Cameron's Playhouse - Season 1 To Get The Remastered Treatment

 

Cameron's Playhouse is a long running Australian comedy series about an educational show gone wrong. Created by Cameron Hons, who is actually a writer on the Emerald Rangers website as well, yes, that's me!
Cameron's Playhouse evolved from an idea of another show I had , back in 2006 called Sonic Randomness, which a lot of my classic oldschool friends from the early 2000s would remember. But then I wanted to do a show where I would front the camera. Back then, Youtube was still in its infancy, despite me being the YTPer MRINSTRUCTIONBOOK, starting from 2007 - 2012, I kind of kept the Cameron's Playhouse stuff separated from the platform. It also predates Twitch, and I was already interacting with the audience members and sharing the episodes around. Reading viewer's fan mail and other nonsense like that.

I really enjoyed making the first season of the show. Some people might think the first few seasons were a bit extreme with humor and random stuff, I think it hit the mark quite well, and was a great way to pave out the rest of the show. I still look back at Season 1 fondly. 

A remastered shot of the show's co-host, Dr. Steven Jefferson from the first season.

Back in early 2008 I was reluctantly forced to get my hair cut, to attend a terrible school that didn't even work out for me in the end. But then I thought, what if I were to disguise myself as different characters a bit more easily. Thankfully I don't need to worry about any of that these days.

I have gotten only a few bits of criticisms from some viewers who watch the show, and they mostly don't understand what's going on. Yes, it is very meme cultured based, focused on visual humor and gags. But people who complain, might not understand that, back in 2008 - HD and 4K home cameras weren't really a thing yet at the time. I had a small camcorder, and then moved onto a DVR camera. Remember those Handycam Mini DVs? With the cassettes? That's what I used to film Cameron's Playhouse Season 1 & 2. 

For the most part it was good, but it really did have some lighting problems. I was annoyed about them, despite still enjoying the episodes of the show and the things going on during each one.

Each episode of the 1st season was colour graded and corrected as well as fixed with a 16:9 aspect ratio.

I personally oversaw & did the colour grading and correctness to each episode and was incredibly blown away with how amazing the fixed up versions looked. Since the start of the show this season has never been colour graded. I was just showing everybody. "Look at how good this looks!" "I have never seen the colours stand out so well for this season!" Also, in the new 16:9 format, things stand out much better without cutting off too much stuff. Actually, you can see things in the background more than before. In the first episode, for the first time I could actually see the time on the clock in the background. I started filming the first episode at 3.50pm, and didn't finish it until about 5pm. So the episode took me about 2 hours to film. Pretty solid too, as most of them were done in all 1 take with most ideas come up with on the spot.

Original VS Remaster

I was just showing everybody. "Look at how good this looks!" 

Colour grading and correcting for the first season took less than a week once I figured out how to do it properly. Nearing the end of the exports, I decided to keep the show at the original 30fps exports. It was a better idea, as a quicker time to export and the show wasn't filmed in 60fps originally. I think you can see way more background stuff as well due to the 30fps rendering. Only the last few episodes I had trouble with. Vegas refused to cooperate and kept on rendering to a black screen on certain clips while exporting. It was very frustrating, including the final episode of the first season, which exported black screen issues multiple times. It got so bad, I left the computer on overnight to export twice, and both times failed. In the end, I gave up on using Vegas Pro for future colour coding remasters, and decided to use my Final Cut Pro on Mac instead, with similar and great results.

I am really pleased I have finally managed to colour grade & fix up the first season, which is something I was always wanting to do during the show's long run, and with the 15th anniversary of the show this year, what a better time to release it again on Bluray, now improved. I also plan to do some new exclusive artwork for the new version's cover art on Bluray.

Cameron's Playhouse has turned into quite the successful show, with 7 seasons, 6 feature length films and 1 spin off movie, based on the show's popular co-host, Dr. Steven Jefferson.

Cameron's Playhouse Season 1: 15th Anniversary Remastered Edition is now available to own on Bluray, with the restored bonus features from the original release!

Even the Pilot Episode and 2008 Christmas Special gets the remastered treatment too!

DISC 01:

01. Weather (Remastered)

02. The Outdoors (Remastered)

03. Electricity (Remastered)

04. Piracy (Remastered)

05. Food (Remastered)

DISC 02:

06. Keeping Clean (Remastered)

07. Good And Bad (Remasterd)

08. Time Travel (Remastered)

09. Talent (Remastered)

10. The Final Episode (Remastered)

DISC 03:

01. The Pilot Episode (Remastered)

02. Bloopers

03. Episode 1 Audio Commentary by Cameron Hons

04. Getting Into Character Featurette

05. Deleted Scenes

06. Deleted Scenes with Audio Commentary by Cameron Hons

Seasons 2, 3 and 4 also plan to be remastered and colour graded the same way.  

Check out the official trailer of the season 1 remaster here!