About + Contact
BHA+ is a Patreon-supported, subscription-based media channel that combines Blogs, Podcasts (via Libsyn), and Videos (via YouTube / Vimeo) with a simple mandate:
1 — Reviews: practical-minded reviews of vintage video gear spanning the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, covering tube and CCD cameras, camcorders, video mixers, special effects generators, character generators / video titlers, video & audio processors, and some of the accessories designed to make one’s adventures in home video a little more robust.
The broad spectrum encompasses consumer, prosumer, and broadcast tiers of common, familiar, arcane, and WTF? products, and I tackle the sometimes befuddling issues newcomers can experience when there’s an unfamiliarity with tape-based media, battery types, power supplies, cables, connectors, and unique challenges of analogue and early digital gear.
2 — How-To’s: Whether you want to capture / digitize / transfer content from analogue videotape to a digital medium, bounce and blend footage between these domains for unique visual effects, or integrate analogue gear (cameras, VCRs, processors, etc.) into a digital workflow, these and other processes are explored and outlined through a series of blogs and videos, as well as Video Manuals to help you become familiar and hopefully comfortable using selected vintage gear.
3 — Glitch Videomaking: There are fantastic Eurorack modules and software to create and evoke glitchy / messed up / texturized imagery, but my current focus is on cameras and VCRs literally dying from rotting capacitors. This doomed gear an be used to create glitchy video signals which can be treated / looped / filmed off monitors and layered in software to create unique effects.
4 — Using Vintage Video Gear in assorted Short and Long-Form Projects: Whether narrative, non-narrative, experimental, 3D, music videos, etc., part of my reasoning for learning how to use primarily analogue gear is to integrate effects or create a standalone works using 20-50 year old gear. Translation: shooting a film using tube cameras; editing a SD master on a linear editing system; aiming for a look that doesn’t wholly stem from a series of plugins designed to evoke 1990s CCD cameras; or whatever inkling takes your through a unique workflow.
The format is simple: Blogs in written and Podcast formats. Podcast Interviews with experts, artists, filmmakers, and historians. Reviews of diverse gear. Long-form test footage instead of rapidly edited montages. Video Operating Manuals.
Blogs and all Podcasts are free, as are all Gear Reviews. Differing Patreon tiers offer full-length test footage and Video Operating Manuals of select gear; interlaced versions of SD test footage; interlaced versions of glitch footage; making-of / behind-the-scenes featurettes on showcased short films; and more.
I want this to grow into a long-term project, and the financial support will help create programming that’s more of a resource for the like-minded, and the curious.
For more info on how to support this channel, please visit my Patreon page [to follow].
Custom Analogue-Digital Audio & Video Services
Thanks for interest and support,
Mark R. Hasan
Publisher, BHA+ / Big Head Amusements
For queries: please message via Facebook, Instagram, Vimeo, YouTube, and X (formerly Twiter), or email (“inquiries” “at” “bigheadamusements” “dot” “com”).
Short Bio: Graduate / Survivor of York University’s Film Production program. Accredited Journalist (Rue Morgue Magazine, Film Score Monthly, Music from the Movies), Podcaster, and Publisher of KQEK.com, where I cover films, TV series, film music, and cinematic eccentricities.