Our final presentation this morning, again
we have two speakers.
The title of their presentation is Mission Preservation! Bringing the Films of the Defense
Visual Information Center to the Public.
Our speakers are Audrey Amidon and Heidi Holmstrom who are both preservation specialists in the
Motion Picture Preservation Lab at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland,
where they and their colleagues assess, preserve,
and help to make accessible the archives' vast holdings of motion picture film.
Heidi received a master in history with a
certificate in archives and records management from Western Washington University.
She serves on the board on the American Baptist
Historical Society and provides guidance in the care of their audio visual collection.
Audrey received a master in film archiving
from the University of East Anglia.
She previously worked with the Donald MacMillan Film Collection at the Peary MacMillan Arctic
Museum at Bowdoin College.
We welcome you.
Hi I am Audrey. You just heard a little bit about us from Mary Lynn.
As she said we work in the film preservation
lab at College Park and we do a wide variety of things from all ends
from the inspection to preservation and preserving
and making accessible the motion picture records.
This project we will tell you about today is just a small piece of some of what we do.
It is something we have been working on for
quite a long time.
Hopefully, we would want you to leave today just understanding how our incoming inspection
and technical assessment is the foundation of all future preservation decisions, and
it ensures the long-term accessibility of our film records over time.
We started work on this the Defense Visual
Information Center accession in October of 2007.
It has been about five and a half years.
We have been working on it around other projects
preservation, reformatting, other smaller accession projects.
You can see it all there hanging out in the
stacks.
What is DVIC? You will hear us mostly refer to this as DVIC, because that is what we do
in the government we always have to have an acronym for everything.
It is the Defense Visual Information Center.
It still exists in the military. It is now
called DIMOC. I actually don't know what that means.
They produced instructional films and videos
that were shown to military personnel.
Our collection we received is a mix of film and video.
We will be talking about the film, because
that is what we do.
Video is handled in a different lab. You can visit their table out in the hallway there.
The years covered are from WWII to the early
1990s.
We have things like the combat bulletin series, which is essentially news reels that were
shown to military personnel during World War II giving small stories about developments
in the war and different pieces of equipment and things like that.
We do have videos that go up through the 1990s,
the Persian Gulf War.
The film part of it stops in the early 1980s. At that point, the military was making primarily
videos for instructional purposes.
The collection is different than the vast majority of our military footage.
You might see things on cable documentaries
that show people in the jungle during Vietnam.
The military was really good at documenting their activities.
We have thousand and thousand of reels of
unedited footage just showing what was going on.
These are very specifically produced films
that they created in order to teach their own personnel.
That can be any number of things. Some of
them might be kind of uninteresting to the general public things like position and grip
machine gun M1919 A6 on A2 tripod.
Some very specific [things] that may not be interesting for you, but were absolutely essential
to teaching people how to do their jobs.
Some are of more general interest, such as bayonet fighting or living off the land.
There are also a series of educational films
that depicted the history of a particular battle or a particular military unit like
the Fourth Infantry Unit in Vietnam, things like that.
Scattered throughout this accessions, there
were films with really intriguing titles; things like "The Lady is Shocked."
We thought it might sound like a titillating
exploitation film, but it was really a film about underwater detonation tests that were
done to determined the amount of shock a Naval vessel could absorb in cases of nuclear war
or something like that.
I told you it was big, but what did we receive? That picture there is showing you about 5%
of what we got, as it was staged in the stacks for us to start working on it.
DVIC was a little bit different than most
agencies in that when we received it it was already really well organized.
We still had to go through this process of
accessing it, so we could make sure that all of the titles were handled correctly and that
the most original elements were preserved and protected.
Just a few numbers because I like numbers,
just to give a sense of what we had.
We got about 51 pallets from DVIC that comes to about 40 tons that is not how we usually
measure our records, but it is a lot.
We ended up with 2,700 different titles that were selected by the archival unit as being
of permanently value to the nation's history that is why we are keeping them.
In that separate from the video, we ended
up with 13,214 separate film elements. Each title would have multiple reels in most cases.
That ended up being about 10 million feet
of film, which if you stretch that end to end it would take you passed Santa Fe.
We would never do that to our film, because
that is not the way to properly handle it. That is just to give you a sense of how much
there really was. So, Heidi.
After the film was taken in by the archival unit, they were sent down to the motion picture
preservation lab.
Lots of things happen in the film preservation lab ranging from technical assessment of the
film to preservation reformatting.
With DVIC, we mostly only did inspection and technical assessment, because the films were
in such good condition when they came to us.
We did some preservation reformatting and repair work as we found damage or deterioration
in the film elements.
We had to assess all 13,000 reels of film to ensure that our primary goal was accomplished.
Of course, our goal is protecting the original
film elements and extending their life through proper storage and handling.
The films were not accessible to the public
until the assessment work is done, because until that point we really don't know what
we have.
I can tell you a little bit about the assessment, which we also call film inspection.
Each film gets handled hands on by the film
lab staff.
We rewind through the film end to end and collect information about it.
We record data about what type of film element
it is and whether it is a negative or a positive or if it is sound or silent.
We will write down information about the deterioration
that we notice both physical and chemical.
Also stuff like the footage and the length of the film. Just everything so we can go
back to this data, which is stored in a database, and when we get the film in the lab we'll
know what to expect when we open the film can.
And what we would need to do if we were asked
to make a copy of it or any of the other things we would do in the lab.
Assessment allows us to create our archival
sets; this is the most important step in ensuring the long term survival of motion picture records.
We have three have different levels that we
sort them into.
There is the preservation set that is the best most original copy of a film title. We
give that one the most protection.
The intermediates are the reproduction masters. They are the next best copy of the film we
have that can be sent out to vendors.
There are a lot of documentary film makers, who use the records of the National Archives.
Through the vendor system, they can get a
very good transfer. And if you were to turn on cable television right now, you could probably
find a channel that was playing something from our holdings.
The third level is the reference copy and
that is if we have an extra print, we can deliver to the research room to any researcher
who is interested.
You can see we designate it with a red, yellow, green kind of like a stoplight.
We go from something looking like this, what
it was when it first came in to this. You can see everything marked preservation, intermediate,
or reference.
We physically separate the film, so that each one can be stored in the proper storage environment.
The preservation elements are sent off-site.
The color films are put into a freezer to prevent color fading and other chemical deterioration.
The reference copies are kept just down the
hall from the research room at AII out in College Park.
If you would come into see a film where we
do have that film copy, you could request it and see it the same day.
Our numbers on this project are current to
mid-February.
This picture up here is actually the very last little bit of inspection work we need
to do with DVIC.
We are so close to being done. So far we have gone through 1999 distinct film titles.
We have kept almost 7,000 reels out of the
almost 13,000 that we started with.
That is over 5 million feet, which is a lot of winding through film.
We did not keep everything. 7,000 is only
about half way to 13,000.
We retained the best material that we have for the preservation and intermediate copies
and discarded the extra prints.
We have to do this, because we have limited space in the stacks.
When you consider for a lot of items we have
we only have a single copy. If we can get three copies: a preservation, an intermediate,
and a reference set, we are pretty well covered.
Sometimes agencies ask for extra copies to be returned to them, but for the most part
once we have done this and assigned the sets we can be pretty sure that it will be preserved.
We also discard some elements that are extremely
deteriorated and in such a case we would do photo-chemical preservation and print a new
copy and discard the vinegar-ed copy.
Acetate film starts to break down into acetic acid -- which is vinegar -- that can spread
from reel to reel, so you really want to segregate it from the rest of the collection.
This is kind of an example of what it can
do. It really messed up the inside of this can.
We don't want it spreading anywhere else.
So now I am going to give it back to Audrey,
so she can tell you how to get access to the collection.
Also I would say if you go to our table, we
have a little piece of extremely vinegar-ed film that if you touch it, it is so brittle
it just falls apart.
So if you want to go destroy something, now is your chance.
We did emphasize that this is about making
things available to the public.
So the question would be how can you find out about it?
Right now 1,800 of the film and video titles
are already in ARC that is all of the army and air force.
They were the larger chunk of the titles that
came from DVIC.
As soon as we finish the little bit you saw on the table, the archival unit will start
getting the descriptions in ARC.
Every one of those titles will be described in ARC. All of those 2,700 titles.
If you want to view it, you do need to come
to the research room in College Park.
Right now there are 730 titles with reference prints that is what came from DVIC about a
third of them.
You can go to the research room and ask to see them. You can view them on a flat bed
viewer.
For the titles that don't have reference copies, you can request that a DVD be made.
There is a bit more lag time on that, because
there is labor involved and it has to work through our queue, but everything is available.
For today, if you stay after the question
period, we will be showing you what we think is the most awesome title we have ever encountered
at the National Archives.
It is a 1967 film that was a film produced by the military to teach proper dating etiquette
that is called, "How to Succeed with Brunettes."
It is just as awesome as it sounds. It is not the most historically important film,
but it is definitely awesome.
So if you want to know more, you can find a film we made last year called, "Out of the
Dark: Bringing Films to Light at the National Archives."
It shows some of our other processes in action.
You can find it on YouTube if you go to the main search box and type in Out of the Dark
and National Archives. It is usually the first one to come up.
Or come ask us anything at our table just
outside.
Do we have any questions?
Are there any copyright restrictions on the film for the ones the government produced?
For the most part, it is generally understood
that things produced by the government don't have copyright restrictions.
There was a presentation given by the general
council last year that explained that sometimes there is music used in them or sometimes they
outsource some of the production material or production processes and there can be issues
there.
The military was fantastic and they kept great records. There are production files that you
can look at for the edited film.
There is often information in there, but it takes a little more work to make sure that
it is okay.
All the unedited footage any of the jungle in Vietnam or World War II footage that is
all raw that for the most part is produced by the military and is silent and you can
use it how you want.
We did look at the production notes for the film we are about to show you and as far as
we could tell there was information saying it was ok to use as long as it was not for
profit.
We are hoping to get it put up on YouTube, since we know it is totally clear.
It is always very tricky and you cannot assume
that it is not under copyright. It takes a little bit of research.
Hi. Hi. Could you explain what exactly the
difference between film and video is?
Very specifically those terms are used interchangeably all the time.
People will use their iphone and record something
and say they are filming it, but that is not filming it it is recording it.
Film is a photo-chemical format. If you had,
people don't have them anymore, a camera that use to have film in it, and you got that negative
back.
That is a piece of film--you can look at it and see-- in negative you might not be able
to see exactly the way it should look. It is a physical image you can see as long as
you hold it up to light.
Video would be like your VHS cassette if people use to have those.
It is an electronic record that you need another
machine in order to be able to see it on another screen somewhere else.
If you pulled the tape out of that cartridge,
you don't have anything; you cannot see anything of what the record would be.
Sorry I meant to explain that.
Basically it is eye-readable versus machine-readable.
We do. That is not in our general mandate,
but there are very specifically...if you have ever heard of the Universal News Reel collection.
There is a copyright question for you. They
were given.
News reel collections are actually really valuable for stock film purposes.
Universal did not realize before they gave
their whole collection to the National Archives free and clear that within ten years it would
be extremely valuable.
It is all completely in the public domain. As Heidi had said anytime you turn on the
TV you will probably see National Archives footage if it is not military it is probably
Universal News Reel.
It does go up through the 1960s. It is beautiful footage. It is all in the public domain.
We have some smaller bits of other news reel
collections things like the "March of Time" and a little bit of Paramount.
We end up with those for different reasons.
Those are not in the public domain.
If anyone wanted to use those they would have to figure that out and figure out where they
have to pay for the rights to use those.
If there are no more questions, we can watch something magical.
I am not going to make anyone watch this film,
but it is awesome. It's worth it!
[Find "How to Succeed with Brunettes" on the National Archives YouTube channel]