u/numbersix1979

I know I could create this effect with filters on video editing software but I’m curious if anyone’s tried this or if there’s a determined method for doing it. My thought is to record onto a blank tape and distress, either chemically or physically, part of the tape to create the classic flickering visual effect.

* running the tape back and forth in a VCR — seems like a good way to target the affected area but it seems like it would take a long time and potentially wear out the VCR’s mechanisms

* using a magnet — seems likely to just destroy the tape’s contents and difficult to target

* sandpaper or similar abrasive — I have the handy dandy VHS is Life mold cleaner hardware, I’m considering attaching low-grain sandpaper pads to the device and stressing the tape that way. But frankly I’d be open to alternatives because that sounds like a huge pain in the ass

Thoughts?

Haven’t seen the movie so I can’t comment on it but I did want to complain about how disgusting the rehabilitation effort has been. Specifically here on Reddit (since it’s my social media platform of choice but I imagine there’s similar sentiment elsewhere) there’s this very annoying, self-righteous, know-it-all attitude (General Reddit attitude) of “well you have to understand that Michael had an arrested development and he got abused and was on puberty-blocking drugs and never got to have a real childhood and he probably thought what he was doing wasn’t that bad.”

The first thing that annoys me about this is that it implicitly supposes that Michael Jackson was some kind of mentally-deficient, developmentally delayed special needs case who didn’t know what he was doing was wrong. Objectively, that was not the case. The reason why he got so popular was that he was an instrumentalist virtuoso and extremely creative performer. I hate to sound like a boomer but in the years before every pop star was grown like Sea Monkeys in jars by Swedish pedophiles, you used to have to actually be able to play music and know how to choreograph your dancing and come up with good lyrics instead of just having all that shit fed to you by a record company as if by an IV drip. All that is to say that clearly Michael Jackson wasn’t a vegetable because he did plenty of things for himself. I thought there was no way you can have an appreciation for his musical genius and still give him a pass for being too stupid to know kids shouldn’t be molested without recognizing the cognitive dissonance between those two concepts but I guess people manage it.

Other thing is that it’s not like anyone else gets this kind of sympathy. Every comment thread about a criminal (non Luigi criminals, credit where it’s due) is full of bloodthirsty fantasizing about harsh, disgusting punishments for the perpetrators. I’m just going to say it, plenty of serial killers and pedophiles had just as bad upbringings as MJ did, in many cases much worse. Not to cry over serial killers and pedophiles but if you’re going to have sympathy for a pedophile like MJ and still bray for say, kids in Chicago who shoot each other because they have no opportunity and no social services and no reason to know better to be locked up forever … maybe consider why you only have sympathy for someone whose music you like. And more importantly plenty of people who had those kinds of upbringings did not molest kids! Most of them don’t, in fact! Just feels disrespectful to people who suffer to give people who hurt others a pass in situations like this.

Finally, the justification I see people give for watching the movie is that you at least get to hear the music and see it performed on a big screen. Insane. Every famous Michael Jackson performance is meticulously catalogued and readily available on YouTube in 4K. Jaffar Jackson could be a perfectly nice kid but he’s got a weird face and we’re at a point now where you don’t have to watch VH1 at the right time for a concert you like, you can watch the thing on demand on any TV in your house without paying $30 to the Michael Jackson Rehabilitation Trust. Plus parking.