Contrary to popular belief, Tv in the 70’s and 80’s really wasn’t low quality at all! it was what we now term SD quality, and images in 525 (US) and 625(UK) lines were actually quite sharp. Sadly, the limiting factor was the VT machines, and while the Ampex VPR tape machines in the broadcasters VT departments did a great job, home recording was limited to around 240 lines, and worse, copies of copies were pretty poor – and it is these you now see on youtube, all soft and fuzzy. Our BBC repeat series popular in the 70s, and the quality is visually the same as many of the others.
So you don’t need to degrade the images at all, but reproduce the gamma and colour curves of film, which many of the major series were of course shot on. use youtube to study how they managed captions and titles, and of course end credits. Most had quite catchy tunes for their title sequences, and used the styles of the day – so lots of orchestras and big orchestrations. lots of strings and brass. Love boat titles really don’t tax the editor at all – very standard basic stuff. Premiere can do it all, without needing to learn AE.
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