Sean Ono Lennon - Infinite Escher

[therowdyman]

An interesting oddity, featuring Sean, from the early days of HD video. It was uploaded by Reely Interesting, a YouTube that preserves early High Definition video formats. From the video’s description:

This is "Infinite Escher" (00QW-9006) from a Sony-made high-definition 12" HDVS videodisc. The HDVS disc format was designed to be a highly portable 12" laserdisc-derived media format for Sony's "High-Definition Video System" or "Hi-Vision" back in the early 1990's! Back then, high definition was a little different from how it is now. It was analog (not digital) & close to but slightly different in resolution to the 1080i picture we receive over the air today as it was technically 1125i/1035i. Before the earliest high-definition media was available to the public (via satellite, MUSE Laserdisc, & W-VHS tapes), Sony and other companies began shooting footage, doing research, and, showing public displays of high-definition television. There were three main ways of storing HDTV (or HDVS) at that time: Reel-to-reel tape (HDV-1000), cartridge tape (HDV-10 "UniHi"), & 12" Laserdisc-style discs (HDL-5800 / HDL-2000). This footage came from one of the Laserdisc-style discs.

These HDVS discs could only hold a maximum of 15 minutes of video (on CLV discs, even less on CAV discs)...but it held uncompressed, raw high-definition component video! Take that, Blu-Ray!

This star-studded video follows the life a young boy (John Lennon's son, Sean Ono Lennon) as he travels in between reality and some kind of alternate dream universe which harkens back to the famous thought-provoking artwork of M.C. Escher. His travels throughout this 8 minute video feature early high-definition 3D CG visuals, lots of creative chroma keying, and some other bizarre visual effects and camera tricks. This is no surprise since the visual design was a collaboration between REBO Studio, known for their expressive early HDTV projects such as the music video for Cameo's "Candy" and Herb Alpert's "Keep Your Eye On Me," and John Sanborn, Mary Perillo, Dean Winkler, known for their many early & influential video art presentations (i.e. "Ear to The Ground") or bumpers (like on MTV). In addition, art direction was given by the late, great video artist, Nam June Paik. To top it all off, the music was written by the extremely influential Japanese multi-instrumentalist, Ryuichi Sakamoto. Some of the segments were used in the popular Sony Metamorphosis HDVS demo video, among other HDTV and general Sony promotional materials.

For more information about the CG production process, please see the following link written by the animator for the famous "Metamorphosis" scene: https://www.floydgillis.com/Comm/Post...

Enjoy this very special video that was never available to the public in the original HD presentation until now!

Fun fact: Look at the sides of the image. Do you see that they don't fill your TV/monitor? Since this was recorded on the original 1984 pure-analog HDVS system, it also was recorded in the original, more-square 5:3 aspect ratio that NHK & Sony chose for the original HDTV system. By 1988, the HDTV standard was standardized to the 16:9 aspect ratio that began to be used on all HDTV systems forward and that we continue to use to this day; however, the hardware took a couple more years to be updated to 16:9. Surprisingly, YouTube supports videos uploaded in 5:3 aspect ratio so dust off & plug in your favorite 16:10 monitor to see less black bars than on a 16:9 monitor!

Fun fact 2: According to Hiroe Ishii, a former Sony director who helped coordinate this production, one of the stipulations of having Sean Lennon in this production was that he would receive a free Sony Video8 camera afterwards!

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This was recorded off on a Sony HDL-2000 Videodisc player which outputs true analog component (1035i) video. Uploaded in upscaled 4K ProRes for extra clarity!

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[alphabeatles]

Great find!

Obviously inspired by Sean doing whatever drugs John used to do, Paul makes his Off The Ground video 3 years later...