00:00 A social media account is sharing and saving VHS tapes that would have become lost media.
00:06 Meet VHS Oddities.
00:08 My name is Tristan and I'm Maddie and we run the VHS Oddities TikTok account.
00:15 Maddie Feldman and Tristan Calvo-Steady have always loved analog media, especially VHS
00:21 tapes.
00:22 From the art on the case to small pamphlets included in the box and the nostalgic feel,
00:27 Calvo-Steady and Feldman quickly became avid collectors.
00:30 I've always been really interested in physical media.
00:32 I also shoot film.
00:34 I'm also very interested in shooting things on tape.
00:37 And I think that really stems from a place of the, you know, meaning that you can find
00:43 in holding something physically in your hand.
00:46 When I was little, I lived in Spain.
00:48 So my grandparents would send me like recorded television shows from America to Spain for
00:56 me to watch.
00:58 So I grew up with them.
00:59 They're very like connected to my childhood.
01:01 I learned how to use them at like a very young age.
01:04 As their collection grew, the pair wanted to share their love for their odd tapes with
01:08 the world and found an audience on social media.
01:12 We have like two parts of our audience.
01:15 This older audience that looks at this and thinks like, oh my God, I haven't seen this
01:19 since I was like six years old.
01:21 And they have a real nostalgic connection to the content.
01:25 And then Gen Z who watches it and is like, what the, what is this?
01:29 How did someone ever make this?
01:30 This is so strange and random.
01:33 Since starting their TikTok account VHS Oddities last year, they've amassed over 29,000 followers
01:39 and 2.2 million likes.
01:42 Their most viral clip is from a tape called Learn to Speak Spanish, The Basics, released
01:46 in 1998 that features Kerry Washington cracking and eating a raw egg.
01:52 Huevo means egg.
01:59 The bizarre clip earned a response from Kerry Washington herself and got their account featured
02:04 on television.
02:05 Unfortunately, VHS cassettes have all but disappeared.
02:08 But thanks to TikTok account VHS Oddities, the most bizarre VHS clips in history are
02:13 forever preserved.
02:14 When it comes to how Calvo, Steady and Feldman pick their tapes, they say they aim to find
02:19 the most bizarre ones.
02:21 From infomercials to PSAs and more, because they're the ones that would end up forgotten.
02:26 And I think for our audience, a lot of the things that we post aren't just clips from
02:30 movies that you can find on streaming.
02:32 It's clips from things that are very difficult to find anywhere else.
02:35 But what we pride ourselves on is finding and preserving and archiving the tapes that
02:42 wouldn't have an audience otherwise.
02:45 We like to post something that's like under 30 seconds and try to take as much context
02:50 out of it as possible.
02:51 So when you watch it, you just think like, like, what is this?
02:56 Intrigue is what really like fires people up and gets people interested in the content.
03:01 The pair say digitizing tapes is a fairly simple process that anyone could do and even
03:06 shared a how-to video on their accounts for any fans wanting to get into it as well.
03:11 Feldman and Calvo, Steady also have plans to expand the kind of content they publish
03:15 as they're currently planning a live show where they talk about the tapes, their origins
03:19 and interact with an audience.
03:22 In the end, Calvo, Steady and Feldman are just excited to be able to share their passion
03:26 with the world, connect with others and can't wait to watch their account grow.
03:30 It's been a year since we started the TikTok account and the Instagram account and we have
03:36 just seen so much love and so much support for what we do.
03:40 What I love about it is it's been such a big part of our lives for a year now and it's
03:44 our baby, it's what we come home to, it's what we constantly are thinking about when
03:48 we're not thinking about school or work.
03:50 It takes up so much of our time and I wouldn't have it any other way.
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