“Inside The Works” archival footage
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before i start and say what exactly i did, if early examples of CGI from the late 1970s up to the 1980s interests you, definitely check out the documentary that these tapes ended up in! later down the line, the individual tapes should be available in full on the Internet Archive. though i will warn you, what i say below is going to be pretty wordy... scroll to the screenshots if you want to see the results on their own!

what did i get?
i was sent 13 U-matic cassettes that presumably had not been played successfully since 1990, as that was the newest copyright date seen on any of them. as far as i was told, the tapes first went to another individual with a “conventional” digitization setup, where the tapes literally would not play in their VCR, and the team did not receive much communication from that individual after the fact. 4 months later, they found their way to me!

the tapes contain lots of work in progress renders, wireframe previews from CGL’s proprietary “BBOP” animation program, storyboard sketches, and demo reels pertaining to a whole host of projects taken on by the graphics lab - 3D spots for television networks, advertisements, 2D test animations, music videos (including Kraftwerk’s Boing Boom Tschak), and of course, the previews for the feature films “The Works” and “Strawberry Fields” that the team was waiting months to finally see.


what had to be done?
there honestly are not enough words for me to put on a single webpage to express the amount of time i sunk into the tapes, but when i say they were messed up, they were messed up. immediately upon receiving the tapes, i could tell that they had been kept in a humid environment for at least a part of their life, and it was to the point that the mold (or “crystalized formaldehyde“ as the first individual said) was not something that could just be wiped away. furthermore, they were very creased, and as i found out on the first attempts, the plastic reels that the tapes were on had warped enough to where they would scrape the bottom of the cassette shell, slowing down in my U-matic VCR. combined with the fact that virtually any U-matic tape these days will need moisture removed (usually this is called “baking”), i will summarize that i needed to manually wind each tape for thorough cleaning, reattach the clear leaders due to dried glue, swap shells between tapes that had been warped due to heat, and manually rewind once more to prevent “popped strands.”. 

even with all that work, that could not undo the damage from creased tape and warped reels, which resulted in playback that was usually completely unwatchable by conventional means (capture card, TV screen, etc.) thankfully, finding the right test point for vhs-decode once again saved the day, as shown below.


images - tape condition


an example showing one of the U-matic tapes contaminated with mold. it was nightmarish removing this, as it was binding the tape together, requiring very slow turns of the reels by hand...
another one of the U-matic tapes showing signs of mold contamination, though not as severe as the other moldy tape shown. it appeared a lot of the tape on the reel had unspooled over the last ~30 years, though..
a close-up example of the residue that was left on a lot of the U-matic tapes. considering this, it’s honestly a miracle that they played as well as they did...
what i would later learn was the plastic from the bottom of the reel being eaten away as it ground against the bottom of the cassette shell, presumably from the previous individual’s thwarted digitization attempt. also notice the rings in the videotape, showing signs of “popped strands” as said above. 
prepping the tape reels removed from their cassette shells for “baking”, which removes built-up moisture and prevents squealing + sticky-shed syndrome (where magnetic particles shed off the tape). i left the reels in the dehydrator for 12 hours, with a 3-hour cooldown period before attempting playback.

captures - “conventional” output 


a segment of an unfinished project called “Ecotopia” as captured by an I/O DATA GV-USB2 using the composite video output of my U-matic VCR. that rainbowy section is supposed to be the vertical sync pulse...
a segment from a demo reel of “Strawberry Fields” specifically when Jude and Michelle are sent to outer space by train via a “Magical Mystery Tour.” the messed up v-sync pulse once again causes problems for the I/O DATA GV-USB2 capture card.
a general promotional reel for advertising NYIT as a whole. in this sample, both the horizontal and veritcal sync was dancing all over the place..
another segment from a “Strawberry Fields” demo reel, where a giant robotic mantis attacks a giant robiotic ant. this and a few other shots were borrowed from their other fizzled-out movie project known as “The Works.” 

captures - vhs-decode output 


the same segment of the “Ecotopia” reel, captured at the exact same time as the conventional playback, except processed through vhs-decode. unlike the conventional output, the vhs-decode result grabbed from a test point inside of the VCR is stable for viewing.
the same “Magical Mystery Tour” segment from the same “Strawberry Fields” demo reel tape. once again, the picture is stable for viewing.
the same NYIT promo tape segment as before, except without the bad horizontal and vertical syncs. 
the same mantis vs. ant segment of the “Strawberry Fields” demo reel as before, but without lack of vertical hold.
©2026 isiah f