Old Format, New Work

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Some works go beyond Retraux: they not only evoke the production values of an earlier era but are also produced in an otherwise obsolete format or method from that era. When this is the case, it's frequently because the production team is Doing It for the Art -- the desire for authenticity and verisimilitude is such a significant factor that they go the extra distance and/or put it extra effort to make it "right". This can be as simple as a decision to film a Period Piece in black-and-white, or as involved as using genuinely antique equipment and film stock. (Although to be honest, sometimes it's a case of being more affordable when the project is running on a tight budget -- such as a decision to film on 16mm stock rather than 35mm, or filming without sound and dubbing dialogue later -- and any artistic bonus is merely fortunate serendipity.)

Note that even though the trope name specifies "old" format, it's not limited to formats that are specifically antique at the time the work is made. If a hypothetical film from 1968 made use of genuine 8mm footage (instead of standard film stock processed to look like 8mm film) to present a contemporary home movie, the home movie would qualify for this trope. So would sequences recorded on consumer-grade videotape for a late-1990s horror film.

This is often a necessary part of Found Footage Films. In the case of such footage presented as a work within another work or as part of a Mockumentary, it may of necessity display some measure of Stylistic Suck, if only that imposed by the nature or limitations (if any) of the "old format". Camera Abuse is another technique which may be applied to provide "realism".

Examples of Old Format, New Work include:

Film

• While not shot entirely in this manner, Woody Allen's Mockumentary Zelig makes extensive use of footage shot with vintage equipment on equally vintage film stock in order to provide convincingly "authentic"-looking film from the early decades of the 20th century.
• The Hateful Eight, by Quentin Tarantino, was filmed in the Ultra Panavision 70 process, which had not been used since 1966.
• No, a 2012 film about the campaign to defeat Augusto Pinochet in Chile's 1988 referendum, was shot in the video support U-matic 3:4, which was used for television at the end of the 1980s.
• The Blair Witch Project is composed in great percentage of footage recorded on consumer-grade hand-held video cameras, allegedly found abandoned after the mysterious disappearance of the researchers who shot it.

Live-Action TV

• All but the final few episodes of WandaVision were filmed in the style of Sit Coms from specific eras of television, with the production team going so far as to use techniques and equipment (or modern equipment adjusted to emulate it) from the appropriate eras. (And in some cases actually dress for the eras they were emulating.)

Music

• New vinyl EP and LP releases continue even in the 2010s.
• Wasting Light, by Foo Fighters, was recorded using entirely analogue equipment until post-mastering.
• Five Days E.P. by Coins uses "hardware synthesizers, samplers and drum machines exclusively, forgoing the use of soft synths" to invoke the sounds of Queen street around 1996.
• There have new releases on cassette format, most notably the soundtrack to the film version of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Tabletop Games

• As part of a time travel gimmick, the Magic: The Gathering expansion Time Spiral featured several cards with old style frames and abilities that hadn't been used in a decade.
  • Old Fogey from joke set Unhinged is another example, featuring an old frame with old keywords.
  • While the Coldsnap expansion uses then modern card formats, it intentionally included old mechanics and cards to fit a gimmick of being based on an old design file just now found (officially confirmed as a joke after too many people took that statement seriously) meant to replace the much hated Homelands expansion in its block.

Video Games

• Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril for the NES.
• RHDE: Furniture Fight for the NES
• STREEMERZ, from the Action 52 Owns project, was first developed in Flash using NES-esque graphics but later ported back to the NES.
• Thwaite for the NES
• Retro City Rampage was originally intended as such, but the project outgrew it. The final release does however include a prototype that works on actual NES hardware.
  • Retro City Rampage 486, the 2015 DOS port of the game, was sold on a floppy disk.
• Pier Solar and the Great Architects was released in 2010 for the Sega Genesis and uses the Sega CD for an optional enhanced soundtrack.
• Ion Fury was released in 2019 but built off the Build engine which was last used for a commercial release 20 years prior (and that was considered very dated at release). While it pushes the engine to its limits, it will run hardware not that much newer than period.
• Tanglewood was released as a Sega Megadrive cartridge in 2018, having been specifically developed for the system.
• Through websites such as "Atari Age", there is a whole community of developers making games for obsolete Atari consoles.