Close to You footage from The Now Explosion

[moog]

From website: “The "Now Explosion" first aired in Atlanta on Channel 36 in 1970. It was a Top 40 music program which, along with airing the current songs of the day, showed images to go with the music, all to the patter of an unseen DJ. Images came from promotional films and videotapes from the bands' management, but the show's producer, Bob Whitney, also created in-studio and on-location film and tape images to play with the songs. He created psychedelic visual effects over the images, producing rapid zooms, shapes morphing on top of images, multiple colors and images.”

Raw footage (but no sound) exists for “Close to You” here. Just sync it in your head!

UGA Brown Media Archives : Local collection : The Now Explosion Collection [nowexp]

bmac.libs.uga.edu

 

[newvillefan]

What am I missing? There’s no Carpenters footage that I can see on any of those links

 

[moog]

It's raw footage but no sound. As the description says, it's "created in-studio and on-location film and tape images to play with the songs." So for "Close to You," there is a dancer named Sally Gross running on railroad tracks to the (nonexistent in this clip) song.

 

[moog]

The finished product would've looked something like this (here's "Make It With You.") Sort of silly, but it was a precursor to MTV that was sold to TV stations to fill up time.



And had some pretty trippy, ahead-of-their-time video effects, like in "Spirit in the Sky" here.