![80s video filter 80s video filter](https://filmlooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/free-old-film-effects.jpg)
The Found Footage horror anthology series V/H/S uses this technique to great effect.Kung Fury looks like it's from a heavily used VHS tape from 1985 tracking issues even interrupt the opening fight the main character has with a robotic arcade machine, obscuring how he ends up in outer space suddenly in the middle of the fight.The tapes that Enid watches are naturally 80s quality, although it's a mark of Enid's deteriorating sanity when it starts to slip into real life, with rewinding, pause, and other video qualities. "True" widescreen wouldn't become popular until digital formats, such as DVD and High Definition came around. A "true" widescreen VHS tape or LaserDisc would either be incompatible with an existing player, or would look squished.
80S VIDEO FILTER MOVIE
This practice was used for nearly every widescreen movie on LaserDisc in The '90s.
![80s video filter 80s video filter](http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/camera-2-android-app.jpg)
note While widescreen VHS tapes technically exist with select movies, they show widescreen content Letterboxed to 4:3. May be combined with an Aspect Ratio Switch to show a 4:3 frame, as VHS only ever supported that Aspect Ratio. When used in a Found Footage film and/or Analog Horror it can add a horror element by making it seem more authentic, though these days this is more likely to be done with a smart phone camera, unless it's supposed to be a Period Piece. Since the 2010s, this has become a way of establishing a time period as being in the 1980s or '90s, in much the way filming in black-and-white became shorthand for the early-to-mid 20th century, and can be meant to invoke nostalgia. That would make the image smaller, and therefore even lower quality. This can only be justified if the video was Letterboxed on the tape to begin with. Other clues that a filter was used instead of the real thing include when the word "PLAY" on the top left corner of the screen never goes away, as on most real VCRs it only stays for a few seconds, and if the video is widescreen and not formatted for a square-shaped CRT television (as actual rips from a VHS tape will usually be) note Some poorly made VHS rips may stretch or crop the image to 16:9, which aren't the original aspect ratio. Video filters usually already have the video quality be exaggeratedly bad even for VHS. As such, usage of this trope can be a type of Stylistic Suck, as creators that want the look of an aged and degraded VHS tape but are still looking for a certain level of authenticity will often purposely use a worn-out tape, use a VCR with dirty recording heads, or record from one tape to another back and forth with two VCRs, to get the desired effect. Particularly with the advent of Hi-Fi, picture and especially sound quality on VHS improved a lot compared to when it first debuted and of course, professionally-made VHS tapes typically looked and sounded better than a tape recorded off the television, which itself would typically look better than something recorded with a camcorder. After all, VHS wouldn't have been considered at least passable as a video format for more than twenty years, even outselling formats with superior image quality like Betamax and LaserDisc, had it always looked so warped.
![80s video filter 80s video filter](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZeD7leL2658/hqdefault.jpg)
The creator either achieves this through a computer effect such as a video filter, or they find an actual VHS video cassette to film on usually, the more warped and degraded the better, as it wouldn't be as obvious if they used a well-preserved tape.