Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: How are new films preserved today?

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 04-13-2003, 10:09 PM:

Ever since it has become a known fact that both color release prints and original negatives do fade in time, what kind of precautions has the motion picture industry taken to preserve current motion pictures in color from meeting the same fate as the early negative films of the fifties that were not preserved using YCM black and white seperation negative process? Almost all films released today does have a high definition digital video master for DVD replecation. Are these digital master also used as a preservation method for a film or are movies still preserved using the old method with black and white seperation negatives? I know of some recent films that were released using the Technicolor dye tranfer IB process made from B&W seperations created from the original color negative source. Beside possible digital video preservation methods, are movies still preserved the old way with B&W film seperations?

-Claude

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 04-13-2003, 10:23 PM:

Perhaps some are being preserved with 2K data but even that's not full resolution; you'd need 4K at least I think for that. But how to save this data in a form that will last a century or more? Tape? I doubt it. CD-R? Would you trust something whose dyes can be altered by the tiny laser in a CD burner drive? A regular stamped CD, maybe with a gold reflective layer? Possibly.0

If they are smart they would stick with B&W seps as it's the only thing we know will last. But unless a test is done to make a composite neg there is no guaranty that they will work although I suppose nowadays it might be adequate to do a hi rez scan of select frames through a set of rolls and get some idea whether they can be used to make a new composite neg without actually doing it.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-14-2003, 06:03 AM:

AFAIK, almost all feature films today use pre-print FILM elements for long term preservation. If not B&W silver separations, then properly stored intermediate film (master positives or duplicate negatives), usually on stable ESTAR base. Of course, the original negatives are also a preservation element, and should be stored properly:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products/lab/2238.shtml

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products/lab/5242.shtml

Kodak Preservation Services

Saving Films for Posterity

http://www.kodak.com/country/US/en/motion/support/technical/storage1.shtml

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-14-2003, 07:25 AM:

...but the original negatives will be on acetate, and we all know what will eventually happen to that.

The other crucial thing is to store them in appropriate temperature and humidity right from the start. Many, if not most of the restoration problems faced by archivists up until now have been caused by their having to dupe elements which have been stored for decades in conditions which are too warm and too damp. Such conditions accelerate the decomposition of both nitrate and acetate, and also colour dye fading.

A lot of research has been carried out in the last 20 years or so to establish the optimal conditions inside the vaults themselves, and new archive buildings going up now are taking this research into account. Until really quite recently the archive community has tended to place more emphasis on copying elements than storing them optimally, but this is slowly changing. The International Federation of Film Archives, SMPTE and other professional bodies all issue guidelines for storage conditions.

It is believed that a new acetate colour element stored appropriately (-18 degrees C and 20% RH, if memory serves me correctly) has a service life measured in centuries rather than decades. Storing it that way right from the start, rather than decades after the stock was manufactured, is potentially a huge advantage in ensuring a film's long-term survival.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-14-2003, 09:01 AM:

The SMPTE document is SMPTE Recommended Practice RP131.

Here's a comprehensive list of recommendations:

http://www.amianet.org/11_Information/11b4_Materials.html

http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/8/14/r14-204-e.html

Here is film storage information on the Kodak website:

Film Storage

Film Preservation

Scott MacQueen

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 04-14-2003, 09:39 AM:

One would sort of hope that, even though it's expected that film will provide better longevity, any telecining of a film would be preserved. Especially for films that were DI.

Data migration is an awkward problem, but it is not so bad when you have a dedicated IT department who knows how to handle it. You just have to be committed to moving the data from one format to another, and to do so regularly. Disk is cheap enough these days that storing your archival data on rotating media is a viable solution, especially with mirroring.

It sure would suck if somebody telecined a movie, threw away the digital masters after making the DVD, and then the film prints "degraded" and nothing was left...

--jhawk

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-14-2003, 09:47 AM:

AFAIK, problems are most likely when migrating digital data from a compressed data format to a different compressed format. Trouble is, most digital imaging formats use quite a bit of compression.

Even when a digital "master" is made, good archiving practice keeps the original, and stores it properly.

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/digital/mastering.shtml

Recent DVD releases of older films usually have much better quality than earlier video releases because the FILM originals were kept, and retransferred as newer telecine technology became available. Even today's 2K digital masters may become outdated as 4K film scanning technology becomes more affordable:

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products/v2/sehlin04.shtml

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-14-2003, 10:52 AM:

quote:
Disk is cheap enough these days that storing your archival data on rotating media is a viable solution, especially with mirroring.

It is not yet cheap enough to archive thousands of feature films, uncompressed, at 4k resolution and at a price comparable to keeping the original film elements in a temperature and humidity-controlled vault at the appropriate levels. When you then factor in the costs of continual format migration, this option becomes even less economically attractive.

quote:
It sure would suck if somebody telecined a movie, threw away the digital masters after making the DVD, and then the film prints "degraded" and nothing was left...

And it would suck a hell of a lot more if somebody telecined a movie, threw the film away and 10 years later discovered that the hardware was no longer available to read the digital media on which the telecine data was stored, or that the telecine was done using a compression protocol which was no longer supported by the next generation of software. But that, IMHO, is far more likely to happen.