The limits
of the TV frame become of interest to Rachael, the protagonist in The
Ring (2002). While watching ex-boyfriend Noah physically intervene with a VCRs
mechanism she begins to suspect there is more to see beyond the
screens edge than meets the eye. In a later attempt, upping the
assault on the tapes reluctance to give up it's secrets, Rachael uses
a more advanced machine to pan across and beyond what is visible to
the very edge of the recording.
Both
attempts result in a type of overload and failure of the playback
media, employing a common cinematic visual trope suggesting the very
limits the device or medium have been reached. The build up to the
climax of the first attempt, a sort of generic 'she cannae take any
more captain' moment is visually represented by the, technically
erroneous, manipulation of the tape's transit across the drum head
attempted by Noah (which could surely work only in an imagined AV studio.
Physically manipulating a video drum head is very unlikely to reveal
any surplus image - just a loss of picture) and crescendoed by with the receipt of an electric shock. In the second instance at the higher
spec facility, an analogue VU meter, itself a somewhat retro but oft used device, displays overload to the point of failure.
These markers define the crossing into another space, both for our protagonists journey along a dangerous and uncharted road and more specifically into an area less visited – the fringes and back rooms of the videocassette and VCR technology.
These markers define the crossing into another space, both for our protagonists journey along a dangerous and uncharted road and more specifically into an area less visited – the fringes and back rooms of the videocassette and VCR technology.
What Rachael finds there is a clue, a pointer towards locating the origin of the tape. Did Samara want to leave a trail that might lead a certain kind of viewer to her location? Had she merely figured out how to squeeze an ultra-widescreen image onto regular tape? We never find out. Instead the discovery adds to the already considerable enigma of the tape, displays Rachael's resourcefulness as an investigator and moves the story on to the next beat.
Caetlin Benson-Allott describes this space discovered beyond the frame in Lacanian terms via Zisek to suggest a sense of paranoia. This revealed position within an image is where the viewer herself is being viewed from by the Other. 'you can never see me from the point from which I gaze at you' ¹
This might might be a fair description the Macrovision experience, the
sensation of realising your VCR knows what you have been up to.
Punishing you immediately with a weird, spoilt copy and suggesting
that you may be in big trouble for breaking the rules. For just
as the gaze hides at the side of the screen, so does Macrovision. The
Macrovision signal is hidden out of view at the very top of the
screen in roughly 45 unused lines. As stated in the 1985 Patent
'Since most television sets are overscanned by
5% to 10%, these pulses would still be invisible.' ² Though
normally out of view the signal can be seen as a row of bright
undulating bars within black when the image is pulled down on a
television or a monitor with manual Vertical Hold adjustment.
Lost Highway's mystery Man, no stranger to dupes, evokes the technological uncanny by occupying two spaces at once. Here he shares the vertically adjusted screen with a Macrovision signal. Lost Highway (1997)
It can
also be seen when, during an attempted recording of a protected tape,
the image folds, flags
and flickers downwards, momentarily revealing the signals presence.
Like Samara's recording, the Macrovision signal was not assigned to
tape with conventional means. It would be inserted during commercial
duplication by sealed electronic units leased from the anti-copy
service provider.
Portions
of Samaras images and Macrovision exist in areas of a videocassette
recording usually hidden from view. (Macrovision can be quite easily
located and even analysed on an Oscilloscope, though it appears reluctant to give up all it's secrets³ and most internet based analysis involve some degree of interpretation and assumption. Samara used
'projected thermography' to place her montage on the tape – how and where
she located or embedded her curse is never established)
André Bazin stated 'there
are no wings to the screen'⁴ and yet it
seems within a videorecording there are. Bazin also attributed the
painted canvas with centripetal force drawing the world inwards in
direct contrast to the cinematic screen which asserted a centrifugal
force, casting the 'cinematographic
image into infinity'⁵ Perhaps he didn't watch much television because CRT
technology always biased what needed to be seen inwards creating a
safe area where
inconsistencies in CRT performance would not result in a loss of
information or image in the non visible overscan regions. In the
transference of cinema to homevideo this was exacerbated by the pan and
scan telecine process. This biasing inwards suggests but does not reveal an
other, a zone beyond what is visible.
'VHS always contained
(made visual reference to) more than could meet the eye.' ⁶
The sense that something is present, perhaps watching us from a position just out of sight, seems a much valued trope within horror movies, anti-copy systems and horror movies that appear to share the objectives of such systems.
(1) Retrotechnophobia: Putting an End to Analog Abjection with The Ring, published in Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens, 2013, Caetlin Benson-Allott, University of California Press p119
(2) Method and apparatus for processing a video signal so as to prohibit the making of acceptable video tape recordings thereof Apr 17, 1985 - https://patents.justia.com/patent/4631603
(3) The technical specifications of Macrovision anti-copy system were naturally confidential. Online analysis of the signal, such as in the link provided, get very close to a full understanding but there are usually certain artifacts or functions that seem to evade the inquirer. https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/170667-What-Macrovision-looks-lik
(4)What is Cinema, Theatre and Cinema part 2, 1967, André Bazin, p105.
(5) ibid. Painting and Cinema, p166.
(6)Ibid. Retrotechnophobia: Putting an End to Analog Abjection with The Ring, Caetlin Benson-Allott, p120