I've bowed out of this discussion for better or for worse, but there are points that aren't being made here, so I'm going to hopefully jump in unscathed. Speaking on these terms, I think it's safe to say that most archivists aren't joining the conversation because a) they're busy with their work, rightfully so, and b) I'm sure that many feel that discussions such as these are a waste of time, as there are individuals who will never see it from the other side of the camp.
I'm not really an archivist in a sense that I work for any major archive, but I've worked for a number of archives in the past, and I'm the Vice President of the
3D Film Preservation Fund, which is a 501c3 set up to preserve stereoscopic films. Since most of the materials we work with are on safety stock, and since there isn't a commercially viable way to present these films properly for the home market, a lot of what we do is rather moot to this discussion.
That being said, I'm known as a "get 'er done" sort of guy when it comes to preservation, and somewhat qualified to talk about actual costs, conditions, etc.
A lot of these PD merchants (i.e. always in the $6 and under bin), at their worst are simply copying old tapes of transfers that were done some twenty years ago by people who cared enough to do the transfers in the first place. At their best, they're film-chaining worn out 16 mm prints, hardly what anyone wants to sit through past eccentric cinephiles who will sit through anything.
An example of the former—a good friend of mine, Bob Furmanek, did some transfers of a few PD titles back in the late '80s for Image Entertainment (SCARED TO DEATH, AFRICA SCREAMS, JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, THE DEVIL BAT). Bob went back to as early generation elements as possible, usually prints, but sometimes negatives or fine grains. He paid out of his pocket to sit down at a professional transfer facility to make sure the timing of SCARED TO DEATH was consistent with the original nitrate print that he was transferring it from.
At these places, you book by the hour, and many of the companies that do these on the cheap book a two or three hour slot and do what's known as a "one-light" transfer, in which an un-timed element might pass through the telecine with adjustments done on the fly, or a "best light" where they figure out the average timing and leave it on auto-pilot. Bob pulled strings, favors, and cash out of his pocket to sit down an actually did what you
should do when transferring a film, for a mere PRC programmer. To me,
that is true dedication.
The end result was nothing short of astounding for its time, and still holds up well today, which is why so many PD outfits have over time, duped the LD, or made backroom deals with various companies to get a hold of copies of Bob's master tapes. If you see SCARED TO DEATH on DVD these days and it looks good, chances are that it's Bob's transfer. Of course, there's nothing he can do about recouping his costs, because the film's PD. But he did it because no one else was going to.
Furthermore, there are a number of people on this very board who have paid out of their own pockets (including myself) to have preservation negatives struck from original elements that were nitrate, or even projection prints when those were the last surviving elements.
About five years ago, the 3D Archive discovered that Library of Congress had what turned out to be the earliest surviving commercial 3D film, a William Kelley/William Crespinel "Plasticon" demo reel. A previous attempt had been made to copy the film, but it never materialized. The 3D Fund ended up spending its own money to do some major work on the film, since we had difficulty in separating the left and right eyes off of an anaglyph print (those interested in the technical details can read about it
here). There were no grants involved—the money came out of the individual pockets of the archivists for this project since the film was starting to deteriorate, and we had to do the preservation as soon as possible.
So, you might look at this case and say, "why didn't Library of Congress restore it themselves?" Well, if you consider that the final cost of a negative is minimum of $.60/foot (a very conservative estimate—that's not counting other lab costs), a 1000-foot reel costs about $600 to preserve on film, and most likely just as much to work in the digital realm—again, estimates depend on factors. Ask yourself, "why doesn't Library of Congress do something about it?" for every reel that sits un-preserved and figure out the sum and you will have your answer.
This is on a very simplistic level of preservation—it does not account for anything other than the sheer lab-work that is necessary to preserve a film. But while you might look at the "Plasticon" situation and ask "why didn't Library of Congress restore it themselves," I look at it as, "at least they were well-meaning enough to let us have the film to do it for them," which is always the case for any serious offer to archives for films that don't have donor restrictions on them.
Lest we forget, as well, that we're also in the single worst economic crisis since the 1930s. The DVD market, blind as fans might be to its output, is a perfect microcosm of the reigning in of the lines, as it were. Archives operating in the red during the best of times have it hard enough because they still have to answer to boards, donations, grants, etc., but imagine how much more difficult this is during a time of poor economy.
J. Theakston
"You get more out of life when you go out to a movie!"
