I thought I’d start the year off with a smile. In the spirit of last month’s “Fatal Deviation X”, which was made 10 years ago, this is what I was doing almost 20 years ago, complete with 80’s mullet. Scary how quickly time flies.

It was filmed using a VHS camcorder and edited with 2 VHS recorders. Those were the days!!! I have tweaked the edit where I could. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the source material so it was impossible to remove the hideous colour banding from the 80’s edit points. As such I embraced it in the edit and degraded the picture a little bit more for a Grindhouse feel. I also added special fx (a pipedream then), sound fx, and some music, keeping the self composed synth score I used then.

The plot: Blade Runner meets The Terminator. Someone is a replicant. But who?

I hope you enjoy it. It shows how wonderful it is to have these things many years later. In fact, so much time has passed, I feel I can watch it objectively, as if it’s someone else. Although the quality isn’t the best, if you can look past the deficiencies, I think it’s a real hoot.

Replicant on Vimeo

He He, loved it mate. TBH, i wasnt expecting much when i read how it was originaly edited.... i remember my own efforts using the same method, but i was pleasntly suprised kinda like the Grimleys do Sean of the Dead

Nice jumpy bit with the hand btw

Thanks for the comments enc. I'm glad you liked it.

Old school! I used to edit loads on my VCR but never turned out as good as this. Good Work!

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www.fingercuffproductions.co.uk

Click here for my Youtube channel

Thanks Fingercuff. Editing with 2 VCR's used to be a nightmare. And to think, at the time, I recorded the sound effects with one hand whilst operating the synth keyboard with the other hand, on the fly, in one big audio dub. Life is so much easier now!

Was it something I said ?

8 plays since I uploaded and 4 of them were from work. Not a good start to the year.

Tried to watch it a few days ago but gave up. I know this was old technology and you've embraced it etc etc, but I just found it was taking a lot of effort to watch. The reward didn't seem to justify the effort.

Anyway, I thought I'd do you the courtesy of watching the whole way through, given the lack of response here and knowing the quality of some of your other stufff....

So....I think the concept, plot and script were good and the acting OK to good. There was some good camerawork (allowing for the technological limitations) and interesting shots. And the editing was pretty damn good.
I did not like the stereotype smarmy Tory canvasser. Without justification this was sub sixth form political "humour".
The best part of the film for me was yor music. Very appropriate and very much of the time. Superb!

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Tim

Thanks for taking the time to watch Tim. Why did you have such difficulty in watching ? Was it just the VHS quality and colour banding issues?

Yeah, nothing more serious than that. I found I had to peer really hard at the screen to make things out. Also trying to watch in my study with my wife cooking, TV on in next room, stepson listening to music in the other adjoining room and my 4 year old running around probably didn't help concentration

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Tim

Cheers Tim. You're a gent for giving the film the benefit of the doubt. It is really appreciated. I was hoping it would find an audience that it never had the opportunity to receive, back in the day. However, it's got 3 thumbs up out of 26 plays on Vimeo. That's a better percentage than I've ever got.