DCC Archive The Beatles-the stored masters at Abbey Rd

Guys, "I Love Lucy" WAS done on Film, with a 3 camera shoot. It was the first show to use the three camera shoot, also.

The reason it was done on film was NOT to preserve it for future generations. No one, including Desi Arnaz, was thinking that far ahead. The reason it WAS done on film was because at the time, 1950, there was no coaxial cable from the East Coast to the West Coast for transmission 3 hours later.
The only way to get a high quality copy of thre show to the West coast was to ship a film can of the next show to the West Coast affiliates.
They also had to do plenty of re-takes, as many of the gags that we say Lucy do did not work the first time, and had to be reshot.

Both Lucy and Desi did not want the show to go out Live, because of all the crazy thinbgs that went wrong with early Live TV. they also refused to simply make a kinescope off a monitor and ship THAT, because even tho that was cheap to do, the Quality was terrible.

How do I know all this? Simple...I read Desi's autobiography, where he explained all this in detail.

Mikey

 

I believe Grant T is wrong. I Love Lucy was filmed - NOT videotaped - before a live audience using a three camera set up. Many other shows at the time were broadcast live and preserved on kinescope.

Although the first experimental videotape recorder was demonstrated in 1951, no practical recording device existed until 1956 -- several years into I Love Lucy's run. CBS broadcast the first network television show on videotape in November of 1956.

Here's a link to a website on the development of video recording technology:
http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/notes.html#video

 

OK, I was wrong. I checked. But I did think I recalled them using videotape at some point in the process. I know there would have been a difference in quality. Even the Twilight Zone experimented with videotape in the early 60s but it judt didn't translate the story very well.

Mikey, I too read Dezi's book. You are correct. Got any salt for my words?

 

Pass the salt over here too...


Todd

 

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

 

read the book instead (though i love the movie, too).

"Effie Perine rose and went into the outer office. Spade took off his hat and sat in the chair. The girl returned with an engraved card--MR. JOEL CAIRO.

"This guy is queer," she said.


"In with him, then, darling," said Spade."

later, chris

 

Interesting what Huston came up with in place of that line...

She hands Spade the card, and he notices some sort of fragrance from it.

"Gardenia," she says...

And so forth.

[ November 15, 2001: Message edited by: Camarillo ]

 

i wholeheartedly agree. one of the best book-to-screen adaptations out there.

later, chris