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What music videos was filmed with “film cameras”?

Themidwestcowboy

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It appears that most of his music videos from the 'Thriller' era onwards were filmed with film cameras.

Note that Michael Jackson used to call his music videos as short films, which also strongly suggests that he used film cameras for them.

Also, he had the necessary funds/budget to film his music videos with film cameras.

For example, director Steve Barron stated that he used 16mm film for the shooting of the 'Billie Jean' music video.

Because of that, the Michael Jackson Estate technically can re-release these music videos in 4K format.
 
Themidwestcowboy said:
What music videos were shot on film? I was under the impression that the 90s stuff was shot on tape but I found these pictures online.

Are these all film cameras?
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Yes, they're all film cameras. Starting from Billie Jean (16mm), everything else was shot on film (35mm).

According to Steve Barron, the Billie Jean reels are gone due to a limited budget. Most of the Dangerous onwards stuff have digital fx which were done on tape.
 
MJbr2 said:
Yes, they're all film cameras. Starting from Billie Jean (16mm), everything else was shot on film (35mm).

According to Steve Barron, the Billie Jean reels are gone due to a limited budget. Most of the Dangerous onwards stuff have digital fx which were done on tape.
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They're gone???
 
MJbr2 said:
Yes, they're all film cameras. Starting from Billie Jean (16mm), everything else was shot on film (35mm).

According to Steve Barron, the Billie Jean reels are gone due to a limited budget. Most of the Dangerous onwards stuff have digital fx which were done on tape.
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What about those videos that didn’t have VFX such as TDCAU and Jam?
 
IAINTWORKIN said:
A few of Michael’s short films had thumbnail changes today on the official YouTube channel which indicates a possible release of more HD short films very soon
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MJbr2 said:
Really? Which ones?
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The ones that I posted. That’s why I made this thread because of the HD thumbnails.

Edit: forgot to include Bad MV such as APOM, MITM and SC. But I already knew that those, except for MITM, we’re shot on film
 
Themidwestcowboy said:
The ones that I posted. That’s why I made this thread because of the HD thumbnails.

Edit: forgot to include Bad MV such as APOM, MITM and SC. But I already knew that those, except for MITM, we’re shot on film
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Man in the Mirror is just a montage put together with stock footage, so that might be tape only. APOM comes from film shots of a few 88 shows (Paris, Hamburg, Wembley etc). SC is a weird situation because it is technically part of Moonwalker, so WB should own the rights to it, but who knows.

One thing has to be said regarding this topic: it has been proven that the format container used on DVDs capped the actual quality of SD footage. Fresh transfers from the tape masters (for the videos which were shot on tape) would look miles better than previous DVD releases.
 
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IAINTWORKIN said:
A few of Michael’s short films had thumbnail changes today on the official YouTube channel which indicates a possible release of more HD short films very soon
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However, about two months ago, the in the closet thumbnail suddenly changed, but nothing happened.
 
Most music videos from the 1980s & 1990s were edited on videotape, no matter what they were originally shot on. They didn't always save the original footage. It was thrown out, destroyed, or lost in a lot of cases or taped over if shot on videotape. The same thing happened with many older TV shows.
 
DuranDuran said:
Most music videos from the 1980s & 1990s were edited on videotape, no matter what they were originally shot on. They didn't always save the original footage. It was thrown out, destroyed, or lost in a lot of cases or taped over if shot on videotape. The same thing happened with many older TV shows.
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I am very curious what AI can do in these cases, in the future. Imagine they could feed the current version of the Billie Jean short film, and tell AI: "Don't change anything, but make it 4K." That would be really interesting...
 
Piek said:
I am very curious what AI can do in these cases, in the future. Imagine they could feed the current version of the Billie Jean short film, and tell AI: "Don't change anything, but make it 4K." That would be really interesting...
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It'll probably look like wax figures or a video game like that recent Get Back documentary about The Beatles. 😄
 
DuranDuran said:
It'll probably look like wax figures or a video game like that recent Get Back documentary about The Beatles. 😄
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People have to stop being bitchy about grain. Grain does not make it look old.
 
Get Back looked better on Disney plus than the youtube trailers. More grain, youtube compression destroys the grain.

I think I got used to how it looked not long after I started watching it.
 
SmoothGangsta said:
Get Back looked better on Disney plus than the youtube trailers. More grain, youtube compression destroys the grain.

I think I got used to how it looked not long after I started watching it.
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The rooftop gig footage was unsettling to me as I got used to the YouTube versions with grain.
 
Mister_Jay_Tee said:
Yeah they are not remastering ancient film footage just to keep the grain on it.
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Restoring film has nothing to do with removing grain. Degraining is the video equivalent of remastering an analog era music album but brickwalling it, instead of mixing it closer to the original album levels. The main reason the grain is removed is that the younger generations are used to watching modern digitally shot movies & TV shows, which has no grain. Sometimes they even add fake grain like when fake record noise is put on a CD era album. In recent years some CDs come in a record style album cover instead of the regular plastic CD case.
 
MJbr2 said:
Yes. Iirc, Steve mentioned the edits were done directly on the reels and the final cut was discarded after being put on tape.
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Wow so BJ is gone forever? But I understand because Michael was a known artist but wasn’t that big of an artist yet so his record company didn’t want to give him that big financing for the BJ short film cause of risks maybe? The best the Estate could do with the short film is locate the highest quality VHS tape of BJ in their vault or Sony and upscale it like what the GM Estate did for Wham! and some of their early videos.
 
Not sure if this has been mentioned on here but the Estate has updated thumbnails in decent quality, that doesn’t automatically mean remastering of the short films cause this is the Estate we are talking about. But maybe just maybe, they are switching up things a little. Maybe and hopefully they are remastering content just in time for the biopic, who knows. It would be weird just to click on the HQ thumbnail/video just to watch the LQ short films so maybe some work is going on?
 
femi said:
The best the Estate could do with the short film is locate the highest quality VHS tape of BJ in their vault or Sony and upscale it like what the GM Estate did for Wham! and some of their early videos.
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VHS is a commercial format, not used in the industry. Master video tapes are a different game (just google 1" videotape and Umatic if you may and you will have an idea).

femi said:
Not sure if this has been mentioned on here but the Estate has updated thumbnails in decent quality, that doesn’t automatically mean remastering of the short films cause this is the Estate we are talking about. But maybe just maybe, they are switching up things a little. Maybe and hopefully they are remastering content just in time for the biopic, who knows. It would be weird just to click on the HQ thumbnail/video just to watch the LQ short films so maybe some work is going on?
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I believe this thread was started due to these thumbnail changes. If it doesn't mean fresh scans of the original film negatives, hopefully they can put out new transfers of the original master tapes we all know in higher quality now that they're not limited to DVDs.
 
MJbr2 said:
I believe this thread was started due to these thumbnail changes. If it doesn't mean fresh scans of the original film negatives, hopefully they can put out new transfers of the original master tapes we all know in higher quality now that they're not limited to DVDs.
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That was going to be my next question. Take a video like APOM, that video is a collage. It’s scattered all over from different stops on the BWT. It’s going to be very hard to recreate that from scratch especially if master footage is lost. I know they have the 15th performance of APOM from Wembley but do they have the others. As you said, hopefully they have the OG master tape to it, I was shocked to see it had remastered thumbnail, just wondering how’s that going to work.
 
femi said:
That was going to be my next question. Take a video like APOM, that video is a collage. It’s scattered all over from different stops on the BWT. It’s going to be very hard to recreate that from scratch especially if master footage is lost. I know they have the 15th performance of APOM from Wembley but do they have the others. As you said, hopefully they have the OG master tape to it, I was shocked to see it had remastered thumbnail, just wondering how’s that going to work.
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Spike Lee's montage from Bad 25 proves that they still have the source negatives for the various APOM performances shot for the video (btw, if you mentioned the 15th because of Spike's edit, that is actually the 14th), but that'd be virtually impossible to recreate the original video. Therefore, it'd be more reasonable to use the master tape for authenticity.

As for the master tapes, I'm pretty sure they still have all of them, but as we all know, tape suffers from quality loss if played too much. Judging from the various VHS, LD and DVD releases over the years, not to mention promo tapes and everything, I bet the masters have been dubbed and transferred numerous times and suffer from substantial loss of quality at this point in time.
 
MJbr2 said:
As for the master tapes, I'm pretty sure they still have all of them, but as we all know, tape suffers from quality loss if played too much.
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Film can also lose quality. The colors can fade or the picture can turn green, red, etc. and it can get scratches & spots. Very early film was made of a material that is very flammable and can deteriorate faster than later film stock. It can also be destroyed in fires, wet basements or weather like what happened at Universal Studios in 2008. Film needs to be stored in a climate control space to last the longest. But digital can lost as well, computers crash. I've read that some digital master recordings have parts that are lost.
 
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