Talk:Shoestring (TV series)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 05:30, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Eddie Shoestring's phobia

I think Eddie suffered from a phobia of computers - this is from memory and it's at least twenty years since I saw the programme, so I don't want to add something incorrect! Autarch (talk) 21:43, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

After reading the article more closely, I can see where it's already mentioned. D'Oh!!! Autarch (talk) 21:46, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Shot on Super 8?

I remember seeing a few minutes of this and and mainly noticing the poor quality of the picture and sound, and generally amateurish production. And then the opening scene was Shoestring's secretary complaining about not being paid. I thought maybe it was called "Shoestring" because someone was trying to prove that a TV show could be shot on such a low budget, hence Super 8 film and a broke hero as a nod to the audience. It would be notable if that was the case - I'm looking to see if I can find any info on this. Algr (talk) 18:51, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

- Apparently not. I didn't find any real sources, but I can now infer that I don't know a thing about this. Algr (talk)

I watched it at the time and there was nothing wrong with either the picture quality nor the production, bearing in mind that in 1979 a 20" TV set was the norm at 4/3 screen aspect ratio. It may be that today's large screens show up the limitations in the film stock used.

You also may have seen it broadcast from a poor-quality print. In the late 1990s some TV stations were using low-quality media for broadcast of bought-in programmes, with some being well below former professional technical standards. At one time I remember occasionally seeing films that looked suspiciously like they had been broadcast from commercial DVD's.

As an example, a certain UK TV commercial station broadcast Murder, She Wrote using the worst video tape reproduction I had ever seen until YouTube. What is more, there had been no colour correction to UK (EBU) technical standards nor adjustment for gamma correction, resulting in a picture dark and painful to watch. The series remained like that for some time and I surmised that they had either bought the series on low-quality tape media (cheaper), or had no-one with the technical expertise to correct it. I suspect that the genius at the TV company that bought it ordered it by mistake in NTSC format rather that ordering it in PAL, or neglected to have it transferred from the former to the latter before broadcast.

As the UK had what was widely regarded as the best TV in the world up to that time this was merely a foretaste of the declining standards that were to come. Prior to this time - the mid 1990s - the BBC and other UK TV stations had made most of their programmes in-house, with usually decent budgets, props department, etc., but from that time on the new programmes were to be made by outside contractors, independent production companies. The result was a few good programmes and unfortunately a larger number of abysmal ones, by any standard.

The problem got worse with the introduction of digital video cameras used by people unaware of the technical niceties, which is why many programmes shot on digital have poor colours and a dark gloomy picture.

But as for Shoestring and the subsequent Bergerac, IIRC, the picture quality was the same as was normal for TV at the time, bearing in mind that they were shot (I think) on 35mm film. For outside shooting you had to use film rather than video tape because the broadcast video cameras of the time were too bulky, relatively immobile, and required mains electricity which led to cables running everywhere. That is why for Outside Broadcasts (OB) such as sports events, etc., the usual vehicle used for televised video coverage in the UK was of the Pantechnicon type. And you shot on 35mm rather than anything better because the film stock and processing costs for 35mm were low enough for a small-ish budget TV series that as far as the producers knew, would be shown once on BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, or Channel 4, and then perhaps never repeated - this was before the public could buy programmes on video for home viewing, either on VHS or DVD (although there were a few VHS recorders around in UK homes by 1979, it was mainly schools that had them, for recording schools programmes for later playback to classes). If a first series was a success, and perhaps sold to broadcasting companies abroad, then a second series might have a bigger budget with higher production values, more outside locations etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.148.220.131 (talk) 19:09, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

35mm? I had understood that the BBC almost always used 16mm. Even for impressive stuff like "The ascent of man". Algr (talk) 07:52, 10 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Super 8mm is not and never has been a professional format. Before digital acquisition, the UK had used 16mm as the standard for TV productions for years, though ITV used 35mm on its early major filmed TV series like Robin Hood, The Saint etc. The quality you're describing for Shoestring is no worse than ITV's The Sweeney, which appeared five years earlier or Taggart, which appeared after. Indieshack (talk) 13:15, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]