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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: Maintaining film projection ability long-term
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 03-08-2014 02:17 PM
Hi Leo...how is your Saturday? ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
quote: Leo Enticknap
That would also be misleading, because the vast majority of theatrical audiences see a projected print (assuming an all photochemical post-production workflow) that is at least three generations removed from the camera negative, often with optical printing involved in at least one.
Yes and no. If one is trying to see what the film-makers saw when they approved the look...then you are looking for the closest thing to the OCN. If you are merely looking for what the typical audience saw...then you are looking for an original release print. And those that have seen both know that the release prints looked notably worse than the "EK" prints (though they probably were not called that then). I have run an EK print side-by-side to a "Select" print (two theatres...the primary and the overflow) and the difference was more than apparent...the feel of the movie changed. I've also noticed that the difference between a release print from the 70s and earlier look much better than release prints from the 90s and later. My guess is that there is another set of generations between the OCN. Of course, in the older movies, one can see an instant quality change when an optical is "spliced" in like a fade out/in on the older titles.
I'm not looking for a bias either way...but I do think the digital proponents feel that film is getting a beneficial bias if it isn't somehow getting the worst release print comparison. I don't think you'll get too much argument from many (possibly most) "pro-film" people that the general public is doing better with DCPs and is likely to keep doing better as time and technology allows us to meet and exceed the EK prints of yesteryear.
With respect to the 77 vs 57 years. I'm not following you. Mr. Toland died before DCPs...so what? What he approved was what he approved. Again, I feel that recordings of any nature reflect the time they were made in...I'm not too interested in the opinions of what someone may have done at a later time...even from the same person since they will have changed and been influenced by what came later.
quote: Leo Enticknap
Very few people would try to argue seriously that listening to a CD rerelease of a Hendrix album, or a Beethoven symphony not played on period instruments, prevents you from understanding what those musicians were trying to achieve.
Actually...yeah a I would. Unfortunately, most people never get to hear the TAPE recordings of period rock...they also don't listen on the studio monitors they used to do the mix. But the medium DOES make a difference and the delivery method heavily can influence the feel of the music. If you know that a recording was mixed using Altec 604s as the reference monitors (just using them as an example since they were used on a LOT of records)...you'd be amazed at how listing to the same song you already know changes when you hear it back as close as possible to what they were mixed on. There is more to a song than notes on a page or sound from speakers...there is emotion in the performance. Why do people go to live presentations when they have "perfect" recordings of the same songs?
A friend of mine has a rather extensive collection of recorded music...and also an extensive collection of the equipment originally used to play it back. One thing he discovered is that the sound is often improved if it is played back on the period piece rather than a "modern" piece of equipment that tries to simulate the response of the older piece. It makes a difference.
quote: Leo Enticknap
The technicians who scan old movies or digitize the 1/2" studio masters of Hendrix albums would claim that they are trying to reproduce the aesthetic properties of the source in the duplicate as closely as possible. We can argue until the cows come home as to how successfully or otherwise they've managed to achieve that.
And I'm not trying to downplay their artistry/efforts too. Their work is going to to have a better chance of preserving these elder works of art. However, try as they might, it is but a facsimile of they are trying to dupe. Some clearly do a better job than others. And a frightening thing is that they are all lumped together...those that are effectively "auto-scanned" and those that were meticulously preserved, transferred with every effort to capture what is believed to be the essential elements of the original.
In film preservation...you have the works of those like Bob Harris that actually will try to find original costuming and such to ensure things like color is right...find the best elements that exist and go to town trying to make the best of whatever exists...and then there are those that merely dig up what is around and dupe that and call it "restored." There is a difference between a Bob Harris restoration and most others...though I don't always see eye-to-eye with Bob (particularly on sound), there can be no question that he always tries to get whatever there is of existing elements to make it the best possible.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
The reason is that I firmly do not believe that the paying public agrees or even cares that you might be showing a film presentation of a classic film. Sure, to you and me it should be important that the film is shown in 35mm, but other options are available that serve the need. I think there is a little too much "Romance" of the idea of watching an old 35mm print of a movie, fun yes, does it matter? Not really.
While your statement may reflect many, if not most, of the public...it is flat out wrong as a definitive statement. It all depends on the market. There are plenty of sites from around the world that make a point of presenting classic titles on film and they get great attendance as a result. There are people that will travel further to seek out an film presentation. This is not unique to film but any art form. You will find that one has to be in a certain market to have enough of these types of people to make such a venture viable. The same could be said for many museums too. Pick the furthest corner of your country to place a film theatre or museum...heck a library...and you are likely to have no visitors/customers. Place it in a major metropolitan area...the results are going to be very different.
I consider myself very fortunate that in my area (essentially Washington, DC), we have the AFI/Silver. It is a venue that will likely be presenting film and classic titles for the foreseeable future.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
In 100 years are we really going to be playing in theaters some of the movies that were released today? I don't think so. The important ones will survive the less important ones might not. We don't have to save or preserve every film ever made.
Since we are showing films made 100+ years ago still...I would say you are likely very wrong. Yes there is a survival of the fittest in movies, like music (who thinks that the radios's playlist is incredibly short?...perhaps if they used the top 10 songs rather than the top 3 of any month they'd have more variety).
Ever see the movie The Match King? Probably not. I guess it wasn't one of the "winners" in the natural selection of things. However, I was able to see it at the AFI/Silver. The Library of Congress had a copy and made a protection copy. Wow...anyone that doesn't know the lesson of "those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" (I'm probably paraphrasing). The story could have been from 2000-2008 and would have it right in...though matches are not what they once where...substitute current commodities for matches. It being based on a true story makes it even more fascinating. (Look for the book with the same name)
You can't download it, rent it or buy it. However, I would hope that eventually it does make it to some form of electronics so that it isn't lost to the public. Fortunately, I got to see it in a theatre with 100s of people (on film, natch). Of course, I would hope that places like the AFI/Silver could keep showing it so people can enjoy a piece of time too.
I come back to...I wouldn't want to make a decision for future generations as to what is a keeper and what is a tosser. If it was important enough to be made in the first place...it is likely a keeper too...even if it is a piece I don't personally care for. What we leave for future generations is what we record about ourselves and our entertainment...films, paintings, stone tablets, records...including the technology that made/used them is all part of it.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 03-08-2014 04:37 PM
quote: Steve Guttag
Since we are showing films made 100+ years ago still...I would say you are likely very wrong. Yes there is a survival of the fittest in movies, like music (who thinks that the radios's playlist is incredibly short?...perhaps if they used the top 10 songs rather than the top 3 of any month they'd have more variety).
I get that, and I am not saying that there won't be re-releases in 2114, but its not like we have major re-releases in the year 2014 of 100 year old movies. These rare screenings of original prints like The Match King are complete rare one-offs in most cases. Good for you that you were able to watch it, I have not, but that does mean there is a crisis going on like the media portrays. The Match King survived not because film lasts a long time, it survived because someone took good care to make sure that the film (which lasts a long time) would last that long. Match King also struggles to live on today because video, streaming etc were not something producers were thinking of like today.
There is nothing to suggest that a film like Avatar or Skyfall which originated in a digital format would not be able to be viewed in 100 years. Agreed, a DCP from 2009 might not work in 2109, but with careful care and data migration, the movie will sure live on.
quote: Steve Guttag
What we leave for future generations is what we record about ourselves and our entertainment...films, paintings, stone tablets, records...including the technology that made/used them is all part of it.
I respect your POV, but I think there is a little too much "romance" of the love of film in your POV.
quote: Justin Hamaker
One thing I think would be interesting is to see visual effects from movies updated with current technologies when possible. I'm not suggesting you simply replace the original movie with an update, but it would be interesting to see a movie like RoboCop(1987) with updated visuals in place of some the horrible looking miniatures and green screen shots. But this of course would assume the raw footage used to create those shots still existed.
Absolutely not. A very bad idea. Terrible idea Justin.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 03-09-2014 01:24 PM
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
so if we have done all that, then the whole idea of "preserving" a print is pointless. Somehow, somewhere the movie will be able to be seen. In the last 40 years, how many influential or important films have we lost because we did not preserve the original negatives? None. Modern bluray releases do not need to be scanned. The media makes an issue out of nothing.
There is no crisis going on.
You're conflating two separate issues: the preservation of "born analog" and "born digital" originals.
One aspect of these two issues is the same: that most of what doesn't survive is lost either because the active decision is made to junk it, or because no active and ongoing effort is made to keep it and it gets lost by omission. You're right that in the last 40 years or so, the amount of stuff that falls into the latter category is tiny. Most of the iconic "lost films" (The Mountain Eagle, London After Midnight) we keep talking about are, as David Pierce's recent research on American lost films has revealed, from the silent era. But that was why they were lost. In 1926, Hitchcock was not a widely celebrated genius, The Mountain Eagle did not get a very wide release (and no export), and no-one thought it was culturally important enough that it had to be kept.
I would say that there were two reasons for the post-1970s period being different. 1 - the nonprofit film archive movement really got going in the '60s and '70s; and 2 - so did TV and home video, which provided an aftermarket for "old" feature films, and thus an economic justification for for-profit archiving to take place. Before then, the only commercial archives of any significance were stockshot libraries based on newsreel collections.
However, I'd speculate that we're potentially in a much stickier situation with born digital. However wonderful digits are as an access medium, they remain lousy as a preservation medium. No-one has yet invented a "store and ignore" digital carrier that matches the longevity and hardware/software compatibility of film in atmospheric storage. There are basically two options: "always on" storage such as a RAID-based server, or storage on offline media combined with regular migration. Research is still going on as to the comparative costs of film preservation vs. digital preservation using known-to-work methods we have at present (including by one of my former students), but early indications are that per minute of running time at a given image quality and per year of reliable archiving, film is still a lot cheaper.
Stories have also emerged of studios losing digital intermediate files from movies made in the last 10-15 years on early generation LTO tapes, forcing them to go back to filmout IPs for rerelease material.
But the fact remains that all the signs are that the manufacture of color film won't be happening for much longer. So developing cheaper and more reliable digital archiving solutions is something we're simply going to have to do. Given that much bigger players than the film archive movement are now generating "big data" and trying to archive it (e.g. big IT gorillas like Google), the resources they can bring to the table should produce a breakthrough soon.
quote: Steve Guttag
Hi Leo...how is your Saturday?
It kinda turned into Sunday while I wasn't looking. Dratted DST...
quote: Steve Guttag
If one is trying to see what the film-makers saw when they approved the look...then you are looking for the closest thing to the OCN. If you are merely looking for what the typical audience saw...then you are looking for an original release print.
I would take issue with the "merely". If the whole object of the exercise is authenticity, then you have to ask, authentic to what? What the typical audience saw represents the impact and effect a movie (or sound recording, or whatever) had on the society it was released into. Sometimes that went against some of what the principal creatived involved in making the movie were trying to achieve. What is the authentic version of My Darling Clementine, for example? The version as mass-released, or John Ford's originally approved cut, now preserved in UCLA, which is quite a bit longer, has hardly any musical cues, and portrays Earp as a more complex character, less of straightforward hero, with no hesitation in stooping to his opponents' level if he needs to?
While it's great that the Ford cut is preserved, I don't think you can make a case for it being more valuable than the studio-approved version in what it tells us about its subject matter. The same applies to the technical and aesthetic properties of a movie, too. Hardly any of the public ever saw a showprint straight from the OCN, or heard the 1/2" studio masters of a Hendrix session played on a tube-amplified Ampex and 1970s reference speakers. In fact, as consumer technologies like Dynagroove (audio signal optimised for cheap, entry-level playback equipment) show, the end listener was often given something deliberately very different.
quote: Steve Guttag
With respect to the 77 vs 57 years. I'm not following you. Mr. Toland died before DCPs...so what? What he approved was what he approved. Again, I feel that recordings of any nature reflect the time they were made in...
My point is that the playback experience also reflects the time in and the technology with which it's being viewed or listened to, too; and that in evaluating authenticity and/or making value judgments, we have to be aware of that and cannot try to pretend that the factor isn't there.
quote: Steve Guttag
I wouldn't want to make a decision for future generations as to what is a keeper and what is a tosser.
Try not to hit the ceiling too hard ... on my very first day as a student on an archiving master's degree, about the first thing the professor told us was that the mark of a good archivist was not what (s)he decided to keep, but what (s)he decided not to keep! His point was that archives are not bottomless pits, and that there is a cost to keeping anything in a way that safeguards its long-term existence. It's not going to happen by accident (or at least, you can't guarantee that it'll happen by accident). All competently run archives will have an acquisitions policy which says what they'll take and what they won't, and part of that policy will be determined by what their expansion capacity realistically is. There will be a disposal policy, too: for example, if the British Film Institute has a print of a Hollywood B-movie that hasn't been used for 40 years, and then discovers that the Library of Congress has the OCN and an IP in very good condition, they may decide that this shelf space can be put to better use with something else on it.
We haven't tried to preserve every single written record ever created, and now we're at the point where anyone with a cellphone can create relatively high quality moving images (i.e. they can create video as easily as they can write), we cannot realistically do this with movies, either.
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 03-09-2014 04:40 PM
How is your Sunday Leo?
quote: Leo Enticknap
I would take issue with the "merely". If the whole object of the exercise is authenticity, then you have to ask, authentic to what? What the typical audience saw represents the impact and effect a movie (or sound recording, or whatever) had on the society it was released into.
I don't see how you can claim either has more merit than another. The look of what got approved is where the most value is because one can likely still create what the masses saw from that. I absolutely agree that there is a high value on knowing what was seen by the masses but I put a lesser value to it. I also feel that what the masses saw in yesteryear was much closer to what the studios saw than what happened later in life when catalog titles became valuable again and things were made from multi-generational dupes. I would never consider release prints from the 90s (and probably 80s) to be representational of look that the film makers were going for. In the name of preserving irreplaceable elements (OCNs and such), release prints seemed to move down the trough a bit. As such, I come back to the EK print (or its historical equivalent) as being the best representation of the movie.
When it comes to the "cuts." That is indeed a slippery slope. Certainly, the biggest value is in the release version or versions as there were not only one. Stanley Kubrick was well known for editing even after release! Even movies like Apocalypse Now are not identical in the 70mm and 35mm forms (70mm showings were supposed to have a handout that had the end-credits but also the bombings scene was also excised). There are also "Roadshow" versions as well as the regular versions of some movies...so even in release print status, you have multiple cuts. I would tend to place the highest value to the more prestigious cut (e.g. the "Roadshow" version) over one that may have been cut to fit a running time.
"Directors Cuts" are something altogether different. While I think there is value to them as their vision may have been negatively altered due to studio demands, the release version should have the highest priority. That said, director's cuts have been put into release (American Graffiti and Blade Runner come to mind) but I would be inclined to treat them as entirely different titles
But as far as preserving the look of the movie...the EK print or equivalent has to be the definitive version.
quote: Leo Enticknap
In fact, as consumer technologies like Dynagroove (audio signal optimised for cheap, entry-level playback equipment) show, the end listener was often given something deliberately very different.
In cinema we have the "near field mix" which is not representational of the movie sound track...don't believe me...have fun talking to Brad about that. Is it worth preserving a mass-consumer version though it is a degraded? Probably to a degree from understanding how the masses were treated in an historical perspective. But again, going back to the master tapes...you can generate the rest...the master tapes is what caught the sound they were looking for. And yes, I do believe people should try to keep the equipment used to play/display historical elements...those pieces contributed to what was appreciated. Playing back on "modern" equipment may alter the integrity of what was believe better. As an extreme example...people have commented on some BluRay releases where the movie was degrained...making it look worse. I think it better to leave it as is and let the viewer/listener decide. There is a big difference between repairing obvious damage and trying to overcome technology of the day. The technology is part of what was being recorded, like it or not. So, removing scratches...okay, removing grain...not okay.
quote: Leo Enticknap
My point is that the playback experience also reflects the time in and the technology with which it's being viewed or listened to, too; and that in evaluating authenticity and/or making value judgments, we have to be aware of that and cannot try to pretend that the factor isn't there.
I agree so I also think we should try to preserve the technology of how things were viewed and listened to as well.
As for my keeper/tosser comment. I would agree that every existing version of everything is impractical to keep...I was not trying to imply that. I was mainly referring to making an entire title extinct because it was deemed not worthy by today's audience.
If something was important enough to be offered to the masses, it is probably worthy of being preserved to some degree. Odds are, if it was a low-budget thing, there probably aren't much remaining of it anyway and one isn't going to have a lot of choice in the "version" of what is to be preserved.
I can certainly appreciate the difficult decisions an archivist has when it comes to throwing things away...it is permanent but there isn't room for everything from everyone. Each year, the LOC lists the movies that are admitted to the preserved list...it isn't an automatic thing as some might think. Even such classics like Marry Poppins JUST made the list!
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 03-12-2014 04:21 PM
quote: Leo Enticknap
However, I'd speculate that we're potentially in a much stickier situation with born digital. However wonderful digits are as an access medium, they remain lousy as a preservation medium. No-one has yet invented a "store and ignore" digital carrier that matches the longevity and hardware/software compatibility of film in atmospheric storage.
Yes, nobody has invented a store and ignore digital carrier, but that does not mean we are in any danger of losing any of the important films from the modern era. Some film somewhere somehow will still exist. A modern bluray is sufficient at this point in time of projecting to a large audience even if the master data is destroyed or lost. The media is making a bigger issue out of things than they really are.
In the past three days I have watched six movies from the 1950s and 60s on DVD, there was no need for me to watch these movies on a large screen in B/W 35mm to enjoy them. Sure, these movies required 35mm to be scanned at some point in time to be able watch them today but there is nothing to say that my dvds will not be able to be played in the near future.
I also don't buy the idea that you need to be able to watch the movie in the way it was originally projected or recorded. This is just "romanticizing" the idea of 35mm film. Yes it is cool to watch it this way, but it is not required to enjoy it. Most average people do not care.
This week at the Tiff Lightbox in Toronto, they screened The Never Ending Story, The Goonies, Basic Instinct, The Black Stallion, The Wizard, and a lot more of others, they were all presented in digital. Nobody seemed to balk or complain that the 35mm prints might of been more "authentic".
quote: Leo Enticknap
But the fact remains that all the signs are that the manufacture of color film won't be happening for much longer.
I think the manufacture of 35mm color film will be happening for a lot longer than people think. We might not see 35mm release prints at some point in time, but I think 35mm color film will be around longer than some think.
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