The indoor scenes were shot in video, while the outdoor scenes where shot in film. Due to the impossibility to edit together both formats at the time, the footage was mixed "live" during the broadcast.
It took 12 years to edit the complete series in Spain on DVD. It first appeared in 2003 in a 6 DVD pack with the episodes in a random order and lacking lots of them. Five years later, the pack was re-released adding 2 more disks, with more episodes but the series still incomplete. In 2015, the distributor changed and the series was released for the first time complete in 10 disks.
Season 3 was recorded in 1982, 14 years after the first two seasons. It was a special commission from the director of TVE-1, who wanted to use a well established format to perform an experiment on how well VCR could be used to make a full high quality TV series, with the intention of replacing film and earlier video formats in a near future.
They wanted to check, not only how well recording and editing could be made, but also how much cost and production time-frames could be reduced with the new medium. As such, all kinds of shots, camera movements, lightning, sets and decorations were used, to test the limits of VCR and how far it could go.
What could be seen, in the words of director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador was that, even though VCR was still too young, at least with Spanish television budgets and technical equipment, to be a perfect substitute of film for TV series, as the quality of the final product wasn't still comparable with series of the time produced on film, it was certainly the format of the future, and it certainly reduced costs to an infinitesimal amount, and time-frames were reduced to a fifth of the average standard, making it possible to record full one-hour episodes in less than 24 hours. Serrador's biggest complain was that VCR was not as easily editable as film yet, but he had no doubt that technology would eventually be improved to a point when that wouldn't be a problem anymore.
VCR was shelved as a main medium for TV series for a few years, until Tristeza de amor (1986) became four years later the first mainstream Spanish TV series to be produced entirely on VCR.
They wanted to check, not only how well recording and editing could be made, but also how much cost and production time-frames could be reduced with the new medium. As such, all kinds of shots, camera movements, lightning, sets and decorations were used, to test the limits of VCR and how far it could go.
What could be seen, in the words of director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador was that, even though VCR was still too young, at least with Spanish television budgets and technical equipment, to be a perfect substitute of film for TV series, as the quality of the final product wasn't still comparable with series of the time produced on film, it was certainly the format of the future, and it certainly reduced costs to an infinitesimal amount, and time-frames were reduced to a fifth of the average standard, making it possible to record full one-hour episodes in less than 24 hours. Serrador's biggest complain was that VCR was not as easily editable as film yet, but he had no doubt that technology would eventually be improved to a point when that wouldn't be a problem anymore.
VCR was shelved as a main medium for TV series for a few years, until Tristeza de amor (1986) became four years later the first mainstream Spanish TV series to be produced entirely on VCR.