Shea Scientific Films is an ongoing mystery/Analog Horror multimedia series, consisting of a YouTube channel
and a Twitter page.
In May of 2023, a pair of Michiganders, Andy and Chris, discover a box of VHS tapes in a recently-abandoned, unusually sparse apartment. Andy begins digitizing the tapes, and the pair soon discover that they are copies of vintage science education films from a studio that has no apparent record of its existence.
Now tasked with a mystery and a potential lost media recovery operation, Andy runs the YouTube channel and handles conversions while Chris posts findings and other information on Twitter, in the goal of uncovering the history of the studio and what became of it.
This series contains examples of:
- Audience Participation: Andy and Chris will respond in-character to YouTube comments and tweets.
- Classified Information: The patent entries for John Shea that Chris finds have their patent and classification numbers redacted at the printing level; they aren't blacked out, but are hidden using typed dashes.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Shea films are color-coded by topic:
- Cyan is biology and earth science.
- Magenta is physics.
- Yellow is chemistry.
- Black is space.
- Content Warnings:
- The second film uncovered, "Acids and Bases," is heavily damaged with lots of dark patches on the film, effectively causing a strobe effect for much of the runtime. The title and description have a warning about this flashing, and Andy and Chris put out preemptive warnings about it on the YouTube community tab and on Twitter, respectively.
- Though there's no specific warning for it, Andy and Chris both posted notices that "Death and Decomposition" contains footage of dead animals.
- Deliberate VHS Quality: The films themselves are meant to look like digitized VHS film transfers.
- Four Is Death: The fourth recovered film is titled "Death and Decomposition," and is exactly 4 minutes and 44 seconds long. The digits of its production year, 1973, even add up to 20, which is divisible by 4.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Chris discovers that John M. Shea, the apparent founder of the studio, has at least several hundred, widely-varied patents dating back to the early 1950s. This in turn seems to have made him a...
- Rich Genius: John Shea was a billionaire even back in the '70s, something Chris notes is very unusual. All that money seems to have come solely from Shea's massive amount of patents, which, based on their universal redacted status, convinces Chris that the U.S. government licensed them wholesale to use or just simply control.
- The '70s: The titular studio was active from January 1, 1972 to June 20, 1973.
- Shout-Out:
- In a photo of the box of tapes, one of them is in a Gemini-brand case (the real-life company, though).
- After the release of the tenth tape, Andy made a community post stating that "We're 10 tapes into the box now"; 10 Tapes is an ARG by Swedish YouTuber Jeffiot, who featured Shea Scientific Films in one of his videos several months prior.
- In an interview with Andy and Chris, Kay Saudek, the composer of Shea Scientific Films, mentions being a fan of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream.
- One of Andy's YouTube posts contains the phrase (bold added) "No video tonight. Mind if I wait until tomorrow?" Several months before, Nick Nocturne explored this series during a livestream.
- String Theory: Chris claims to have seen "a big corkboard with strings and stuff" in the abandoned apartment, but apparently didn't get a good look at it initially. He finally tracks it down in December 2023, revealing that it's a collection of highlighted, Michigan-related UFO article printouts and a string leading from northwestern Ohio across southwestern Michigan.
- Vanity Plate: The channel's first upload is the studio's vanity plate, and it seemingly occurs after the end credits of each film.
