Man turns his dad's old police force training footage from 1994 into a musical montage

It’s a huge blast from the past. Twitter user @lavashark23, presumably with a lot of time on his hands during the circuit breaker, managed to edit together a montage of shots from his father’s police driver training school days from 1994 into a nostalgia-laden vignette. 

On Monday (April 27) he shared the fruits of his labour onto his Twitter account for all to watch. Fortunately, he whittled the footage down from its original 3-hour long duration. 

Spent some time stitching together my dad’s old vhs footages from his training course days in 94. It was 3 hours long BTW pic.twitter.com/6KVV0DdpVW

— isDANKar (@lavashark23) April 27, 2020

The footage, filmed in March 1994, offered a rare glimpse into the lives of Singapore’s trainee policemen as they learned to ride (and even fall off) the bulky police motorbikes of yore. Good to know that these guys knew how to have fun while training too as they laughed and posed for shots at the training circuit.

But how did @lavashark23 even manage to do so, considering that the old videos are on VHS? For those too young to know what that even is, videos used to be recorded and played back at home using videotape cassettes, and we would record episodes of Under One Roof on it. This was before VCDs, LaserDiscs (remember those?) and DVDs took over. 

According to @lavashark23, he managed to convert the old analogue footages into digital formats at a shop that carries out the service in Sengkang. So if you’ve got some old tapes lying around in the storeroom, that could be your best bet. 

not sure if yall are from malaysia or singapore but i did it at sengkang, singapore ?? i “googled vhs mp4 conversion service singapore” :’)

— isDANKar (@lavashark23) April 28, 2020

"Some of the old [Traffic Police] motorcycles had kick-starters or a combination of kick and electric starters. Anti-lock brake systems were not available then,” noted Guy Consigliere, a retired Singapore Police Force officer, to The New Paper in an interview.

"I rode both good and bad models (of TP motorcycles), but with better technology came better motorcycles after the 2000s."

ilyas@asiaone.com