Macrovision 3 - something is hidden at the screens edge.

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.

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