted, for instance. Like the Malcolm McLaren show, they also have leftover oddities before and after the main recording (Bowie's unshown performance of 'Time Will Crawl' + takes of trailers with Jimmy Nail promoting his forthcoming 'exclusive' performance).
Live editions usually survive with uncut leftovers too - also from August 1994 there is 10/8/94, which went out live on a Wednesday due to sports coverage. Before its own recording there's complete VT playbacks of the top 10 + top 40/FSOL video, as well as several retakes of Let Loose's pre-recorded introduction. 11/11/93, the show which was recently suspected to be (and indeed is) the real first live edition from Elstree, contains what I presume to be the floor managers thanking the audience after the credits.
I've dug them out too now you've mentioned them (looks like we're both privvy to the link where they are). The 1992 one's quite different to the 1994 one, partly because it only runs to around 35 minutes whereas Malcom's goes on for over an hour (as Claudia and Adrian don't flub anywhere near as much as Malcolm did- the main thing seems to be Wet Wet Wet having to start again- and them having to replay the breakers segment leading into to a few times), but also it seems that was mostly done as live- with the captions and transitions done during recording and inserts properly played in, as opposed to the 1994 one where it looks like they just played parts of the inserts in to give an idea of how things would run in the finished show, but edited them in properly in post. Looks like in 92 they were still trying to do it "as live" as much as possible but by 94 they'd moved on from that.
I wonder why certain raw studio tapes survive. I imagine with the 87 one it's because of the Bowie performance and people were amused enough at Malcolm's performance to keep his, but there's nothing special about the 1992 one apart from the Jimmy Nail bit at the end (which isn't hugely riveting). I guess it's just chance and luck. Similar with the survival of mute link copies- the survival of the one from June 88 of course created a confusion which led to BBC4 skipping the episode needlessly.
Interestingly on that 1992 episode there's a flub where when they run the new entries over the U2 video, for some reason they show Londonbeat at number 38 three times- but it's like that on the finished version of the episode as well as on the rushes, so clearly someone missed it!
I recall there was also an unedited copy of 10/3/88 in the same source, however it appears to have gone walkies with the owner trying to cut down on storage space of late - I've reupped the original unprocessed 480x360 VT for it here as a result:
https://we.tl/t-m78mR9go40
No extra pre-recorded performances or similar with this one, which gives credence to the theory of these unedited rushes often surviving by mere chance, but there is some off-screen banter with the audience and Smith + Wright. The same also applies for the raw tape of 28/7/88, which was used for footage in 1988's 'Story of' and still remains in said source instead of the TX version.
As has been said above, up until around the Blaxill era TOTP appears to have most often been recorded "as live", but would naturally stop and start again/do retakes if required. I've read that Cowey had his own preferred recording routines too - with all of the pre-records going on, there were lots of retakes even if nothing had gone wrong, as well as links done separately from performances to be patched together in the TX copy. The opening link was apparently more often than not the very last one to be made...