Houston videographer unleashes his archives onto YouTube

A Houston man, Josh Burdick, is working on digitizing some of his VHS tapes from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, featuring footage of the Space City at work and at play. He’s also uploaded a few dozen stills of Houston from 1988 to 1992. less A Houston man, Josh Burdick, is working on digitizing some of his VHS tapes from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, featuring footage of the Space City at work and at play. He’s also uploaded a few dozen ... more Photo: Josh Burdick Photo: Josh Burdick Image 1 of / 63 Caption Close Houston videographer unleashes his archives onto YouTube 1 / 63 Back to Gallery

This week, Funai Electric, the only remaining VCR manufacturer, announced the company will permanently shut down their production lines by August. But while VHS tapes may be a thing of the past, some of the movies put on them are still close to our hearts.

A Houston videographer named Josh Burdick, armed with his trusty RCA Pro Wonder 300 – using VHS tape – captured a much greener, less developed side of Houston for a variety of projects.

Burdick took a look back at his footage as he feeds it into his Mac at home for archiving and setting it loose on YouTube for public consumption.

“I just figured out how to work iMovie on my Mac so now I'm able to go through some of this stuff and see what I've got,” Burdick says.

So far he’s uploaded videos of local color in and around Houston, snippets of Houston television broadcasts and commercials, and late ‘80s election coverage.

You might recognize Burdick’s name from the series of beautiful color photos his father Cecil Burdick Jr. took of the sights of Houston in the ’50 and ‘60s, which were collected and displayed by the Houston Chronicle in 2008. Part of his father’s archive can be seen on his official website and are worthy of viewing if you are a Houston history devotee.

One of his father’s photos of the Astrodome under construction in skeletal form has become iconic in Dome preservation circles.

Among Burdick's videos is a 1988 commercial for WaterWorld – Houston’s late great water park -- that would probably not fly in 2015. A Houston Post commercial from that same year touts a color weather map and a readership of more than one million. A young pre-White House George W. Bush is profiled in one clip from the 1988 Republican National Convention at the Superdome in New Orleans.

“It's fun looking at that old news coverage. I never knew what I'd do with all these tapes I was making but I thought it would be neat to look back at later,” Burdick says.

Burdick also posted some shots from inside the Astrodome during the 1992 Republican National Convention.

A visit to Houston FreedomFest in July 1991 at Sam Houston Park features a young Burdick doing man-on-the-street interviews with mulleted locals in various forms of inebriation. The finer points of Busch beer are argued.

Also included is a special video trip he was able to take inside the Houston Chronicle while he served as his high school’s yearbook photographer in the summer of 1989. Our paper’s photo department was much larger then, compared to present-day where photographers only need a laptop or WiFi connection to transmit photos.

One of the longer videos in Burdick’s collection is a trip through the sights of Houston on a hot summer day in 1990.

What are some of the biggest changes he notices in the footage after 25 years?

“The biggest change is the amount of construction that has occurred. The addition of 1500 Louisiana was a noticeable difference with our skyline. Discovery Green is another example. That area of downtown was not the picturesque place it is now. The area around the Transco Tower is now stuffed with buildings,” Burdick says.

Burdick expects to continue editing and uploading footage for the foreseeable future.

“I think I amassed about 120 two-hour home videos and about 400 or so six-hour VHS tapes of stuff off the TV between 1987 until 2000,” he says.