7 hour BBS Documentary Nearly Ready

spyrochaete writes "Jason Scott, proprietor of textfiles.com, is nearing completion of his 3-DVD, 7 hour documentary on the history of the BBS. This documentary is 3 years in the making and is a patchwork of nearly 250 interviews spanning hundreds of hours. Trailers and samples are available for download (also available in low quality for you 300 BAUDers out there). Pre-order before Nov. 10 and you can submit a paragraph to be included on a file on one of the DVDs."

Comments

Ahhh... Usurper and LORD

[Drakonian]

Remember those days?

I'll be right back, I'm taking Violet upstairs.

The BBS

[doodlelogic]

Am I the only one who thought that with 3 DVDs you could store most of the BBS systems and let readers find out what it all was for themselves?

Mooo!

[Russ Nelson]

Moooo! Great to see Sketchcow doing this before all of us old farts who cut our teeth on 300bps BBSes die off.
-russ

Being a filmgeek

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm definitely a filmgeek.

Less is more.

70 minutes is always better than 7 hours

Re:7 hours???

[trilks]

Most of us spend hours and hours online every day as it is...now we are supposed to watch a 7 hour documentary about being online too? Trolling on /. would be more productive...

Editing

[njfuzzy]

It sounds like someone needs to learn a thing or two about editing.

Many subjects have been distilled into 2 hour documentaries. Sure, two hours of film won't make you an expert, or communicate the full depth of knowledge, but it can show a great deal. I am sure that the history of the BBS is a rich and potentially interesting subject. However, I am sure it isn't so complex and full of details that it could not survive a 2-hour treatment.

A seven hour documentary will be watched by 7 people, and interest none. The subject would be far better served by something edited to a size mere mortals could digest.

Re:Editing

[FatherKabral]

There are actually some people out there who like to get the whole story. While I won't be rushing out to buy this set on release day, I am sure my boss will snap it up. Then I'll borrow it from him and watch it. I am fairly young as far as computing goes, but I did start out with a couple of BBS's...how else was a 10 or 12 year old boy to download all the girlie pics he wanted to look at with good old Lview... Anyway, I think it'd be kinda neat to see all the stuff I missed by my parents not getting pregnant and having me in high school. THOSE were the days.

Re:Editing

[Jason Scott]

I chose Njfuzzy's response because it seemed to catch the most-posted concern about the BBS Documentary. However, for anyone not cruising this article at a "show me all comments from -1 upward", let me mention that an awful lot of people are posting concerns about the "7 hour documentary".

And, like a lot of people, njfuzzy took the time to post his concern without actually looking at the site in any depth.

The story and experience of the BBS stretches 25 years (if you don't count proto-BBSes like PLATO/Community Memory/etc., and I do). It involves literately millions of people, and thousands of folks who were pretty hard-core into it and what it represented. And among them, were many hundreds of people who affected a lot of lives and brought life online, and spent a lot of energy doing it.

Therefore, the problem I faced at the beginning of the production was similar to that of doing "Car: The Documentary". How would you fit in Henry Ford next to a description of kids who take rental cars and juice them up with nitrous kits to race? Well, you can't. Or, you could and everyone gets 30 second mentions. I consider that fare that really any production company can do on spec for any cable channel out there.

Therefore, I made a choice. Instead of constructing out of thin air a "story line" that would span this 25-year history, give very little detail, and basically just serve as a vague introduction to the story, I would instead split the story into parallel episodes, each focusing on a major aspect.

The thing is, really, any group or production house could do a light, somewhat accurate BBS Documentary. To do one with a lot of detail and accuracy would require a lot of energy and a lot of work from a quarter that wouldn't normally work that way. I decided to bridge that gap.

DVD, also, provides a perfect medium for this sort of work. With the ability to go to any episode, switch around to details you might have missed, and most importantly, the ability to digest everything at your own speed, the opportunity is there to take on a lot of subject that would not normally be considered "commercial".

Think of this. I have Ward Christensen's only video interview. Some will not care, and some will care very much. I am of the folks that care. There are a lot of subjects covered in this documentary, many dozens, which were otherwise going to disappear forever. That's why I did it. That's what drove me as I travelled thousands of miles and did hundreds of interviews. That's what will hopefully persist long after the last DVD is sold and my last breath: that this was an important point in human history.

This said, it was NOT edited as a series of interviews, one after another, on a dry subject. I don't think the subject is dry at all. On the other hand, it is not agog with jiggling breasts and explosions, and I would think that people seeking such fare will move down the aisle. I think, at the end of the day, I will br very proud of the final product, and people who know what they're getting into will find it very enjoyable.

And in many ways, really, 7 hours barely scratches the surface.

Someone forgot to edit

[ValuJet]

Steven Hawkings A Brief History of time is 80 minutes.

I just can't imagine there are many people who care enough about nerds dialing up bulletin boards to spend 7 hours watching them.

Re:Someone forgot to edit

[useosx]

Steven Hawkings A Brief History of time

Technically it's: Errol Morris's "A Brief History of Time" which is about Stephen Hawking.

Stephen Hawking didn't make the documentary. He wrote the book, certainly, but typically the director not the writer gets the credit.

I highly recommend all of Errol Morris's documentaries. My favorites are Fog of War, Mr. Death, Brief History of Time, and Gates of Heaven. I haven't seen the others.

History is great and all...

[DeepDarkSky]

...but sometimes, maybe not enough people will care. I was into the BBS stuff and all for years and years. Now that we have the internet, it's wide-open to everyone and doesn't seem that special anymore. There's certainly a very rich history in BBSes - all of the things we now take for granted on the internet now were being developed in the BBS community. But now, BBSes are bygone memories as we move forward. Long gone are the days of hours of downloading, constant busy signals and expensive long-distance dialing.
Though the BBS world was more tightly knit in some ways, it was also expensive to run and use. If there's anything I've learned, is how the BBSes make the internet look really good now.

I think most people could care less about BBSes, but I suppose for the few tens/hundreds of thousands of us who experienced it, the nostalgia factor is enough to encourage us to watch this. We can tell the young whipper-snappers "You young 'uns have it really good. Why back in my days, we had to..."

Re:History is great and all...

[IGnatius T Foobar]

BBS's are not dead. Dialup is dead, but the BBS lives on. BBS's have moved to the Internet, where they are still some of the most close-knit online communities you can find. What some people don't seem to realize about online communications is that it's the people that matter. Not files, not banner ads, not warez, not even most of what passes for "content" on most big commercial sites these days.

No other environment is quite as "folksy" as a BBS. Why do people post in the comments section on Slashdot? Because it's people reaching out and connecting with other people. We in the BBS community have never lost sight of that basic tenet, and that's why we log on to our favorite boards, day after day, year after year, decade after decade. To talk to real people.

Whaa??

[dogbowl]

7 freakin hours!?!?!

I'd have a hard time sitting through a seven hour documentary on WWII. Who in the world is nerdy enough to want to watch all of this??

Having not had any coffee yet...

[Shadow Wrought]

I read the blurb as being a 7 hour documentary of the BBC. Which seemed like it might be OK (depending on how much focus was spent on Monty Python, Blackadder, Mr. Bean, and Dr. Who) but certainly nothing to fuss over. Time to fire up the ol' Mr. Coffee!

He missed one.

[B5_geek]

Does anybody remember C/Net BBS? (C=64) It was the only one that supported ASCII movies. You could create "movies" of buffered commands. Man those were the fun times....

C64 + Digiboard + 2 phone lines + two 1581 drives.

LORD was great, there was a bug in the casino though. One of the games offered 2:1 odds, and played at exactly that ratio. It was soo easy to get millions of "credits". We then used those credits to offset download ratios. =)

gah 7 hours..

[blackicye]

My best guess is 6 1/2 hours of the footage will be featuring the downloading of pr0n at 300bps.

and the remaining 30 mins will be people sitting around waiting for the Callback verifiers to ring back so they can set up a new account :P

7 hours...

[justforaday]

It's 7 hours long for a reason -- they're simply scrolling the text of everything that's ever appeared on a BBS (think the intro to Star Wars, except with stuff from BBSland).

Ancient History

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

for you 300 BAUDers out there

I remember when I was working for an Engineering firm, one of the largest in the world at the time (late 90's). They needed to get some drawings out ASAP and the T1 was down, they didn't have an on site admin.

I saw an old Hayes modem sonnected to a computer that nobody used. Everybody was shocked and amazed when I fired up a terminal and typed in ATDT + the phone number (the guy needing the files had a modem as well - he knew how to use it). LOL. Everybody was trying to figure out out to send the files by courrier, or even pay for a plane ticket for hardcopies.

ATH

[Doc Ruby]

3 years in the making, and (at 300baud) 11.4 years in the downloading!

Wow.

[macthulhu]

In the early 80's, I was as big a fan of BBSs as anyone else, but 7 hours? Is there an interview with every single person who ever dialed into one? Yikes.

I'm not going to buy this one

[Nept]

until I know when the extended edition will be coming out.

It's not 7 hours straight...

[MixmastaKooz]

Looking at the website, the DVD's content seems to be episodic with some decent interviews (like Dr. Cerf). I think it's amazing that he got 7 hours of tape just on BBS's. But for narrative's sake, I hope he grouped the interviews/footage into episodes that are either topical or chronological.

What type of treatment would you prefer on this subject?

I would prefer a topical divison of episodes because BBS gaming would be fascinating as I spent a bit of time playing them (my favorite was Trade Wars or was it called Space Wars? It feels like it was eons ago). I wonder if he addresses how they led into the multi-player games we currently have today. A discussion on modem development would also be interesting as would a discussion on the culture of BBS users. A topical division would also allow me to skip parts that might not interest me like BBS programs available on OS/2 (A topic which I could care less about). However, a chronological treatment would be fine, but I think it would get either tedious and/or obtuse by the end having weaved so many themes/points throughout it.
Lastly, since I work at a Science Center, I hope the episodes/chapters aren't too long because it would be great to show them in my gallery! Overall, I look forward to getting my hands on this!

BBS Days...

[Osrin]

The BBS world seems like a lifetime ago. For over two years I ran the european regional mail and echomail hub for the GT Power network from a 286 that buzzed away at the end of my bed. I dreamed of a day when everybody could use email to talk to not only geeks, but also friends and relatives. Now we have the day. The PC doesn't buzz at the end of my bed anymore, but instead I'm plagued by spam and spy-ware. My illusions are shattered. On the plus side, I was still developing utilities back then, primarily for the network. Probably some of the most fun I've ever had. TO my surprise much of the code that I wrote can still be found in old archives, although most of it just seems to bomb out with a Runtime error 002 nowadays.

14k? Whippersnapper!

[name_already_taken]

Yes, and they will take forever to download at 14k!

What's this '14k' you speak of? In my day, we had 300bps, and we liked it! Sometimes I even used 110bps for that extra-old-timey feel!

Hell, we even called bps 'Baud', and we liked it, because we didn't know any better!

And that's the way we liked it!

Histoy of BBS Graphics

[Jonah Hex]

Well you had NAPLPS (more info & pics) which practically no one used (at least in the US) but did get some support from a few BBS packages and terminal programs.

Then there was RIP (aka RIPscript, pics) which got the most implementation, although the tools and actual BBS support were far behind what ANSI was capable of.

Then towards the end of the BBS era, you had Syncronet appear on the scene, which IIRC had ANSI and RIPScript support first, then added a custom terminal program with SVGA graphics. (not sure based on what presentation protocol, but I'm pretty sure it was proprietary) What's really interesting is it's been open sourced and is still in active development.

As a long time BBS operator (Xenogenesis BBS, Sysop HEX, 313 area, first running TAG software then Oblivion/2 which I'm listed as an author for although I never put out an "official release") I'd definately say ANSI was the standard. I still miss my Obv/2 setup and it's tight ANSI menu sets (all produced personally, I'd check out the scenes packs but made my own in TheDraw of course) and I'm hoping to put it up on the Internet someday from my backups.

Jonah Hex

Ahh memories

[Skraut]

I remember writing my first shareware game in (don't laugh) gbasic. I spent 3 months reducing the file size from 80k to 31k so that people could download it from BBS' faster. 2 weeks later Doom was released and suddenly people equated file size with quality.

I ended up making a 1 meg .tiff and sticking it in the zip file, and my downloads increased significantly.

BTW the game made me a whopping $25 which as I promised in the shareware nag screen, went towards my college education... Ahh to be 15 again.

FidoNet

[Taco Cowboy]

There was no Internet, but there was a loyal Fido serving us.

Still remember logging on to BBS, receiving the first New Year Celebration message on 9 AM, new year's eve. The guy sent it from Australia, already at night !

I replied to the message, and it arrived at his BBS 6 hours later, and he was STILL awake !

Yep, at least 2 guys hadn't had anything better to do during New Year's Day (in Australia) and New Year's Eve (in America) ! :)

The feeling is gone now. No comeraderie anymore in the Net age.

One time I was pushed to become the temporary moderator for the FLAME group, and oh yeah, I was flamed to crisp ! For whatever's worth, it was fun, Fun, FUN !!

My thoughts (I've seen previews @ Defcon)

[telemonster]

Jason Scott appears to have done a very good job with this documentary. Don't let the 7 hour number scare you, it is broken into 7 different parts that cover different things... For instance, there is 1 hour devoted to the underground scene and ansi art scene..

Once I saw the preview it did dawn on me how much there really was to cover. It seemed well presented, and probably STILL not complete!

From those that were around in the BBS days... Do you remember the Dual Standard HST craze? Telegard 2.5 and 2.7, FidoNet and crashmail... OOFNet and THG, ACiD and iCE, that horrible RIP graphics garbage... and of course the true community the local BBSes provided that is generally lacking with the global internet?

I saw the preview of the film @ Defcon, and also saw Jason speak @ 5th Hope about preserving media. It is interesting, as the project I tried to deliver to 5th hope was a video archive system --- collecting as much video content related to the underground computer world as possible, and delivering it on demand. Good news is the archive is growing -- bad news is there is still millions of news casts and other "reports" that I don't have... if anyone has old VHS/Beta tapes related to anything involving computers or telecom, please let me know. My last big milestone was the Whiz Kids tv series from 84! Also found Hack Attack, aired on Disc in 94... Very interesting stuff. Whiz Kids floored me, as the technologies exploited in this 1984 tv series were so ahead of their time, including Motorola MDT and DOT signs!! Crazy stuff.

Where was I, oh yes-- 7 x 1 hour documentaries , each covering a different aspect/portion of the BBS scene! Watching the preview, I wanted to immediately see the whole thing. I can't speak for everyone, but I personally have been eager for the release of his work. He also stated that in a year or two the cuts that hit the floor during editing will be given to the archive.org folks. Very very cool!

Re:Snore-fest.

[Jason Scott]

Every hour you watch of this documentary will make another 10 years of your life awkward and sexless.

I'm thinking this goes on the back cover.