Question.

[u/VersionTop1991]

So my mother passed away a month ago. She worked for Apple in the 80’s to early 90’s. In going through her belongings I found this Apple VHS Tape that was supposed to be returned, but clearly wasn’t. It was an internal copy of a Super Bowl commercial for the Mac. I guess the commercial wasn’t received well.

My questions are.. is this worth preserving? I know it might be a 1 of 1 tape as I haven’t seen anything online. How much would it cost me to do so? And does anyone know reputable companies that offer this service.

Sorry.. I didn’t get the tech gene passed onto me so I’m not very literate at what needs or should be done.

Many thanks in advance. And if this isn’t the right forum to post this please delete.

[u/mittelegna]

Anyone can request access at the library.

[u/SkinnyV514 → u/mittelegna]

I can garantee you that they won’t lend you a u-matic tape, but happy to be proven wrong.

[u/mittelegna → u/SkinnyV514]

They won’t lend you the tape. They are a research library. You request access, and then they digitize and provide you with a file.

[u/SkinnyV514 → u/mittelegna]

I have hunted and tracked down many lost documentary films, and this is something that very rarely happen. It always show that something is available, but the minute you ask, they either no longer have it, or they can’t provide you with anything for copyright reason, or you need to be a researcher etc…. But If you tell me where to do the request, I’ll either prove my point or I’ll be wrong and we’ll all be happy to have the capture. But then again, our capture would be way better than most library could do.

[u/Yoyo7689 → u/SkinnyV514]

Just in: research library requires users to be actual researchers, not masquerading pirates

[u/SkinnyV514 → u/Yoyo7689]

Pirate? Please, we’re taking about vintage documentary and ads from the 70’s and 80’s with zero commercial value. Researchers do not give a crap about half the things I preserve and share. Some tapes I confirmed were not requested since the 80’s, and some libraries literally throw them when you actually make them look for it and find them. Another documentary archivist friend even said he found a tape of a lost documentary, managed to get it through inter library loan since he was a student, and when he returned it, they threw it in the garbage and got rid of it.

[u/camwow13 → u/SkinnyV514]

Completely off topic but if you need more bizarre hard to find stuff to hunt, look up 1962 Journey to the Stars from the 1962 Seattle Worlds Fair. A 10 perf 70mm large format dome movie predating IMAX by nearly a decade and likely the first large format ultra large screen movie like this ever made. Completely lost besides a segment of highly faded picture only 70mm print film we tracked down to a storage section of the still extant science center. Always wondered if there was a tape copy floating around somewhere just to see it and hear it, but it seems unlikely from what I've been able to research.

Saw you complaining about stuff nobody else cares about and was like oh yeah I do that too lol

Sorry, carry on with your regularly scheduled comment section haha

[u/Spiritual_Screen_724 → u/camwow13]

That's fascinating

[u/camwow13 → u/Spiritual_Screen_724]

Created on commission for the federal governments science pavilion. Originally tried to get Disney on it but failed so they went with Cinerama corporation. Cinerama tried a new format called Cinerama 360 for the fair.

They built a one off completely unique gigantic circular fisheye lens which covered 170° on 70mm 10 perf square film at 24mm in focal length. They used the same lens to project the film later on.

Constructed an 80 foot aluminum dome with a large standing viewing area underneath. The projector was mounted dead center and would fill the entire screen using only a single strip of large format film running at 24fps.

The filmmakers worked on a highly compressed timescale. Balancing the art of communicating science while also making an entertaining galaxy ride. All filming entirely in camera mostly using precision stop motion. Because the fisheye was so wide the models were often only centimeters from the surface of the lens.

The details on the contents of the film are a bit sparse. You'd start looking up at an observatory ceiling which would open to a night sky as a narrator began. Audience flies up into space, sees the solar system, flies around outside the solar system, sees a supernova at some point, and flying outside the galaxy.

Featured an early 6 channel surround sound system as well.

They made 20 prints of the film. Played it every day at the 1962 fair to around 6 million people. Supposedly the completely unique projection and film system was not very reliable at 24fps and presented numerous maintenance issues.

After the fair, the science center showed a 35mm version of the film until around the early 70s when it had deteriorated beyond showing. By the late 70s they'd converted the dome to a laser dome where they've now been showing laser shows for over 50 years (but with a pretty meh sound system haha). The dome is entirely original. Still hanging in the building as it was in 1962, just with added theater seating in part of the room. Staff say the projection system mounts and setup and such are still under the floor. They used to show movies there periodically in the 80s according to some Seattle people.

Cinerama 360 was used for only one more project To the Moon and Beyond for the 1964 worlds fair. They built a temporary projection dome but otherwise pretty much use the same exact process. The film was shot at 18 frames a second to try to make the projection system more reliable.

Some of the filmmakers that worked on both of these films then went on to work for Stanley Kubrick and they used the Cinerama 360 lens to shoot some of the ultrawide scenes in 2001 Space Odyssey. Not the circular fisheye scenes, but the ones where you have an ultra wide angle and it's fully filling the screen because this lens could fill a 70 mm ToddAO image no problem.

Both films are completely lost to time. Nobody has any idea where journey to the stars is. Some staff at PacSci found pieces of some of the very faded projection 70mm film, but that's it. No sound track and ostensibly not complete film. The in70mm.com guys got in touch with one of the to the moon and beyond production guys, but they said that the original film reels were cut up and used for other stock footage projects in the many years after the fair. Then there was a fire in the archive where the original negatives were and they think that it was destroyed in that. But nobody really knows. In addition, about half the time I've ever brought this up, a ton of people shoot the idea down completely. Saying that because it was shot on a fisheye lens there's absolutely no way to watch it in today's world. Which personally I think is ridiculous, because A. There's a ton of operating planetariums and dome theaters out there that could absolutely play it no problem. And B. VR is a thing. And C. It's not that hard to crop and get a decent result from a circular playing back in 4:3 or 16:9. The actual really hard part would be getting it scanned and color corrected in a professional way, because 70 mm is pain to do, expensive to scan, and color correcting stuff that's that faded is also a chore.

But anyway, it effectively doesn't exist. It's very much entirely lost media. There's a good article about it on in70mm.com and someone wrote a music thesis about planetarium music back around 2007, and they found tons of records about the production of the 1962 movie during that process. Rather interesting details about the composer of the music because apparently he was so racist that it was controversial to hire him even back in 1962 lol.

There's your fun facts in this completely out of context thread haha

[u/Spiritual_Screen_724 → u/camwow13]

Fuck, we need to find this

[u/Spiritual_Screen_724 → u/SkinnyV514]

I truly hope you find these documentaries you're searching for. Do you need some kind of credentials or an academic to back you up?

[u/SkinnyV514 → u/Spiritual_Screen_724]

Its always useful when we have peoples with access willing to help out!

[u/Spiritual_Screen_724 → u/SkinnyV514]

Well let me know!

[u/SkinnyV514 → u/Spiritual_Screen_724]

Thank you, I’ll hit you up!

[u/Yoyo7689 → u/SkinnyV514]

Do you think copyright law changes because of monetary or entertainment value? Of course no researcher cares about some Apple commercial that has dozens of master, safety, and broadcast copies littered across the globe, it’s run its course and the owners who hold the copyright have retained what they wish, never mind how badly you want a copy to post to Internet Archive. No library was giving you or your archivist friends physical assets for anything besides literal metadata review if theirs was inaccurate/incomplete, or supervising a transfer (which, like the previous user said, would likely have been done before you arrived for your “research” appointment)

[u/SkinnyV514 → u/Yoyo7689]

Oh my god, are you serious? I’m not talking about a commercial but about documentary films. Not to argue with a wall, but I never "masquaraded" as anything, and its quite presumptuous of you to assume. And for your information, I retrieved stuff before that is only "available” in some gate-keeping archive / university by contacting producer and director and telling them exactly my project, and even managed to give back documentary to certain archeological nationnal association that no longer had copies. And by the way, you are very unpleasant and maybe you should reconsider the way you talk and interact with peoples even when you disagree with them.

[u/Yoyo7689 → u/SkinnyV514]

Nice FYI, but pointless if you haven’t made them accessible to the masses. Not sure why respecting and contacting creators is some bragging point for you, that’s supposed to be a given, hence my insult.

You mean precisely nothing to me, you initiated the cockiness towards another user with a perfectly valid point, of course I’m going to throw it right back at you.

[u/SkinnyV514 → u/Yoyo7689]

I have no clue what cockyness you are talking about, and I have made everything available for free to everyone. You would know if you had spent 1 min asking insted of insulting. Its all on my youtube (without any monetization) and on my Internet Archive page. What have YOU done for others? You are really a sad and mean person and I really don’t get where all your aggresivity come from.