Amateur video?

[gatech!chinet.chi.il.us!katefans@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Chris Williams)]

Chris here,

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Dave Neff flings himself in front of the bus called .gaffa:
>> Overall, the videos on "The Whole Story" did not impress me.
>> The early ones seems rather amateur (Wuthering Heights)

and Gregory Bossert replied:
> point taken, but remember these date from the early days of music
> videos.  i remember the excitement over the first Blondie videos
> (from the same era) -- they look a lot like a high school video
> project to these modern, MTV-jaded eyes.

and Michael Graham commented:
> The video for Wuthering Heights may to some appear amateurish - all those
> stupid, over used effects...but in the song she IS a ghost. So as cheesy as 
> the effects may look now, they ARE appropriate.

  Well....to put all of this in context of the time I dug out some of our
early music video compliation tapes, and honestly, "Wuthering Heights"
was a "cutting-edge" video! The particular video effect used was the Quantel
"Trail", one of a handful of $150,000 gee-whiz boxes that only the top
few post production houses bought. I remember when I first saw this video
on, of all things, _Don Kirshner's Rock Concert_. I was knocked out. The
effect didn't crop up again until the Jackson's "Blame It On The Boogie"
clip. The other videos on the tape are far less sophisticated; The Who-
"Who Are You";  David Johansen- "Funky But Chic"; Squeeze- "Cool For Cats".
  The only thing that approachs in terms of conceptual sophistication
is David Bowie's "Boys Keep Swinging".
  
   For some perspective here is a bit from ABC's "20/20" about thea
introduction of laser videodiscs, oh so long ago:  
--------------------
(video and music)  Tom Petty "Refugee" (band-in-a-box)
(VO)  Rock Music generates the largest chunk of record sales, and ever
   since the mid ninteen-seventies companies have been making promotional
   tapes and experimenting with different ways to put pictures to music;
   this is the most common- simply by showing groups in performance, like
   Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

(video and music) Tom Petty segues into
(video and music) Wuthering Heights

(VO) A second method uses high technology to illustrate music -
   like the computer generated special effects added to this performance
   by Kate Bush.
---------------------

    So, sure the effect has been overused, and looks cheezy *now* but,
for example, just because everyone has arms sticking out from walls,
Jean Cocteau's _Beauty and the Beast_ shouldn't be discarded. I'm sure
the first time someone had the dreaded water-hitting-the-table-in-slow-motion
it looked pretty neat.

  Remember, Kate was the first to use the hyper-dreaded "Orch. #5"!


                                Chris Williams of
                                    Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                                        katefans@chinet.chi.il.us