I start this article with a question because i really am not sure whether to consider this webshow lost or not i’ll get onto why later on but firstly let me set the scene.
Back in 2013-15 i was interested in The Game Theorists where the series Game Theory is shown and because i was younger i really liked it so in 2015 when the channel gained a sister channel in The Film Theorists i was really interested as i like films (and surprisingly still do). On this channel there were three shows Film Theory like game theory but with film topics instead which was ok, Did you know movies which was like did you know gaming but with film facts and not games and the subject of this article frame by frame. Something that surprises me after watching FBF ,as i’m going to refer to the series as for the rest of this, was that i was drawn to this series as it’s based around the more technical side of films and talked about for example the origins of found footage horror and the origins of film itself. As with a few YouTube series however i did just go away from the channel and the series a few months in.
Now in 2020 i had a video in my recommended from another YouTube channel The Gamer From Mars who made a video on Game Theorists shows that had stopped updating and were lost and not available and the part that stuck out the most for me was the mention of frame by frame and i was wondering what had happened to the show. So i looked it up and found not soon after 7 videos that were uploaded from about the time they were uploaded to the actual channel. Yes someone’s stealing of another’s YouTube videos helped a lot with searching. These videos are easily found and can be watched right now and i will put a link to a playlist at the end so you can watch it if you’d like.
Now on to me actually trying to find more of this series. It’s important to state why i did firstly and that’s mostly because well because i don’t like having things lost and also because i just wanted to enjoy it. So on an upload from that other channel ,which was the FBF mad max fury road video, i looked at the comments mostly to see if there was any info about why the series had gone and while there wasn’t luckily there was a Reddit post which didn’t give a lot of information besides a link to an unlisted video that was on the film theorists channel. This unlisted video and the comments on it made this search very easy. The video i was on by the way was about Valerian and the city of a thousand planets from 2017 which was sponsored by STXfilms ,who i think had something to do with the film, which is definitely why it’s still up but unlisted. Now in the comments for this video i found that someone had made and posted a PDF after going through a lot of searching on the wayback machine and finding the videos. This PDF is linked below.
This PDF while not complete with absolutely every video has more than enough on it documenting the 7 uploads from that other channel to the unlisted video I mentioned earlier to a lot more like the Godzilla episode or the episode about la la land which were not available at all outside of the wayback machine. There is some missing however most importantly is the 1st episode which the video can be clicked on but the video was never archived which sucks because it’s the debut to the whole thing. Without the help of this person we really wouldn’t have been able to have a good amount of this series and it really makes me happy that we do. So if they ever read this thank you. But anyways with the help of the wayback machine’s media player you can download these episodes and enjoy them.
Something that does really confuse me about this story though is why did this happen? Disagreements between how something should be run are common and that’s ok but erasing all of the work someone did besides one video with no mention to my knowledge seems off. However Did You Know Movies was also taken down from the channel but did continue on albeit on a different channel. The creator of the series Kyle also seemed to have just kinda disappeared as there was an FBF video uploaded to another youtube channel that archived his older work but this apparently isn’t his at all. There was also word that a lot of his non FBF content was deleted presumably by him but there is no source on that it was but it would make sense as looking at a video he uploaded there was one with the R-slur just there according to the reuploaded channel.
In conclusion FBF is a very interesting series to think and talk about as it’s partially lost but it’s also connected to a huge YouTube channel that is still getting uploaded to and there is pretty much no mention of it outside the unlisted video and the channel trailer which does contain some footage from the 1st episode. I think this situation can also kinda prove that sometimes the internet can be really helpful in finding lost media but also can be the cause of losing this and that some stuff can be lost to time even if it’s big and recent. But is this series lost? Not really but some of it absolutely is like the 1st episode we can though watch a lot of episodes and that’s really good.
Thanks for reading this!
Link to the PDF i mentioned pdf (justpaste.it)
Link to my YouTube playlist (93) Frame By Frame TFT – YouTube
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