 Very different and we're on air. This is Jim groom and this is another episode of reclaim today and we have the special privilege and honor of actually inviting someone who was kind of watched the birth of video in many ways John Graham who's joining us from Arizona to talk a little bit about some of his history in video So John welcome. Thank you, Jim Now John, I want to actually start this if it's all right with you just saying how our cross how our past cross and Why we're even having this conversation because I personally find it really it's interesting to me like maybe like you said no one else But for me, this is this is how the web works and it's awesome. So John had found a post that I wrote in 2015 about the first VCR of my family owned the Panasonic Omnivision from 1982 VHS a beautiful kind of like the Cadillac of VCRs of the time And I posted about it and I posted about this other Montgomery Ward two-piece VCR recorder and I posted this years ago three years ago kind of forgot it and I get an email from Yours truly John and which you said hey I actually have a little something to share with you and you might want to take it from there Well, I I'm 70 years old and I decided I needed to clean out my house Get rid of stuff, you know, you accumulate stuff in early in life and you get rid of stuff later in life I was definitely at the get rid of stuff phase and I'm not a pack rat But if I have something that seems to have value to me I I keep it and I look for opportunities to dispose of it without just throwing it away And one of the things was this Montgomery Ward as you say VCR that I had back from I think I bought it in 79 And I think I paid what was it around $1,100 just think for it. Yeah, and so there it was I had this thing. I kept it all these years. It works fine and But it was so old and outdated and just I but I couldn't imagine throwing it away So I went online to look and see if anybody Had any interest in such a thing or if it might be on eBay or somewhere So just a Google search and there that's how I found your post. How bizarre. Yeah So I mean, it's cool too because that's in some ways the power of the blog But it's also For me at the time I got that email for you to give you a little context I work at a company called reclaim hosting. We Help run infrastructure for universities But my kind of passion has been since the 80s video tapes In particular like VHS tapes and video stores So my partner and I found ourselves an interesting situation where we could open What was essentially a 1980s video store in Fredericksburg, Virginia called reclaim video And so when you wrote me that and you showed me the owners out the manual and the fact you paid 1300 for that for that vcr I was like, this is amazing And I was really I mean I was really impressed with you know, the fact the omnivision I didn't know that what is the relationship? Let me ask you this What is the relationship between the Montgomery ward model from like 81? And the panasonic omnivision you bought I think it was like 82 Like so were they just the same model just one was branded? Well, I I don't really know did the Montgomery ward model actually was that branded as a Montgomery ward product? I think it was but I can't see clear enough on the catalog to tell but I think it was I'm not sure My my sense was that it was probably just sold by Montgomery ward because they were kind of a sears And that it was a panasonic a panasonic product yeah as mine was mine was a panasonic product, but uh, I It might have been the model number was closed or something like that But there was this two-piece thing and the reason I bought a two-piece I was working in the business at the time And I was doing professional video I'd started in san francisco and then went to la And then I had a chance to start a new show in Boston called Chronicle Which was going to be an alternative to the way everything was going which was tabloid, you know reality tv So here was a it was it was going to be like the Harvard Of magazine shows the Harvard version of magazine shows are sort of a local 60 minutes So I jumped at that because I was working in la la and getting tired of the frankly the crap that we were turning out and uh, so uh, I went to Boston and uh, I was just at this point in my life Just fascinated by documentaries any documentary My friends said you and I have uh, one of the producers at the station said you and I have lust for documentary And there were a lot of them being done at the time, you know, there was the There was a lot of stuff coming on television The government was supporting public affairs kinds of things are in fact demanding it And so I bought this thing for two reasons one was I would I decided I was going to record every documentary that came along And I watched them and I had a full-time job So I would have to watch them at night and you could set up a timer, you know and record everything So I would I subscribed tv guide and I looked in and I marked all the documentaries and I punched them all into the vcr So it would record them all and the other reason of course the reason I bought the two piece was well I'll probably get a camera at some point and just make my own stuff for my own personal Reasons because I'd done that back in the late 60s and early 70s with a sony portapac So I'd done that before and now we had something that was in color and better and all that kind of stuff And I want to that's a really nice addition So I want to come back to the sony portapac which we talked about offline And that's an interesting story that I haven't really heard too many people talk about about how powerful the sony portapac was To the idea portable video. Is that right? Yes, it is I'll just finish this little bit And then I will go back to that and that was the reason that I bought this thing was that as I say I thought that I might do some of my own videos just for my own purposes for my own fun as I done with the portapac What happened however was that uh pile after pile after pile of phs tight tapes six hour tapes Just you know, they were just all over the place that I was like, oh my god I could never look at this stuff. I could never look at all these documentaries. You know how it is It just was too much and I ended up looking at very little of it Was there was there a kind of when they call it the portable video recorder, right? How portable was it like when you have that unit like was it, you know, super heavy like how How was it? How did they imagine portable in 1982? Well, I just I just sent this thing to you and uh in its little file box that it fit in it fit in a Plastic file box. It was 28 pounds and so one piece, you know, you had Slum over your shoulder that was kind of the electronics and the other piece was Well, actually come to think of it. No the the piece that you had over over your shoulder You had a camera and that and just that piece and then the other piece was the piece that recorded offline So it was pretty light. It really was as was the early portapac The sony portapac was very light the stuff that was really heavy was the early professional video You know, we recorded on uh on three quarter inch umatic That stuff that just was horrifying that was Yeah, I'll I'll go through the weights of all that tell you about what that was like at some point. That was insane But uh, yeah, go ahead. No, no, no, please go on Just to go back to the sony portapac. I had uh started school in 66 And then dropped out in 68 and then back in 1970 at the University of Massachusetts And I uh was a psychology major, but I was interested my my major interest is always Why do people believe what they believe and so the media interests? It's sort of the mcluan thing You know, it's like what what what what is going on here? Why do people just say? Oh, yeah, I believe that because you know some images in front of them and uh, and so when uh, so I took I minored in in mass media and when I went and took that first course the professor said well By the way, we have this new camera that's come out. It's a portable video camera tape action outside as it said The vhs thing That's the title of all our emails back and forth tape action outside because that's what it said in the early days When they were selling the vhs But anyway, this portapak So I went to the equipment room and checked out a portapak and I asked the guys said well When do you want me to return it? He says, I don't know. We got 10 of them. You're the only guy who's asked for one Uh, just check with me every once in a while. So I kept it for two years. I never I never brought it back summer and everything I just kept it because they never nobody else seemed that interested But I thought it was utterly amazing that you could do motion photography Uh out in the field outside for nothing. It didn't cost anything at all You just would recycle this tape and I would just record my life I just think I was like Fred Weissman of my own life I just went out there and I just kept this thing with me all the time. It was light. It was easy to use. It was fun and uh and at home when I go back to The dorm room or whatever the fraternity that I was in I would hook it up to the tv set the black and white tv set Just an rf had an rf output and I just would watch my day I would review my day on video and that was astonishing to me and when you think about it that was in 1970 It really was kind of an astonishing never before in the history of man Had we been able to do that for very little money? I mean if you had lots of money, you could do it in film get the film developed But no one did anything like that. I mean friend Weissman sure he'd set up camera and burn film for a long time But that was professional and this was just amateur and for fun It was amazing to me that I could do that and it's crazy the price point like you said like it was it was 115 or 16 dollars. I think in 1970 Which I mean wouldn't be super cheap, but would totally be affordable for a family I didn't even know uh what that cost because as I say I just borrowed it from the school Yeah, uh And the other thing that I did with it. I was in school and uh, what I made a uh instead of writing a final paper I did a little video from one of my courses Then we yielded a little black and white monitor into the classroom and hooked it up And everybody everybody was just awestruck that this guy had done a television show, you know to them It was a video. It was a television show for his final paper You know, I had some guys sitting in a on a stool in a studio in the format of that time And then rolling tape, you know and something that I'd done outside Environmental issues had always been my thing and so I I did several on that But when I found out how how amazed uh professors and students were by that I made that my standard and so I did quite a number of these videos back when I was in school instead of final exams or instead of final papers Wow, so early video papers and some early video papers. Yeah. Yeah, very Now go ahead. How did it go? So you were at the University of Massachusetts? You kind of explored this new medium, right? That was starting to hit the streets Like what did that like what was the impression of video in 1970 71 like how was it just like What is that like did people understand how it was different from film like was it clear the differences? Uh, no, uh people just saw it as television and that's what I created for them So they didn't have a sense of video and it wasn't film It wasn't home movies because I mean what I was doing with it was kind of just uh documenting my life But uh when I brought something into a classroom, it wasn't a home movie. It was a it was paper You know a video paper and so, uh the format that I used the it was was just a standard, uh television show Again, I got I there was a guy who was at radio on the local radio station It was looking forward to a career in tv eventually went on and had a big career with public broadcasting Mike Moran And I he was my guide had had him sit in the in the in the studio There was a studio a television studio on campus and and I used my little porta pack and Shot him sitting there on his little stool and he would introduce the documentary. Good evening. I'm mark moran and tonight We're going to look at trash you know that kind of like so Yeah, so that so nobody really You know the idea of video the way we have it now and of course now we have You know youtube and everything else the medium keeps changing But it really hasn't happened yet It happened later with the with the magazine show when when when professional videos started to go out in the field It all kind of loosened up and became magazine show and then reality tv later And there is a big jump say between I mean I'm thinking about this in a swath of say a decade between 1970 and say 82 when you bought the the video recorder There was on mass of movement towards video for home video consumption um You could buy a recorder pretty cheaply Anyone and kind of rather than doing the super eight now you were doing video You play it back kind of that whole idea of watching your life that you did in the 70s Was now catching up in the 80s for a mass market. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does and and and I wasn't really doing it. I bet I I wasn't really doing that because I was you know, the reason I bought that two Uh part unit was to do that on video because people were still using I think super eight at that time Mostly to do the kind of home video thing. So that transition was happening But I didn't really do that because um Again, I was more interested in seeing documentaries and and I was out shooting all day in the professional world So I just really never I went to the professional side Wanted to go sort of back to the amateur side But did went that stuck with the professional side after that Well, and you brought something up two things I want to ask first is you when you were remarking about the porta pack and the fact that you know You could shoot it and then go back and watch it and it was instantaneous You can you know, no producing the film, you know, no There was no kind of production or development of that. It just was immediate Now you could edit and so for the things that I brought into the classroom I'd edit for the stuff that I did for myself. I would just roll over the same tape the next day I mean I I videotape my life that day looked at it that night and went over it the next day Now when you were in the product we were in the professional video production One of the films you work from and you showed me the the image and I'll find the image and I'll share it here Is you work with coppola on one from the heart and it kind of when you were talking about the early experiments with video You were doing I mean this was an experiment which he has dubbed electronic cinema That in some ways was revolutionary to kind of what video could mean for a director trying to get an instantaneous Idea of what his shots and the scenes and the miniatures all look like I mean, could you talk at all about your time on one from the heart? Well, he had he had created, you know, he'd made a lot of money on godfather and everything and and And so he created zoetrope studios that he had his his studio actors And he was just awash and money and fame and he could do anything he wanted and so he came to him I think and said Look, we have this high definition video. You ought to take a look at that That's the future and everybody else I thought they went to probably said. Oh, yeah big deal coppola said Cool. And so here he was putting together one from the heart Which is the story that's really it's about two couples in las vegas and they switch they switch And it's kind of a small story It's kind of an intimate story, but he was with all his money. He was doing a huge He was building this these vast sets of las vegas las vegas las vegas on steroids if you can imagine such a thing because it already is and he was creating these sets and they were taking too long to build and and And his actors were rehearsing and they had and they were getting bored and they were just sort of hanging around the studio So there was an atasakinsky and terry gar and everybody was like, all right. What's next francis? You know and well we're waiting for this. We're waiting for the sets to get built and then somebody suddenly had the idea Well, let's oh so oh what he was doing So he had hired this guy named tony fox who was the video guy that he knew and tony was operating this this High-definition video and the video recorder. What was it called? It was a Oh, I can't think of what it was, but it was there was a name for it was it was a video disc It was a high definition video being recorded on video disc where you could write over it It was a big disc. It was like an LP record and Tony had this thing and and so we actually ended up Shooting or tony ended up shooting the storyboard and putting it on the video disc And then he would go and as the actors were rehearsing they would replace scenes on the video disc with actors rehearsing in rehearsal rooms And a couple they just kept looking at this and looking at this and looking at this and saying well, I don't it's not my movie I don't see my movie. I want to see my movie And finally he said, okay, the hell with it. Let's just go to las vegas where all the sets were based on real places Honestly, let's just go to las vegas and shoot the movie And so tony called me tony was a friend of mine back from my san francisco days where he had worked for one Television station. I worked for another in sort of news of public affairs He said hey, let's go shoot this thing with copla So I hired a sound man and he had his sound man and the four of us were the entire team We flew in a uh, I think it was a private jet copla's private jet or something to las vegas Hit the ground went to our hotel rooms. He said just drop your stuff and uh, and let's go shoot the movie And so two cameras two video cameras And we never went back to the motel room till 36 hours later when we grabbed our stuff and got back on the jet And went back to la So we never slept in the beds of these beautiful hotel rooms, you know with jacuzzi's in them, you know He's just many money copla was just anybody then But oh, yeah, that's it. That's awesome. And here's a picture of you With the video camera copla looking like the godfather with that hat Pretty awesome. And who's the gentleman on the left of copla? So I don't I'm sorry that I don't remember his name But he was the guy uh the freelance sound man that I hired for that for that shoot. That's and He did a great thing. We were uh The you know, we were on the streets of vegas and shooting this thing and there were all these famous actors And there was francis cor cor copla, you know harridine stanton and rahl julia and everybody And uh, we started to gather crowds and this is we were doing this non union too, which was pretty bad You know, it's supposed to do anything non union in vegas. We just hit the streets Filming and the word started to get out and we were getting pressed by some people and saying who's that? Is that is that netasha kinsky? Oh, can I get her autograph? And my sound man just suddenly in a stroke of brilliance said no, no, no, that's not really netasha kinsky That's a netasha kinsky lookalike. This is a lookalike contest And everybody went away the unions went away everybody went away and we were free This happened about 12 15 hours in and we had another 12 15 30 out, you know For a total of 36 hours of shooting where nobody bothered us because we were just a dumb lookalike contest So after that shoot the idea the consensus was this was going to be a You know, this is going to be an amazing film you shot the whole thing on video Which is crazy the idea of thinking of shooting a film twice and it does explain some of the expenses So what happened between the video and the film and like What was it about the video that might have been so attractive? Why why did it work so well? So, uh, tony, I I wasn't involved after that So tony was tony was back in there and he edited this thing together And from what tony told me afterwards that coppola just loved it He thought that he had a total winner. He had a great great story Everybody watched this video and I thought it was a great story. It's still out there somewhere I'm told it's so you can see this this video and I don't know where it is But but it was it was the video was a big success But it's really the question of you know Does the medium really does the the medium really translate to another medium because he shot the film on the sets these huge sets, you know when there were dance numbers and And uh, and 60 million dollars, which is a hell of a lot at the time. That's what that's so cost And it just it didn't it didn't translate up if you know what I mean Once he once he took that really kind of small intimate story about two couples, you know Everybody's sort of struggling in vegas And it doesn't it doesn't work and they go back to their original So it's a beautiful little video and a video story But when you take it to 70 millimeter on these Wild sets and you have dance numbers and all that kind of stuff It just didn't fit the story at all and the movie failed and nearly brought down coppola. I mean it really heard his career I mean he never really was coppola again, you know after that No, not in the sense of it was with the godfather. Yeah, and I think it was basic misunderstanding of of of you know how the medium the media did not translate I remember tony used to say tv is for little screens and Movies are for big screens and don't mix them up and I think that's he was kind of right It's cool because one of the things that's also interesting about that is the the idea that he was Coppola in some ways like you said working with sony and with this experiment like one of the early Thinkers about how you would use video to create a production film like that of that magnitude And the thing about video That's still interesting in terms of the reflection of that film is that film has been Not only pan and everyone remembers who hasn't seen it very few people have seen it But those who do remember it is the film that broke coppola There's a lot of people who kind of revisiting that film in terms of the aesthetics And in terms of like how the film was, you know, beautifully shot and how it looked But do you think I mean not seeing the film how does that translate from the video work that was done to the actual You know 70 millimeter full blown, you know, it's a musical about, you know Two couples who have that kind of night affair and then go back Um, I guess that's an open question because you know, I don't know if that's something that could be answered But it seems like he did all this experimentation with video. Was it just kind of a practical Play like did it is that what, you know cost the film like where does that go? I guess I think I think I think, uh, you know, he was just going to make a film in a big beautiful extravaganza Busby Berkeley kind of film, you know, and uh, we're brought up to the the modern age in 70 millimeter and and and uh I'm trying to think of the guy who we had doing the dance numbers that famous Uh, I can't remember. Anyway, uh, I think the video got in the way I really do I think it I think it threw him off his game Because then you know, he thought well, I could I could work out all the scenes and do everything on video and actually Then I'll have it exactly right So when I'm burning that huge money and shooting 70 millimeter on these big sets and everybody's getting paid millions You know to do this kind of thing I don't know exactly what I want because I'll have done it in high Definition video But the mistake was he went to las vegas and shot this really like on the street film And I think he just really just couldn't translate after that. He was that he was still trying to make that beautiful little little love story Uh in 70 millimeter with dance numbers, you know, they just they just didn't work from one from the other I think that's what happened. Yeah so and you're and you kind of experience with Shooting video at a certain point you kind of you know, you stopped right like you you mentioned that, you know Round that time in the 80s after the Chronicle, maybe you stopped shooting video for a while What's it like, you know to say maybe stop being a professional video up and until the early 80s And then stopping for however long and then coming back to a culture that is very much predicated on that medium that in the 70 1970 was a Almost a novelty now. It's it's it's how to we're communicating right now It's actually the water we all live in that is media And so do you make relationships? I mean, do you think and reflect upon that moment versus now and Anything for us to think about as I'm playing nostalgic with reclaimed video and kind of Revisiting an old aesthetic and form Because you know, obviously it was part of the story, but it seems almost arcane And an afterthought now How do you think about that having been intimately involved in the industry? Well, one of the things that Everything I did was kind of led by the technology, you know, the porta pack came along and I grabbed the porta pack and did my life and then the uh The the professional video the the ikigami hl 35 and it's the greatest story that I think of that I know Is getting that this camera cost 55 thousand dollars when I went to work for uh evening magazine in san francisco This they they I they gave me they made me a unit Yeah, I worked for six months as a sound guy for one of the other guys Then they said, okay, you're good. We're going to give you your own unit We're buying you a camera the camera comes And it's the the catalac of video cameras I mean this thing is comes in this huge box And we we and I came in and everybody was in that day because it was monday when we had the production meeting And the thing came in and we opened up the box and everybody wanted to see this beautiful new camera And there was a little a little brochure, you know a little booklet in the top And we opened it up and it was japanese, of course And it said you will treasure with pleasure your new handy looky 35 handy looky h-a-n-d-e l-o-o-k-e-e Handy looky just spent 55 thousand dollars for this thing and it's a handy looky This was a beast. I mean just keeping this thing going keeping this thing running And remember doing flight ops on the uss enterprise And the thing just failing in the middle of middle of flight ops or out of a deck of an aircraft carrier The thing just fails. There's nothing you can do but go home, you know take the flight home So let's let's talk about that for a second because you you mention it in passing But you're on the uss enterprise shooting video of A flight ops. Yeah flight ops. Yeah. Yeah back in the days when everybody still hated the military because it wasn't that far after the vietnam war This was in about 77 76 and uh, and but the guy who trained me and who I was working for at the time Uh was a former vietnam film cameraman and so he loved the military said the hell with it We're gonna go doing a nice story about the military. So he calls up the military. I said really you're gonna do a nice story about us Nobody does nice stories. Nobody wants to know we exist So we went and did oh did a lot of military stories. It was really fun Fluid c5a up to uh, alaska and all kinds of things Go ahead So just just you know, so it's always been driven by the technology and now you know, here's the technology Right. Yeah, this this little phone. It's just a cheap android. You know, this is not no big deal This is an s galaxy s6 It's much better video than I've ever shot in my life, right? It's the better video that I've ever shot in my life And so I'm kind of back to my portapak days, you know, I kind of get in the mood and I kind of go and I videotape my life And I come home and I watch it And and yeah, so I'm back to that and it's fun again. You know, it's really fun So you've been replaying the same technological innovation across smaller and smaller and cheaper cheaper devices But in fact, you know, when you think about the the tool you were using in that and You mass and the tool you have now like the phone and we all have like I don't know if this is the case but Did was it looked upon in the 70s as the portapak cheapening the experience kind of like Everybody having a phone and everyone taking a video kind of you know, a video is no longer this precious object It's something to do to record an event to remember to buy a thing of milk or something like it's a very different experience Then it would be, you know, maybe 40 years ago 50 years ago You know, I for for me, uh, it's it's still about the production values and by that I mean, uh, Everybody at some point everybody got a computer, right? And so suddenly is everybody a writer? I mean, is everybody Saul bellow because now I've got now I've got a word processor You know, so am I a better writer because I've got a word processor and I have better storyteller because I've got better technology so, uh, you know like like one of the things that really really offended me over the years was when, uh, I would watch documentaries and stuff or stuff on the news and it just looked terrible the lighting was terrible It was shaky cam and then then shaky cam became a value You know, now it's more real if the camera's moving around like this and as a guy who You know just loved to get good steady clean shots as a professional I was very very offended by that and when I see stuff that people put on youtube You know, and they don't even know which way to hold the camera. I mean the phone, right? They hold it like this Always they hold it like this like it's the phone, right? They don't hold it like this But that's the that's the aspect ratio of the image when it appears on a screen on your television set on the computer The aspect ratio is like this but people do it like this and there's all this wasted and I just look at that and I go Oh, man, you don't know what you're doing. Nobody knows what they're doing anymore The technology in a way has completely cheapened things and because I went on the professional side You know, that's like my conscious about how cheap it did all is But in terms of the technology on the other hand I was always thrilled that I could grab this little Sony porta pack and run out and make Totally cheap inexpensive video that was like having this phone, you know back in 1969 or 1970 It's interesting too one of the things that It's at the end of the documentary heart of darkness that copula says it and it's a kind of moment where He's talking and it's I think it's in the 80s We's talking about like the advent of video cameras And the fact that what they're going to do is they're going to kind of blow up the profession of You know the movie industry as an industry and we'll turn cinema making into an art the argument being that You know some girl with her father's video camera in the midwest will become the Mozart of film And we'll change the way we look at the medium and that will kind of explode the medium And he was saying this in the 80s, you know well before the kind of youtube explosion And I'm not saying that Mozart has emerged from the youtube culture just yet But I mean is there some truth that as the actual technology changes and as the form changes that Someone shooting with a phone straight up like this, right actually might Invent right re-imagine for the medium for the screens. We're watching a whole new kind of you know Maybe I won't call it medium because it's not but a whole new syntax from the medium We've taken for granted for 40 years. So I mean it's interesting how so much again back to copula again back to video still also relevant about what How because whether it's art or not is an interesting question, but just how we are consuming So much of our culture and our news Like you mentioned early on with the clue and like it's never been more relevant the medium of video To communicate to argue to you know indoctrinate you name it so Yeah, I I but I still think it still goes back to talent and you see, you know, sometimes you see a filmmaker who makes a film on video and it goes to uh Redford's thing in utah. What's that? Sundance most of sundance everybody's just oh my god. This is that you know, this is that major new talent And so it goes out there and it's a little it's an indie film and everybody says oh great And then somebody pays that person and what do they do? They don't make another little india film on their phone. They make a film You know, they go they go and they get the good cameras, right? They shoot a film You know a 35 or 70 millimeter after a couple of tries, maybe they try to hang on to that But ultimately, uh, you want a really really beautiful image. You want beautiful sound You want beautiful editing. You want all that creative stuff that requires just a lot of um, a lot of skill and talent to do and uh, that's what people still I think ultimately still want again Just like the word processor anybody can get on their computer and tap away, right? Yeah, how many great you do you say you say you read a great novel that has come out by Jonathan fransen or said something said that was made possible by the word processor I don't think so great films and great films great storytelling is made not made possible by the technology It's made possible by the talent and the skill Well, it's interesting too. And uh, one of the things that video does I mean kind of think back to Let's say 2001 space, obviously Obviously not a film from video a beautiful masterpiece in film But one of the things that he highlights there is the father calling back from the moon station on a video screen to his daughter And there's those moments in cinema and there's moments in the popular imagination beyond cinema of Video as this doorway as this communication portal Maybe beyond like you're saying and I don't argue with that like the the idea of filming and narrative as an art form But the idea of just video has become a very practical reality that all of us in some ways use to communicate with loved ones to Do our job to video in to actually make a sales call or whatever you're doing like To interview someone who's halfway around the world to talk about video in the 70s Like so video is actually it's almost become Ubiquitous, you know even apart from the the art of it. There's also just Like the the omnipresence of video being us being videotaped Everywhere we go like the whole closed circuit tv video what people do with that So it's almost like that would almost be one the art of it would always be one subsection of an entire universe Of a medium that we kind of depend on and more ways just listing them. It's insane Yeah, no, it's true. We uh, we we you know, we we got the The voice we got voice over distance a hundred years ago And now we have picture over distance And uh, and now we're just totally sanguine about it. I mean I went to uh, I went to a birdie Sanders rally, you know the first rally you had in phoenix, arizona 1100 people showed up and I periscoped it You know out everybody so everybody could see that's amazing thing that was happening And uh, and but but there was no art in that and the storytelling was not mine A little bit, you know, sort of showing the crowd a little bit of setting setting the scene and so on But mostly it was just like look here's bernie And uh, I could bring you bernie because I'm here and you're not And so yeah, there's that but I really ultimately it ultimately I think we are storytelling animals And the fact that we have this ability to do visual storytelling at a distance now It's kind of great, but ultimately as it made us all uh, sort of More in tune with each other and more creative with each other and more Empathetic with each other well look at youtube. I don't think so I hope no one leaves a comment on this video That's awesome. Well john I want to actually really I want to not only Thank you for showing up but also for sharing your stories about Not only the the medium, but also your experience of it and then beyond that like us having A token of your video past at reclaim video with the omnivision which should be arriving any day Which are thrilling it'll arrive by phoenix tomorrow Well, that's so cool. Thank you very much and uh for doing this and and thank you to reclaim Video also for buying my buying my vcr. No, it's awesome. You're gonna enjoy it. It's beautiful Yeah, we'll send you our first kind of uh, when it's up and working we'll send you an image and thanks again for having the call with us Thank you jim. All right. Bye. Bye