Tweet The Future of Film and Preservation.

There was an interesting story this morning on ABC Radio National about the future of film as a medium, following Kodak's bankruptcy.

Particularly intriguing is the news that Sony and Paramount are actually choosing to preserve their digitally shot features on film, because unlike digital storage, it has a known and predictable shelf life, is inexpensive, and can be accessed with relative ease without specialised equipment.

I was quite amazed to hear that there have already been a few losses of digitally-shot films due to storage problems, which have had to be reconstructed.

The full audio (hopefully available to those overseas) is at http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/2012-01-31/3801930.

SYNOPSIS
The latest casualty of the digital revolution is the US film manufacturing company Eastman Kodak, which has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Film studios are switching from analogue to digital at a rapid rate. But archivists still have a preference for film, which they say is superior over time. Some archives are even transferring their digital media on to analogue film.

Guests
Robert Burley - Photographer and Lecturer at Ryerson University, Toronto
Don McAlpine - Cinematographer
Andy Maltz - Co-author of "Digital Dilemmas" and Director of the Science & Technology Council, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
Milt Schefter - Co-author of the paper "Digital Dilemmas" and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
Michael Loebenstein - CEO, National Film and Sound Archive

Thank you for posting that radio broadcast. Kind of hit the problem right on the head there. The constant care
required for digital compared to the know shelf life of film. Even with film being phased out of theaters as we speak
I do not see film in the near future being replace on the archival end of the spectrum.

How long this will last is anyone's guess. Each generation of digital will get better than the last. I remember using
5.25 inch floppies, at a smooth 110 KB for the first generation (1976) to the 1.2 MB of storage for the last (1982).
Just this single point a span of no less than 6 years how the single floppy was transformed in size.

Computer have this great ability to be able to upgraded generations of equipment at an almost unbelievable rate.
Film is film, yes there have been advances over the years base, color fade resistance and grain. But in general film
has been pretty much the same for 100 years. Time will tell if stead at the helm or rapid change will win the day.

Pookybear

Digital will always win out as the preferred choice for archiving because in the long run it IS cheaper.

Making a digital copy of a digital master is FREE. Making multiple film copies is expensive.

There is nothing wrong with using digital as an achiving medium as long as several rules are followed:

1) Back up each file in at LEAST three separate places....Five is much better, and with five you can pretty sure you will always have a usable copy.

2) Make sure to include several copies of the program needed to play the files back along with the data files.

3) Check your files every year to be sure they are still usable.

Nothing is free, perhaps less costly but never free. There have been studies that state digital archiving is more expensive than analog archiving. The studio do both types of preservation: traditional photo-chemical and digital. They wouldn't do that if digital is the "preferable" choice for true preservation. Expedient for access, yes. Cheaper for exploitation, okay sure. Long term preservation, jury is still way out. It is still cheaper to make a film fine grain and film print than it is to scan at 4k and digitally process the result (wouldn't consider any 35mm film anywhere near "preserved" at less than 4k transfer resolution).

Digital will always win out as the preferred choice for archiving because in the long run it IS cheaper. Making a digital copy of a digital master is FREE. Making multiple film copies is expensive.

Not really. With the money that it costs to scan in a film, technicians, and the raw materials (ie. hard disks) that preserve a film are still about on par with photochemical work. The edge digital has is in its clean-up tools.

1) Back up each file in at LEAST three separate places....Five is much better, and with five you can pretty sure you will always have a usable copy.

There are still far larger issues at hand here than hard drive composition. Solar storms happen all of the time, and although we haven't been hit with one powerful enough to wipe magnetic material clean, it doesn't mean it hasn't happened before and can't happen (and on the contrary—the fact that we haven't been subjected to one lately means that the risk is even higher now).

2) Make sure to include several copies of the program needed to play the files back along with the data files.

This is, of course, assuming that we'll still be using the same operating systems in the future as we do today. From a fifteen-year old hard disk, I had to go through a 3 1/2 hour rigamaroll with a tech guy from India on the other end of the line just to convert a file a dozen times to access old accounting books. How does this fare with far more sensitive video and audio technology?

3) Check your files every year to be sure they are still usable.

Hah! Do you know how many prints get struck and then just sit on shelves? Check every disk... that means adding even more staff—a problem which studios are just starting to learn in incredibly tough industrial and economic times. Having people check old disks and materials is actually more expensive than just striking preservation elements at this point.

Digital will always win out as the preferred choice for archiving because in the long run it IS cheaper.

Making a digital copy of a digital master is FREE. Making multiple film copies is expensive.

There is nothing wrong with using digital as an achiving medium as long as several rules are followed:

1) Back up each file in at LEAST three separate places....Five is much better, and with five you can pretty sure you will always have a usable copy.

2) Make sure to include several copies of the program needed to play the files back along with the data files.

3) Check your files every year to be sure they are still usable.

Hummm none of your 3 points is free anywhere in the known world. Everything costs money.
Point 1 Hard drives in tetrabytes and petrabytes are not free. Keeping the constant migration of files so
new programs can read them is not free.

Point 2 can be countered by the fact of how many computer programs do you still have from the 1980's to read
your files? New programs are needed to handle larger files and new formats, these are sadly not free either.

and Point 3 People even archivist do not work for free. Someone has to be paid to check this cascading effect of
storing digital data.

And just a question Retrosonic did you even listen to the audio file on that link? All of this was covered in the
program.

As for now Film is way cheaper for archiving. As for the future, I am sure someday that will change.

Pookybear

WIth film, we already san some footages that looked like a crap, a mess, nearly garbage, result of decades of negligence but after carrefull restoratioin image was extracted, after remove cristals or midren, use wet gate. As example we have A Trip To The Moon (1902) hand colored version.

But no way you took a digital tape, a HD, there is no way to recover watchable images if it' is looking like garbage.
A few years and not decades of negligence, it's all you need to destroy digital media.
Economic problem, crises, bad administration, wars, can took time enough to do irreparable damage to digital files.

The right thing is try to archive both formats, digital and film as we can't denay the advantage of lossless copy quality of digital media.

Come on guys. Keeping film archived copies in a temperature controlled vault with sprinkler systems, ect is MUCH more expensive than keeping a SAN. Once the SAN is in place, the costs are minimal to the company, ANd the SAN can be used for many other kinds of Data storage, like backing up the network servers, as well as for digital movies. That allows the carry costs to be amortized over a larger base, lowering the costs even further. Thats why everyone is doing it.

Look, I'm a film lover too, but to say that archiving on film is better is just a false statement.

Look, I'm a film lover too, but to say that archiving on film is better is just a false statement.

Based on what? Got some hard numbers?

[Christopher Jacobs]

Look, I'm a film lover too, but to say that archiving on film is better is just a false statement.

Digital files are nothing but ones and zeroes that some sort of computer circuit and/or software needs to know how to reconstruct into picture, sound, words, or data. When some of those ones and zeroes manage to become switched around through corruption, the data becomes garbage and unrecognizable and the whole file is often lost. I've got digital files from 20 years ago that are fine and have had other digital files become corrupted after only a few months. I have one computer whose hard drive is still going strong after 12 years and another one that got the "click of death" after six years and all the data that was not backed up is now gone. Another hard disk died within four or five years and all of its data is now lost. A video-editing RAID failed within two years, halfway through editing a feature-length movie with everything lost, but luckily the video was shot on tape and not on a hard-drive or flashcard camcorder, so all the tapes could be re-captured to a new hard drive and the project started over again (that was a decade ago, and I haven't checked the tapes since -- I hope they're still playable and that my camcorder continues to function, as the model and format have been discontined for several years now). The standards for 35mm movie film have remained virtually unchanged in over 115 years. A brand new projector can play film from a century ago (if it's not too shrunken or damaged) and a century-old projector can run brand new 35mm film just fine. Film contains an actual photographic picture you can see, and the soundtrack is an image of the audio wave. If they get scratched or dirty or pieces get damaged or cut out, the image and sound get degraded, but they are still there. Analog copies are the only reliable means of archiving anything.

Actually archiving on high-quality linen-based paper would seem to be more practical in the long run than archiving on film (although polyester film seems far more promising than acetate or nitrate). We have paper that is hundreds of years old and still in fine flexible condition and its contents can be seen and read by anyone. The original 109-year-old 35mm nitrate negative to THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY still survives. Videotape from 50 years ago may or may not be readable on specialized machines in very few places. Have you seen any computers lately with floppy disk drives that read 8-inch disks or even 5 1/4-inch disks? Digital audio and video are incredibly convenient, quick, and flexible formats for working with, especially for editing, restoration, and adding various special effects, but no digital formats are reliable as archival media. A high-resolution digital intermediate with all the corrections and special effects desired by the filmmakers must be exported to a high-resolution film printer to make a 35mm film negative to assure anything close to longevity. And the last I heard, it's still faster to make film prints from film negatives than to output film-quality digital files directly to film. Most movie theatres have been using projectors that were actualy built 40-60 years ago, even recently-constructed theatres that purchase reconditioned equipment. At the present rate of digital technological changes and improvements, how many theatres converting to digital projection will be able to be using the same projectors they install this year in 2072 do you think? But 35mm film will still be able to run on the classic Simplex and Century projectors built in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s (many of which are currently operating) with the minor audio modifications added in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s for optical stereo and digital sound.

One more thing worth remembering: digital files not only require computers, but require electrical power. Moving picture film can be seen through completely mechanical means, projected with non-electrical light sources, and sound (on disk, at any rate) can also be reproduced by purely mechanical and acoustic means. Optical sound will of course need a light source and photo-electric sensor with amplification, but people in the distant future with any understanding of elementary physics should still be able to figure it out fairly easily. It may not be "state of the art" but it will work and is something that any intelligent archeologist 2000 years from now can figure out just by looking at it. Digital files, if the recordings happen to remain intact, as amazingly and impressively accurate as the encoded picture and sound may be, are a randomly arbitrary jigsaw puzzle of identical square pieces either black or white with no instructions. Good luck with that.

Christopher Jacobs -

Here, Here!!!

Before my interest in silent film, and still continuing, I do historical research for a living, and teach. So I spend a lot of time looking at old documents. Before the advent of scanned archives available online, one spent hours combing through documents in archives of varying sizes and quality. It always broke my heart when I went to a collection that had newspapers from the 1910's on that where not on microfilm. The yellow pages would often crumble at the edges as I turned the leaves looking for that needle in a haystack. Not the case with the newspapers from the 1850's or 1820's. No, I could turn their slightly foxed pages with no problem, they are still crisp and readable, and their stout leather and thread bindings will mean when I am long dead their linen pages will still be there. Those 1920's newspaper movie ads I scanned recently at a poorly funded collection will be dust before mid-century. Newer, faster, cheaper may not be there in the future. Film, like shellac, and linen paper will outlive us all.

But in the end it all ends up as dust.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." --

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Come on guys. Keeping film archived copies in a temperature controlled vault with sprinkler systems, ect is MUCH more expensive than keeping a SAN. Once the SAN is in place, the costs are minimal to the company, ANd the SAN can be used for many other kinds of Data storage, like backing up the network servers, as well as for digital movies. That allows the carry costs to be amortized over a larger base, lowering the costs even further. Thats why everyone is doing it.

Look, I'm a film lover too, but to say that archiving on film is better is just a false statement.

Nice dodge of my question retrosonic, Did you listen to the broadcast?

Because there is data that storing digitally does cost way more than film for the time being. And so you know
the cost $1,059 a year for film, while the yearly cost of preserving a 4K digital master is $12,514. This is an
industry backed figure for storage of materials and upkeep. You have to remember once film is struck it is
struck, nothing else is needed really. AC does not cost the much to run, and sprinkler just sit there and get
inspected by the fire marshal each year.

However, digital needs constant checking to verify information and changing over to the next format or
hard drive. And yes big fat servers and computer banks guess what sit in nice cool AC as well!

Pookybear

"You have to remember once film is struck it is
struck, nothing else is needed really. AC does not cost the much to run, and sprinkler just sit there and get
inspected by the fire marshal each year. "

>>>Completely, utterly false. Temperature controlled storage vaults cost a FORTUNE to keep in service and maintain.
It ISNT just an air conditioned room. Its a completely controlled environment with tons of electronic monitoring systems, sensors and fire systems. (used to be Halon, is now something called R20)

Digital storage systems are a SAN that already exists for the data storage that every big company Already has. All they need to do is increase the physical storage space...... which is cheap as dirt these days. I build them, I should know.

Youre argument is just....wrong.

Wow,

I see you have your head in the sand. >.> Shame. I shall just keep clinging to my films and will see you 20 years when
you need my prints to watch your favorite movie again.

Pookybear

He obviously hasn't read Digital Dilemma II.

missdupont,

Sadly I think he has not read either Digital Dilemma I or II. And still has not listened to the broadcast that was
originally posted. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pro ... 31/3801930" target="_blank Thank you
Brooksie for posting that. Also a complete lacking knowledge of how data servers work is also not helping any.
As he thinks these are free and use no energy and produce no heat when used and do not need any cooling at all.

No his is a point that it is digital and it has to be better because it is well DIGITAL. However, no one has every pointed
out the fact to him that Film is just that it is "digital". It is not an analog signal like a sine wave of a record. He does not
understand that each second is just made up of somewhere between 16 to 24 samples of real life. And that each sample
is confined to grain of the emulsion as to the depth of the sample. Unlike real life that does not have grain and is not
limited to samples per second. No film is much closer to digital than he would ever admit, he is in love with the idea of
1s and zeros on a hard drive. And that is a big error. The technology is just not ready yet for the replacement of
archival film. In the future who knows, maybe that day will come.

He has dug in on his point and no use talking to him anymore. Nothing new is being added to this thread now. Seems
to happen a lot here these days. It is sad to think how much will be lost if people only use just one tool available to
them instead of the set of tools to complete the task at hand.

Pookybear