As the name implies, there are at-least a total of 18 Hi8 Tapes from the Production of Season 5 of Thomas & Friends that survived, along with one from Season 6. These have all been preserved by ThomasTankMerch. There are 11 "Rushes Tapes", and 7 "Video Assist Tapes" (Along with the S6 Tape). These tapes are primarily comprised of alternate-angle and normal Season 5 shots, as-well as Behind the Scenes shots including production-boards and occasionally crew-members on the set, deleted scenes, and bloopers. The tapes also include specially-shot footage for the Music Videos Night Train, Harold the Helicopter, & Donald's Duck, in addition to Season 5 footage for a song from the following season, Boo! Boo! Choo-Choo, and specially-shot footage for the Japanese PC & Windows game Magical Adventure. ThomasTankMerch revealed that they had these tapes on June 24th 2022, explaining that they had been acquired in 2019 for "thousands of dollars", which after purchasing some additional Thomas props in the meantime, would soon finally have payed off, meaning they'd be able to digitize them and release them to the community via YouTube. They were aided by FlyingPringle and JHRawks in the digitization of the tapes for preservation. FlyingPringle edited together a 2-minute blooper reel and 45-minute highlight reel featuring some of the best footage from all the tapes. These were released to YouTube on July 3th 2022, with the highlight-reel as a live-premiere that began at 9:00 PM CST. All 19 Tapes were released in full the following evening on July 5th.
Trivia[]
- ThomasTankMerch explained that all of these tapes were likely thrown-out in a dumpster, and survived only from the sheer-luck of somebody saving them. This likely occurred sometime during the HiT Entertainment-Era, when old stuff was being cleared out, and the tapes were discarded, for the Master-Tapes likely already contained such footage.
- All the footage was filmed in exactly the same 35mm film camera, although the 35mm masters were converting to Hi8 Tapes.
- Interestingly, some inverted footage (sometimes upside-down) from unrelated productions will cut into the tapes. This is because, for some reason, certain areas of the tapes were recorded over at the time with other content. Footage from Hercules (1997) can be seen on Rushes Tapes #2/8, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) appears on Rushes Tapes #3/4, Citizen Kane (1941) appears, on tape #9. Additionally an advertisement for the British-Magazine "Girl Talk" can be seen on Rushes Tape #5.
- It is revealed for the first time that Boulder's prop was actually a heavily-modified styrofoam-ball, similar in size to a basketball.
- Unfortunately, some of the videos have been set as Made for Kids by YouTube due to the misconception that the franchise is exclusively for kids.
Rushes Tapes[]
Durations listed below.
- #1 (1:20:36).
- #2 (1:23:58).
- #3 (1:23:41).
- #4 (1:31:23).
- #5 (1:34:08).
- #6 (1:17:15).
- #7 (1:33:29).
- #8 (1:21:03).
- #9 (1:32:57).
- #10 (1:27:14).
- #11 (1:31:35).
Video Assist Tapes[]
Durations listed below.
- #1 (1:05:38).
- #2 (1:30:14).
- #3 (1:32:22).
- #4 (1:30:40).
- #5 (1:33:10).
- #6 (1:32:39).
- #7 (1:28:08).
- #1 (Season 6;54:21).
Gallery[]
Info[]
Bloopers[]
Deleted Scenes[]
Behind the Scenes[]
