Anyone here ever do graphics for music video in the 80’s?

[Chuck Reti]

Some that bubble up from the memory bank-

“Video Feedback” – point a camera at a monitor with that camera on screen, move, zoom around slowly.
Use the feedback video from the camera into a switcher to mix with other sources, or as a key signal.
Doing a slight mix with the feedback video to achieve a “recursive” look, smear, trails etc.

Vidicon, plumbicon cameras with lots of knobs on them allowed the video engineer to “beam starve,” which “soft clipped” highlights and often provided a streak or trail.

High contrast keys – used an external source- another camera, motion footage, artwork, whatever- as an “alpha” and inserted camera video or generated background colors.

Not sure that AE or other software solutions can easily duplicate the recussive smear, feedback or trail effects that were achieved with a switcher and hardware DVE, often done on the fly. Maybe there’s a school or cable studio that has some old gear you can get your hands on to play on and see what you come up with..

[Mark Suszko]

Th number one 80’s effect would have to be sparkly persistent motion trails and slow-shutter effects, for examples see ANY ZZ Topp music video. The most complicated one that was popular was the multi-image rotating cube. Back In The Day, this was the proof you were a kung-fu master of the ADO.

[Frank Otto]

ADO cube, squeeze-zoom and quad bus split. And the ever popular chromakey over cheezy Liquid light-wet show/pop art that the art director of the label (a child of the sixties) was insistant about being so hip.

Cheers,

Frank Otto

[Chuck Reti]

[Frank Otto] “And the ever popular chromakey “
and it was always better if the chromakey had a lot of fringe and frying.