Electronovision

Electronovision was a process used by producer and entrepreneur H. William "Bill" Sargent, Jr.^[1] to produce a handful of motion pictures, theatrical plays, and specials in the 1960s and early 1970s using a high-resolution videotape process for production, later transferred to film via kinescope for theatrical release.

Releases

More than half a dozen films were produced in this fashion, including the production of Richard Burton in

.

Process background

Electronovision was an entirely separate and more advanced process from the earlier Electronicam, used by the DuMont Television Network in the 1950s to telecast live TV shows with electronic cameras, while simultaneously filming the production with a film camera attached to the side of the video camera. That process had been used on TV series broadcast by DuMont as well as the "Classic 39" half-hour version of The Honeymooners that aired on CBS in the 1955–56 television season, allowing the producers to archive a high-quality film negative for reruns.

While the press releases on Electronovision were deliberately vague, perhaps to add more mystique to the process, it used conventional analog Image Orthicon

The promoters of Electronovision gave the impression that this was a new system created from scratch, using a high-tech name (and avoiding the word

of the period was very primitive, which forced Electronovision producers to approach their productions essentially as if they were live TV broadcasts. Whole scenes were shot in long blocks, typically at least 5 or 10 minutes, and segments were physically cut together using mechanical 2" videotape splicing blocks. A special chemical solution and magnetic powder, applied to the videotape and viewed under a microscope, allowed the editor to see the video pulses and precisely align them for glitch-free editing. However, the technique was hit-and-miss and made it difficult to make accurate, fast edits.

Sargent's original Electronovision empire went out of business around 1966, following the release of

, which received wide distribution in theaters as well as on cable TV and, later, home video.

Decline

Health and business problems forced Sargent to retire in the 1980s. The process became a footnote in history, though several other attempts were made to revive the essential concept—a higher-resolution videotape system, using modified video cameras, recording to videotape and then making a kinescope for theatrical release.

Rival processes

Avant-garde musician

35mm film

for theatrical release.

Gold Key Entertainment

. It was not successful in theatres, but was frequently shown in TV syndication and 16mm rentals.

In 1973, Hollywood actor/producer

NBC-TV series Get Smart, raised the money to produce Santee, starring Glenn Ford. Platt saw the advantages of using videotape over film, and used the facilities of Burbank's Compact Video Systems to shoot the western on location in the California and Nevada deserts. The motion picture was shot with Norelco PCP-70 portable plumbicon NTSC cameras and portable Ampex VR-3000 2" VTRs, then transferred to film at Consolidated Film Industries

in Hollywood. The film was not commercially successful. Platt committed suicide about six months after the film was released.

In 1976, TV producer

. The film enjoyed some critical success, but was Schlatter's only foray into feature films.

Los Angeles video post-production company Image Transform specialized in creating very high-quality recordings using 3M EBR film recorders that could perform color film-out recording on 16mm by exposing three 16mm frames in a row (one red, one green and one blue) during the 1970s and 1980s. Their Image Vision process used modified 24fps 10 MHz Bosch Fernseh KCK-40 cameras. This was a custom pre-

system of the early 1990s.

See also

• 819-line French TV system
• Display resolution
• Kinescope
• Quadruplex videotape
• Videotape
• Video tape recorder

References

External links

• "The Rock Concert That Captured an Era," Smithsonian magazine
• Chuck Pharis video camera web page