Sunday, May 25, 2008

1981 TV SPECIAL - THE MAKING OF THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK

I’ve always been fascinated about how films are made and back when I was kid I always tuned in for these "making of" specials on TV. You kids today have it easy with your YouTubes, Tivos and DVD recordering machines! Back in my day if you wanted to copy a show...well...the only option was the family audio tape player.

Here’s my tape of The Making of the Raiders of the Lost Ark that I recorded off TV back on November 28, 1981. I remember watching the whole show about two feet away from our Zenith. For one hour my finger was always ready to push the pause button before the commercial breaks.



Instead of making you listen to my crummy tape copy, here’s all six parts of the Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark. ----Update----- The YouTube videos have been taken down. I'm sure it will pop up again eventually so keep searching if you you want to watch the special.

4 comments:

Mr. Karswell said...

Ha ha, man I thought I was the only one who used to do this! I have tons of TV stuff recorded onto cassette like this... I used to just love to lay in bed at night and listen to an old movie playing (that is before I had a tv of my own in my room.) Some films like Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, or Ghost and Mr Chicken I already had memorized visually anyway from seeing so many times so I never had a problem during the more quiet stretches without voices and music and stuff. I remember recording a Sanford and Son episode one time but the recorder batteries were running low and I didn't know it, so when I played it back it sounded really funny, somehow much funnier than the show really was.

Did it drive you crazy when you were trying to "make a recording" and someone was being noisey... half my tapes have me "shushing" my sister as a bonus audio feature, doors slamming in backgrounds, cats meowing, mom yelling, phones ringing, etc... glory days.

I always kept the commercials in anything I recorded too. I wasn't that anal about it, plus I liked the jingles.

Todd Franklin said...

Steve - That's funny about Ghost and Mr. Chicken as I made an audio tape with some of that movie. WTBS always played it! That was the worst when family was blabbing in the background and your trying to copy a Bugs Bunny toon.

Now I wish I'd kept the commercial in!

Glen Mullaly said...

Excellent! My best friend recorded tons of tv shows ( The Incredible Hulk, Buck Rogers, That's Incredible, etc. ) on tape in the late 70s early 80s. I still bug him occasionally about tracking down those ferrous oxide treasures, but I fear they're long gone. Great that you kept yours!

Todd Franklin said...

Glen - I sure loved my tape recorder and I was always taping stuff from TV to silly made-up skits. With a friend, I even did a spoof of Star Wars. Someday I'll have to do a post on it.