I Gotta Make One - Blog Posts

Presenting: The Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie VHS: Clamshell Edition!

Okay, so I have been dying to share this project since I completed it last November, but I've been waiting until I was a little more active on my socials. And now I am!

I was inspired by thecolinstein on instagram to make this. I found his version back in 2023 and I wanted to buy it, but then I thought, hey, I could just make my own how I want it! With a clamshell case! How hard could it be?

Very hard, as it turns out.

That's not to discourage anyone from trying themselves. There were just a lot of roadblocks unique to my own process. Like the fact that I went through, like, five tapes recording the video file because I thought they were bad tapes. Nope, it was my stupid "smart" tv trying to automatically adjust the aspect ratio that was making the picture black out periodically. And before I got a computer that DIDN'T take 1 million years to boot up, it was difficult to design the cover and labels too.

Here's the playback:

Yes, I did record it at (almost) full aspect ratio, not 4:3, but 1.85:1 because that's how I'd watch it (I didn't want cropping on certain scenes and I REALLY didn't want letterboxing). And those glitchy parts on CJ's face are from my phone's camera, not the recording itself (you have no idea the heart attack I had before I double-checked lol)

Now, obviously since there's nothing on the tape to say that this is just a fanmade product, I will NOT be recreating this VHS for sale, not like thecolinstein (he has disclaimers on his). I'm not sure of the legality of selling my version. My whole intent was to simply make it look like the real deal, like you could find this in a garage sale bargain pile and believe it might have once been widely distributed. Also, I cannot be bothered to try taping the video file again, you can't make me lol. This was just a passion project. But I do hope I've inspired someone else!