Film preservation
Encyclopedia
The film preservation, or film restoration, movement is an ongoing project among film historians, archivists, museum
s, cinematheque
s, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock
and preserve the images which they contain. In the widest sense, preservation nowadays assures that a movie will continue to exist, as close to its original form as possible. 90 percent of all American silent films and 50 percent of American sound film
s made before 1950 are lost films.
For many years the term “preservation” used to be a synonym of “duplication” only. The preservationist’s goal was to create a durable copy without significant loss of quality. Film preservation now holds the concepts of handling, duplication, storage, and access. The archivist seeks to protect the film and share the content with the public.
Film preservation should be distinguished from film revisionism
, in which long-completed films are subjected to outtake
s never previously seen being inserted, new music scores and/or sound effects being added, black-and-white film being colorized
or converted to Dolby stereo, or minor edits
or other cosmetic changes being made.
era have been lost forever. Movies of the first half of the 20th century were filmed on an unstable, highly flammable cellulose nitrate
film base
, which required careful storage to slow its inevitable process of decomposition over time. Most films made on nitrate stock were not preserved; over the years, their negatives and prints simply crumbled into dust. Many of them were recycled for their silver content, or destroyed in studio or vault fires. But the largest cause was intentional destruction. As film preservationist Robert A. Harris has said,
.
Because of the fragility of film stock
, proper preservation of film usually involves storing the original negatives (when they have survived) and prints in climate-controlled facilities. The vast majority of films were not stored in this manner, which resulted in the widespread decay of film stocks.
The problem of film decay is not limited to films made on cellulose nitrate
. Film industry researchers and specialists have found that color films (especially ones made in less expensive, less permanent processes than Technicolor
) are also decaying at a rapid pace. A number of well-known films only exist as copies of original film productions or exhibition elements because the originals have decomposed beyond use. Cellulose acetate film
, which was the initial replacement for nitrate, has been found to suffer from vinegar syndrome. Indeed the preservation of color films has now been found to involve a compromise, because low temperatures, which inhibit color fading, actually increase the effects of vinegar syndrome, while higher (normal room) temperatures cause color fading.
Improving storage is the single most important step that institutions can take to protect their film collections.
In most cases, when a film is chosen for preservation or restoration work, new prints are created from the original camera negative
or the "composite restoration negative" which is made from often a combination of elements, for general viewing.
The composite restoration negative is a compilation of duplicated sections of the best remaining material, recombined to approximate the original configuration of the original camera negative at some time in the film's release life, while the original camera negative is the remaining, edited, film negative that passed through the camera on the set. This original camera negative
may, or may not, remain in original release form, depending upon number of subsequent re-releases after the initial release for theatrical exhibition.
In traditional photochemical restorations, image polarity considerations must be observed when recombining surviving materials and the final, lowest generation restoration master may be either a duplicate negative or a fine grain master positive
.
Preservation elements, such as fine grain master positives and duplicate printing negatives, are generated from this restoration master element to make both duplication masters and access projection prints available to future generations.
When restoration and preservation budgets are lower the images are transferred directly to video or digital media for easy transport and copying. Film preservationists would prefer that film images be eventually transferred to other film stock, because no digital media exists that has proven truly archival, while a well-developed and stored, modern film print can last upwards of 100 years.
Today it is universally agreed that the foundation of film preservation is proper protection from external forces while in storage along with being under controlled temperatures. These measures retard deterioration better than any other methods and is a cheaper solution than replicating deteriorating films.
While some in the archival community feel that conversion from film to a digital image results in a loss of quality that can make it more difficult to create a high-quality print based upon the digital image, digital imaging technology is increasing to the point where the resolution in filmed images and digitally transferred images are equal.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD FILM CONTAINER?
Film containers--boxes or cans—should be convenient to use and should protect the film from dust and physical damage. As the physical unit for organizing collections, containers should also provide a rigid surface for shelving and give some measure of fire and water protection. Some also give additional protection in shipping.
Manufacturers make film containers from archival cardboard, plastic, and metal. The ISO publishes standards for enclosures for photographic materials. These recommend that plastic cans be made of polypropylene or polyethylene. Cardboard boxes should be either neutral or buffered and composed of lignin-free materials. Cans, made of non-corroding metal, are also acceptable. Also, containers should not include glues or additives that might have a chemical reaction with the film, as measured by IPI's Photographic Activity Test .
The cans or boxes you choose will depend on your institution's storage conditions and funding. Whatever type you select, make sure that the container is chemically inert, physically stable, and expected to last as long as the film it houses. The enclosure's size should match that of the film. Always stack containers horizontally so that the film lies flat.
When reusing old cans, make sure that they are completely free of rust, dirt, and structural damage. Any metal can showing signs of rust or breaks in its coating should be discarded.
process, so that "schoolboys in the year 3,000 and 4,000 A.D. may learn about us".
In 1935, New York's Museum of Modern Art
began one of the earliest institutional attempts to collect and preserve motion pictures, obtaining original negatives of the Biograph
and Edison companies, and the world's largest collection of D.W. Griffith films. The following year, Henri Langlois
founded the Cinémathèque Française
in Paris, which would become the world's largest international film collection.
For thousands of early silent films stored in the Library of Congress
, mostly between 1894 and 1912, the only existing copies of them were printed on rolls of paper
submitted as copyright registrations. For these, an optical printer
was used to copy these images onto safety film stock, a project begun in 1947 and continuing today.
The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film was chartered in 1947 to collect, preserve, and present the history of photography and film, and in 1996 opened the Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center, one of only four film conservation centers in the United States. The American Film Institute
was founded in 1967 to train the next generation of filmmakers and preserve the American film heritage. Its collection now includes over 27,500 titles.
Beginning in the 1970s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
, aware that the original negatives to many of its Golden Age films had been destroyed in a fire, began a preservation program to restore and preserve all of its films by using whatever negatives survived, or, in many cases, the next best available elements (whether it be a fine-grain master positive or mint archival print). From the onset, it was determined that if some films had to be preserved, then it would have to be all of them. In 1986, when Ted Turner
acquired MGM's library (which by then had included Warner Bros.
' pre-1950, MGM's pre-1986, and a majority of the RKO Radio Pictures catalogs), he vowed to continue the preservation work MGM had started. Time Warner
, the current owner of Turner Entertainment
, continues this work today.
In 1978, Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada
a construction excavation inadvertently found a forgotten collection of more than 500 discarded films from the early 20th century that were buried in and preserved in the permafrost
. This fortunate discovery was shared and moved to the United States' Library of Congress
and Library and Archives Canada
for transfer to safety stock and archiving.
The cause for film preservation came to the forefront in the 1980s and early 1990s when such famous and influential film directors as Steven Spielberg
and Martin Scorsese
contributed to the cause. Spielberg became interested in film preservation when he went to view the original master of his film Jaws
, only to find that it had badly decomposed and deteriorated — a mere fifteen years after it had been filmed. Scorsese drew attention to the film industry's use of color-fading film stock through his use of black-and-white film stock in his 1980 film Raging Bull.
The film preservation movement has resulted in a number of classic films being restored to pristine condition. In many cases original footage that had been excised — or censored
by the Production Code
in the U.S. — from the original negative, has been reinstated.
Another high profile restoration by staff at the British Film Institute
's National Film and Television Archive is the Mitchell and Kenyon
collection, which consists almost entirely of actuality film
s commissioned by travelling fairground operators for showing at local fairgrounds or other venues across the UK in the early part of the twentieth century. The collection was stored for many decades in two large barrels following the winding-up of the firm, and was discovered in Blackburn in the early 1990s. The restored films now offer an unparalleled social record of early 20th Century British life.
In the age of digital television
, HDTV and DVD
, film preservation and restoration has taken on commercial as well as historical importance, since audiences demand the highest possible picture quality from digital formats. Meanwhile, the dominance of home video
and ever present need for television broadcasting content, especially on specialty cable channels, has meant that films have proven a source of long term revenue to a degree that the original artists and studio management before the rise of these media never imagined. Thus media companies have a strong financial incentive to carefully archive and preserve their complete library of films .
Individual preservationists who have contributed to the cause include Robert A. Harris
and James Katz (Lawrence of Arabia
, My Fair Lady
, and several Alfred Hitchcock
films), Michael Thau (Superman), and Kevin Brownlow
(Intolerance
and Napoleon). Other companies such as the UCLA Film and Television Archive
have also preserved and restored films; a major part of UCLA's work includes such projects as Becky Sharp
and select Paramount
/Famous Studios
and Warner Bros.
cartoons whose credits were once altered due to rights taken over by different entities.
A number of "lost" movies have become legends in themselves. These movies were either extraordinarily successful or controversial, but all prints of the original films have been lost because they decayed or were destroyed, and thus they were unable to be preserved. Examples of such "lost" films
include the original eight-hour version of Greed
, and London After Midnight
.
with video demonstrations. These preservation guides, while excellent and thorough, are mostly text. Handling film is like working with a sewing machine. Basic activities like splicing, rewinding, cleaning, and repairing are best demonstrated by moving images.
The site is set up as a dynamic database of video clips that can build over time. The clips can be streamed in Real and Mpeg 4 or be downloaded in Mpeg 4 files. The films and clips are under the rules of Creative Commons which allows anyone to use these clips with attribution --in this case, attribution to the VAFP site and to the author of the clip and his company.
The project is directed by the filmmaker Tom Davenport http://www.davenportfilms.com and this web site was designed by Steve Knoblock who developed the code that runs Folkstreams.net which is video streaming documentaries on American Folklife. Video streaming is provided by ibiblio
at the University of North Carolina. The clips are provided by skilled craftpersons working in film preservation.
Modern, digital film restoration follows the following steps:
Modern, photochemical restoration follows roughly the same path:
delivers a union catalog, archive directory, and informational resources on archival moving images, their preservation, and the images themselves to diverse constituencies, including archivists, researchers, educators, and the general public.
MIC’s Union Catalog and Archive Directory not only help people locate films and collections, they enable collaborative preservation decision-making and management on an international scale. Detailed Archive Directory descriptions allow archivists to evaluate archival activities in similar repositories, identify organizations with common missions to sponsor research and education portals, and offer training and development in areas of mutual interest. The Directory also enables the Library of Congress and AMIA to identify community needs, potential collaborations, and emerging trends, in order to focus community training and support.
MIC seeks to raise awareness about preservation issues and risks to our film, television and video heritage by enlightening readers as to the care of home collections, the role of archives, and the preservation process. MIC’s expert contributors have created and gathered hundreds of informational resources to illuminate these issues and fulfill the daily informational requirements of working archivists.
MIC’s mission is to immerse moving images into the education mainstream, recognizing that what society uses, it values, and what it values, it preserves. Originally designed to address the crisis in film preservation, MIC demonstrates that recommendations rooted in the practical requirements of preserving analog artifacts can evolve into a visionary R&D platform which serves a clientele beyond archivists and explores the leading edge of non-textual indexing, digital rights management, and educational use, all the while continuing to meet the daily needs of archivists by supporting collaborative preservation, access, digitization, education, and metadata initiatives.
'
produced Decasia
, a film solely based on fragments of old unrestored nitrate-based films in various states of decay and disrepair, providing a somewhat eerie aesthetic to the film. The film was paired together with a soundtrack composed by Michael Gordon
, and performed by his orchestra. The footage used was from old newsreel & archive film, and was obtained by Morrison from several sources, such as the Fox Movietone Newsfilm Archives at the University of South Carolina
, and the archives of the Museum of Modern Art
.
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
s, cinematheque
Cinematheque
A cinémathèque is a French word used to refer to a film archive with small cinemas that screens particularly classic and art-house films.- History :...
s, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock
Film stock
Film stock is photographic film on which filmmaking of motion pictures are shot and reproduced. The equivalent in television production is video tape.-1889–1899:...
and preserve the images which they contain. In the widest sense, preservation nowadays assures that a movie will continue to exist, as close to its original form as possible. 90 percent of all American silent films and 50 percent of American sound film
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
s made before 1950 are lost films.
For many years the term “preservation” used to be a synonym of “duplication” only. The preservationist’s goal was to create a durable copy without significant loss of quality. Film preservation now holds the concepts of handling, duplication, storage, and access. The archivist seeks to protect the film and share the content with the public.
Film preservation should be distinguished from film revisionism
Revisionism (fictional)
In fiction, revisionism is the retelling of a story or type of story with substantial alterations in character or environment, to "revise" the view shown in the original work. Unlike most usages of the term revisionism, this is not generally considered pejorative...
, in which long-completed films are subjected to outtake
Outtake
An outtake is a portion of a work that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and DVD reissues of many albums and films as bonus tracks or features, in film often, but not...
s never previously seen being inserted, new music scores and/or sound effects being added, black-and-white film being colorized
Film colorization
Film colorization is any process that adds color to black-and-white, sepia or monochrome moving-picture images. It may be done as a special effect, or to modernize black-and-white films, or to restore color films...
or converted to Dolby stereo, or minor edits
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
or other cosmetic changes being made.
Film decay
The great majority of films made in the silentSilent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
era have been lost forever. Movies of the first half of the 20th century were filmed on an unstable, highly flammable cellulose nitrate
Nitrocellulose
Nitrocellulose is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to nitric acid or another powerful nitrating agent. When used as a propellant or low-order explosive, it is also known as guncotton...
film base
Film base
A film base is a transparent substrate which acts as a support medium for the photosensitive emulsion that lies atop it. Despite the numerous layers and coatings associated with the emulsion layer, the base generally accounts for the vast majority of the thickness of any given film stock...
, which required careful storage to slow its inevitable process of decomposition over time. Most films made on nitrate stock were not preserved; over the years, their negatives and prints simply crumbled into dust. Many of them were recycled for their silver content, or destroyed in studio or vault fires. But the largest cause was intentional destruction. As film preservationist Robert A. Harris has said,
Most of the early films did not survive because of wholesale junking by the studios. There was no thought of ever saving these films. They simply needed vault space and the materials were expensive to house.Silent films had little or no commercial value after the silent era ended in 1930, so they were not kept. As a result, preserving the now rare silent films has been a high priority amongst film historians
History of film
The history of film is the historical development of the medium known variously as cinema, motion pictures, film, or the movies.The history of film spans over 100 years, from the latter part of the 19th century to the present day...
.
Because of the fragility of film stock
Film stock
Film stock is photographic film on which filmmaking of motion pictures are shot and reproduced. The equivalent in television production is video tape.-1889–1899:...
, proper preservation of film usually involves storing the original negatives (when they have survived) and prints in climate-controlled facilities. The vast majority of films were not stored in this manner, which resulted in the widespread decay of film stocks.
The problem of film decay is not limited to films made on cellulose nitrate
Nitrocellulose
Nitrocellulose is a highly flammable compound formed by nitrating cellulose through exposure to nitric acid or another powerful nitrating agent. When used as a propellant or low-order explosive, it is also known as guncotton...
. Film industry researchers and specialists have found that color films (especially ones made in less expensive, less permanent processes than Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
) are also decaying at a rapid pace. A number of well-known films only exist as copies of original film productions or exhibition elements because the originals have decomposed beyond use. Cellulose acetate film
Cellulose acetate film
Cellulose acetate film, or safety film, is used in photography as a base material for photographic emulsions. It was introduced in the early 20th century by film manufacturers as a safe film base replacement for unstable and highly flammable nitrate film....
, which was the initial replacement for nitrate, has been found to suffer from vinegar syndrome. Indeed the preservation of color films has now been found to involve a compromise, because low temperatures, which inhibit color fading, actually increase the effects of vinegar syndrome, while higher (normal room) temperatures cause color fading.
Decay prevention
"Preservation" of film usually refers to physical storage of the film in a climate-controlled vault, and sometimes to repairing and copying the actual film element. Preservation is different from "restoration." Restoration is the act of returning the film to a version most faithful to its initial release to the public and often involves combining various fragments of film elements.Improving storage is the single most important step that institutions can take to protect their film collections.
In most cases, when a film is chosen for preservation or restoration work, new prints are created from the original camera negative
Original camera negative
The original camera negative is the film in a motion picture camera which captures the original image. This is the film from which all other copies will be made. It is known as raw stock prior to exposure....
or the "composite restoration negative" which is made from often a combination of elements, for general viewing.
The composite restoration negative is a compilation of duplicated sections of the best remaining material, recombined to approximate the original configuration of the original camera negative at some time in the film's release life, while the original camera negative is the remaining, edited, film negative that passed through the camera on the set. This original camera negative
Original camera negative
The original camera negative is the film in a motion picture camera which captures the original image. This is the film from which all other copies will be made. It is known as raw stock prior to exposure....
may, or may not, remain in original release form, depending upon number of subsequent re-releases after the initial release for theatrical exhibition.
In traditional photochemical restorations, image polarity considerations must be observed when recombining surviving materials and the final, lowest generation restoration master may be either a duplicate negative or a fine grain master positive
Fine grain master positive
A fine grain master positive is a photographic term. It is also known as a fine grain master or fine grain and is a high-definition black-and-white intermediate positive image generated from a negative for the purpose of creating additional duplicate negatives...
.
Preservation elements, such as fine grain master positives and duplicate printing negatives, are generated from this restoration master element to make both duplication masters and access projection prints available to future generations.
When restoration and preservation budgets are lower the images are transferred directly to video or digital media for easy transport and copying. Film preservationists would prefer that film images be eventually transferred to other film stock, because no digital media exists that has proven truly archival, while a well-developed and stored, modern film print can last upwards of 100 years.
Today it is universally agreed that the foundation of film preservation is proper protection from external forces while in storage along with being under controlled temperatures. These measures retard deterioration better than any other methods and is a cheaper solution than replicating deteriorating films.
While some in the archival community feel that conversion from film to a digital image results in a loss of quality that can make it more difficult to create a high-quality print based upon the digital image, digital imaging technology is increasing to the point where the resolution in filmed images and digitally transferred images are equal.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD FILM CONTAINER?
Film containers--boxes or cans—should be convenient to use and should protect the film from dust and physical damage. As the physical unit for organizing collections, containers should also provide a rigid surface for shelving and give some measure of fire and water protection. Some also give additional protection in shipping.
Manufacturers make film containers from archival cardboard, plastic, and metal. The ISO publishes standards for enclosures for photographic materials. These recommend that plastic cans be made of polypropylene or polyethylene. Cardboard boxes should be either neutral or buffered and composed of lignin-free materials. Cans, made of non-corroding metal, are also acceptable. Also, containers should not include glues or additives that might have a chemical reaction with the film, as measured by IPI's Photographic Activity Test .
The cans or boxes you choose will depend on your institution's storage conditions and funding. Whatever type you select, make sure that the container is chemically inert, physically stable, and expected to last as long as the film it houses. The enclosure's size should match that of the film. Always stack containers horizontally so that the film lies flat.
When reusing old cans, make sure that they are completely free of rust, dirt, and structural damage. Any metal can showing signs of rust or breaks in its coating should be discarded.
The movement
In 1926 Will Hays asked studios to preserve their films by storing them at 40 degrees at low humidity in an Eastman KodakEastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....
process, so that "schoolboys in the year 3,000 and 4,000 A.D. may learn about us".
In 1935, New York's Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
began one of the earliest institutional attempts to collect and preserve motion pictures, obtaining original negatives of the Biograph
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1928. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over three thousand short...
and Edison companies, and the world's largest collection of D.W. Griffith films. The following year, Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema...
founded the Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
in Paris, which would become the world's largest international film collection.
For thousands of early silent films stored in the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, mostly between 1894 and 1912, the only existing copies of them were printed on rolls of paper
Paper print
Paper prints were an early mechanism to establish the copyright of motion pictures by depositing them with the Library of Congress. Thomas Alva Edison’s company was first to register each frame of movie film onto a positive paper print, in 1893...
submitted as copyright registrations. For these, an optical printer
Optical printer
An optical printer is a device consisting of one or more film projectors mechanically linked to a movie camera. It allows filmmakers to re-photograph one or more strips of film...
was used to copy these images onto safety film stock, a project begun in 1947 and continuing today.
The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film was chartered in 1947 to collect, preserve, and present the history of photography and film, and in 1996 opened the Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center, one of only four film conservation centers in the United States. The American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
was founded in 1967 to train the next generation of filmmakers and preserve the American film heritage. Its collection now includes over 27,500 titles.
Beginning in the 1970s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
, aware that the original negatives to many of its Golden Age films had been destroyed in a fire, began a preservation program to restore and preserve all of its films by using whatever negatives survived, or, in many cases, the next best available elements (whether it be a fine-grain master positive or mint archival print). From the onset, it was determined that if some films had to be preserved, then it would have to be all of them. In 1986, when Ted Turner
Ted Turner
Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
acquired MGM's library (which by then had included Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
' pre-1950, MGM's pre-1986, and a majority of the RKO Radio Pictures catalogs), he vowed to continue the preservation work MGM had started. Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...
, the current owner of Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. is an American media company founded by Ted Turner. Now owned by Time Warner, the company is largely responsible for overseeing its library for worldwide distribution Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. (commonly known as Turner Entertainment Co.) is an American...
, continues this work today.
In 1978, Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
a construction excavation inadvertently found a forgotten collection of more than 500 discarded films from the early 20th century that were buried in and preserved in the permafrost
Permafrost
In geology, permafrost, cryotic soil or permafrost soil is soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years. Ice is not always present, as may be in the case of nonporous bedrock, but it frequently occurs and it may be in amounts exceeding the potential hydraulic saturation of...
. This fortunate discovery was shared and moved to the United States' Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
and Library and Archives Canada
Library and Archives Canada
Library and Archives Canada is a national memory institution dedicated to providing the best possible account of Canadian life through acquiring, preserving and making Canada's documentary heritage accessible for use in the 21st century and beyond...
for transfer to safety stock and archiving.
The cause for film preservation came to the forefront in the 1980s and early 1990s when such famous and influential film directors as Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
and Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
contributed to the cause. Spielberg became interested in film preservation when he went to view the original master of his film Jaws
Jaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
, only to find that it had badly decomposed and deteriorated — a mere fifteen years after it had been filmed. Scorsese drew attention to the film industry's use of color-fading film stock through his use of black-and-white film stock in his 1980 film Raging Bull.
The film preservation movement has resulted in a number of classic films being restored to pristine condition. In many cases original footage that had been excised — or censored
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
by the Production Code
Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...
in the U.S. — from the original negative, has been reinstated.
Another high profile restoration by staff at the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
's National Film and Television Archive is the Mitchell and Kenyon
Mitchell and Kenyon
The Mitchell & Kenyon film company was a pioneer of early commercial movies based in Blackburn in Lancashire, England at the start of the 20th century...
collection, which consists almost entirely of actuality film
Actuality film
The actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that like the documentary film uses footage of real events, places, and things, yet unlike the documentary is not structured into a larger argument, picture of the phenomenon or coherent whole. In practice, actuality films preceded the emergence of the...
s commissioned by travelling fairground operators for showing at local fairgrounds or other venues across the UK in the early part of the twentieth century. The collection was stored for many decades in two large barrels following the winding-up of the firm, and was discovered in Blackburn in the early 1990s. The restored films now offer an unparalleled social record of early 20th Century British life.
In the age of digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
, HDTV and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, film preservation and restoration has taken on commercial as well as historical importance, since audiences demand the highest possible picture quality from digital formats. Meanwhile, the dominance of home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
and ever present need for television broadcasting content, especially on specialty cable channels, has meant that films have proven a source of long term revenue to a degree that the original artists and studio management before the rise of these media never imagined. Thus media companies have a strong financial incentive to carefully archive and preserve their complete library of films .
Individual preservationists who have contributed to the cause include Robert A. Harris
Robert A. Harris
Robert A. Harris is a film historian and preservationist who specializes in restoring the large-format widescreen films of the 1950s. He has restored and reconstructed a number of classic films including Lawrence of Arabia , Spartacus , My Fair Lady , Vertigo Rear Window , as well as The...
and James Katz (Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia (film)
Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company, Horizon Pictures, with the screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. The film stars Peter O'Toole in the title role. It is widely...
, My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady (film)
My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, of the same name, based on the 1938 film adaptation of the original stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The ballroom scene and the ending were taken from the previous film adaptation , rather than from...
, and several Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
films), Michael Thau (Superman), and Kevin Brownlow
Kevin Brownlow
Kevin Brownlow is a filmmaker, film historian, television documentary-maker, author, and Academy Award recipient. Brownlow is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era. Brownlow became interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent...
(Intolerance
Intolerance (film)
Intolerance is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; a...
and Napoleon). Other companies such as the UCLA Film and Television Archive
UCLA Film and Television Archive
The UCLA Film and Television Archive is an internationally renowned visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. It holds more than 220,000 film and television titles and 27 million feet of...
have also preserved and restored films; a major part of UCLA's work includes such projects as Becky Sharp
Becky Sharp (film)
Becky Sharp is a 1935 film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Miriam Hopkins. Other supporting cast were Frances Dee, Cedric Hardwicke, Billie Burke, Alison Skipworth, Nigel Bruce, and Alan Mowbray. It is based on the play of the same name by Langdon Mitchell, which in turn is based on...
and select Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
/Famous Studios
Famous Studios
Famous Studios was the animation division of the film studio Paramount Pictures from 1942 to 1967. Famous was founded as a successor company to Fleischer Studios, after Paramount acquired the aforementioned studio and ousted its founders, Max and Dave Fleischer, in 1941...
and Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
cartoons whose credits were once altered due to rights taken over by different entities.
A number of "lost" movies have become legends in themselves. These movies were either extraordinarily successful or controversial, but all prints of the original films have been lost because they decayed or were destroyed, and thus they were unable to be preserved. Examples of such "lost" films
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
include the original eight-hour version of Greed
Greed (film)
Greed is a 1924 American dramatic silent film. It was directed by Erich von Stroheim and starring Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller, Tempe Pigott, Sylvia Ashton, Chester Conklin, Joan Standing and Jack Curtis....
, and London After Midnight
London After Midnight (film)
London After Midnight aka The Hypnotist is a silent mystery film with horror overtones produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film stars Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Conrad Nagel, Henry B. Walthall, and Polly Moran and was directed by Tod Browning. It is also a lost film, quite...
.
Video aids to film preservation
In 2005 "Video Aids to Film Preservation http://www.folkstreams.net/vafp became active on the Internet. The VAFP site was funded as part of a 2005 Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to the Folkstreams.net project http://www.folkstreams.net. The purpose of the site is to supplement already existing Film Preservation GuidesThe site is set up as a dynamic database of video clips that can build over time. The clips can be streamed in Real and Mpeg 4 or be downloaded in Mpeg 4 files. The films and clips are under the rules of Creative Commons which allows anyone to use these clips with attribution --in this case, attribution to the VAFP site and to the author of the clip and his company.
The project is directed by the filmmaker Tom Davenport http://www.davenportfilms.com and this web site was designed by Steve Knoblock who developed the code that runs Folkstreams.net which is video streaming documentaries on American Folklife. Video streaming is provided by ibiblio
Ibiblio
ibiblio is a "collection of collections," and hosts a diverse range of publicly available information and open source software, including software, music, literature, art, history, science, politics, and cultural studies. As an "Internet librarianship," ibiblio is a digital library and archive...
at the University of North Carolina. The clips are provided by skilled craftpersons working in film preservation.
Film restoration issues
Main problems in restoring film- Dirt, dust
- Scratches, tears
- Color fade, color change
- Excessive film grainFilm grainFilm grain or granularity is the random optical texture of processed photographic film due to the presence of small particles of a metallic silver, or dye clouds, developed from silver halide that have received enough photons. While film grain is a function of such particles it is not the same...
- a copy of an existing film has all of the film grain from the original as well as the film grain in the copy - Missing scenes and sound; censored or edited out for re-release.
- Shrinkage: linear and "across the web" (width), as well as localized puckering around large 1 to 2 perforation film cement splices, most common in silent and very early sound films. Highly shrunken film, 1.5% or higher, must be copied on modified equipment or the film will likely be damaged.
Modern, digital film restoration follows the following steps:
- Expertly clean the film of dirt and dust.
- Repair all film tears with clear polyester tape or splicing cement.
- Scan each frame into a digital file.
- Restore the film frame by frame by comparing each frame to adjacent frames. This can be done somewhat by computer algorithms with human checking of the result.
- Fix frame alignment - Fix jitter and weave - the misalignment of adjacent film frames due to movement of film within the sprockets. This corrects the issue where the holes on each side of a frame are distored over time. This causes frames to slightly be off center.
- Fix color and lighting changes - This corrects flickering and slight color changes from one frame to another due to aging of the film.
- Restore areas blocked by dirt and dust by using parts of images in other frames.
- Restore scratches by using parts of images in other frames.
- Enhance frames by reducing film grain noise. Film foreground/background detail about the same size as the film grain or smaller is blurred or lost in making the film. Comparing a frame with adjacent frames allows detail information to be reconstructed since a given small detail may be split between more film grains from one frame to another.
Modern, photochemical restoration follows roughly the same path:
- Extensive research is done to determine what version of the film can be restored from the existing material. Often, great pains are taken to search out alternate material in film archives around the World.
- A comprehensive restoration plan is mapped that allows preservationists to designate elements as "key" elements upon which to base the polarity map for the ensuing photochemical work. Since many alternative elements are actually salvaged from release prints and duplication masters (foreign and domestic), care must be taken to plot the course at which negative, master positive and release print elements arrive back at a common polarity (i.e., negative or positive) for assembly and subsequent printing.
- Test prints are struck from existing elements to evaluate contrast, resolution, color (if color) and sound quality (if audio element exists).
- Elements are duplicated using the shortest possible duplication path to minimize analog duplication artifacts, such as the build-up of contrast, grain and loss of resolution.
- All sources are assembled into a single master restoration element; most often a duplicate negative.
- From this master restoration element, duplication masters, such as composite fine grain masters, are generated to be used to generate additional printing negatives from which actual release prints can be struck for festival screenings and DVD mastering.
Moving Image Collections (MIC)
Moving Image Collections, or MIC , is a preservation, access, and education initiative co-sponsored by the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and the Library of Congress (U.S.). The MIC websiteMIC’s Union Catalog and Archive Directory not only help people locate films and collections, they enable collaborative preservation decision-making and management on an international scale. Detailed Archive Directory descriptions allow archivists to evaluate archival activities in similar repositories, identify organizations with common missions to sponsor research and education portals, and offer training and development in areas of mutual interest. The Directory also enables the Library of Congress and AMIA to identify community needs, potential collaborations, and emerging trends, in order to focus community training and support.
MIC seeks to raise awareness about preservation issues and risks to our film, television and video heritage by enlightening readers as to the care of home collections, the role of archives, and the preservation process. MIC’s expert contributors have created and gathered hundreds of informational resources to illuminate these issues and fulfill the daily informational requirements of working archivists.
MIC’s mission is to immerse moving images into the education mainstream, recognizing that what society uses, it values, and what it values, it preserves. Originally designed to address the crisis in film preservation, MIC demonstrates that recommendations rooted in the practical requirements of preserving analog artifacts can evolve into a visionary R&D platform which serves a clientele beyond archivists and explores the leading edge of non-textual indexing, digital rights management, and educational use, all the while continuing to meet the daily needs of archivists by supporting collaborative preservation, access, digitization, education, and metadata initiatives.
List of restored films
- The Impossible VoyageThe Impossible VoyageThe Impossible Voyage is a 1904 silent film by pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès. The film's runtime is about 24 minutes , and was probably inspired by Melies' successful earlier film Le Voyage dans la Lune...
(1904) - The Battle of the SommeThe Battle of the Somme (film)The Battle of the Somme is a 1916 British documentary and propaganda film. Shot by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, the film depicts the British Army's preparations for, and the early stages of, the battle of the Somme...
(1916) - Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des GrauensNosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauensis a classic 1922 German Expressionist horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok...
(1922) - MetropolisMetropolis (film)Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
(1927) - The Man Who LaughsThe Man Who Laughs (film)The Man Who Laughs may refer to various films, all adapted from Victor Hugo's novel:* The Man Who Laughs ** A 1909 film, made in France by the Pathé film company and produced by Albert Capellani. No copies of this film are known to survive....
(1928) - All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
- The Big TrailThe Big TrailThe Big Trail is a lavish early widescreen movie shot on location across the American West starring John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh....
(1930) - Becky SharpBecky Sharp (film)Becky Sharp is a 1935 film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Miriam Hopkins. Other supporting cast were Frances Dee, Cedric Hardwicke, Billie Burke, Alison Skipworth, Nigel Bruce, and Alan Mowbray. It is based on the play of the same name by Langdon Mitchell, which in turn is based on...
(1935) - Love Affair (1939)
- A Star Is BornA Star Is Born (1954 film)A Star Is Born is a 1954 American musical film directed by George Cukor. The screenplay written by Moss Hart was an adaptation of the original 1937 film, which was based on the original screenplay by Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell...
(1954) - Seven Samurai (1954)
- Rear WindowRear WindowRear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...
(1954) - VertigoVertigo (film)Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
(1958) - Spartacus (1960)
- Yojimbo (1961)
- Lawrence of ArabiaLawrence of Arabia (film)Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company, Horizon Pictures, with the screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. The film stars Peter O'Toole in the title role. It is widely...
(1962) - It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
- My Fair LadyMy Fair Lady (film)My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, of the same name, based on the 1938 film adaptation of the original stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The ballroom scene and the ending were taken from the previous film adaptation , rather than from...
(1964) - PersonaPersona (film)Persona is a film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, released in 1966, and starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. Bergman held this film to be one of his most important; in his book Images, he writes: "Today I feel that in Persona—and later in Cries and Whispers—I had gone as far as I could go...
(1966) - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
- Yellow Submarine (1968)
- The GodfatherThe GodfatherThe Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
(1972) - OverlordOverlord (film)Overlord is a 1975 black-and-white film written and directed by Stuart Cooper. Set around the D-Day invasion , Overlord is a war film about a young soldier's meditations on being part of the war machinery, and his premonitions of death...
(1975) - Superman (1978)
- Superman IISuperman IISuperman II is the 1980 sequel to the 1978 superhero film Superman and stars Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Terence Stamp, Ned Beatty, Sarah Douglas, Margot Kidder, and Jack O'Halloran. It was the only Superman film to be filmed by two directors...
(1980) - RanRan (film)is a 1985 Japanese-French jidaigeki film written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film starred Tatsuya Nakadai as Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging Sengoku-era warlord who decides to abdicate as ruler in favor of his three sons. It also stars Mieko Harada as the wife of Ichimonji's eldest son...
(1985) - Most of the Walt Disney StudioWalt Disney PicturesWalt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
's animated feature films, e.g. FantasiaFantasia (film)Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
and BambiBambiBambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand , produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten... - Most of the major pre-1948 Warner Bros.Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
/pre-1986 MGMMetro-Goldwyn-MayerMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
/RKO Radio Pictures library, including: Gone with the WindGone with the Wind (film)Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
& The Wizard of OzThe Wizard of Oz (1939 film)The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
(1939), Citizen KaneCitizen KaneCitizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
(1941), Singin' in the RainSingin' in the RainSingin' in the Rain is a 1952 American comedy musical film starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with Kelly also providing the choreography...
(1952), and Doctor Zhivago (1965), Raging Bull (1980) among others - A handful of the 20th Century Fox20th Century FoxTwentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
Charlie ChanCharlie ChanCharlie Chan is a fictional Chinese-American detective created by Earl Derr Biggers in 1919. Loosely based on Honolulu detective Chang Apana, Biggers conceived of the benevolent and heroic Chan as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes, such as villains like Fu Manchu...
movies have recently been digitally restored, which include the following titles:- Charlie Chan in London, Charlie Chan in Paris, Charlie Chan in Egypt, Charlie Chan in Shanghai, Charlie Chan at the Circus, Charlie Chan at the Olympics, Charlie Chan at the Opera, Charlie Chan at the Race Track, Charlie Chan's Secret, Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo, Charlie Chan on Broadway and The Black Camel.
List of restored films with enhanced/altered/upgraded effects
- The Impossible VoyageThe Impossible VoyageThe Impossible Voyage is a 1904 silent film by pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès. The film's runtime is about 24 minutes , and was probably inspired by Melies' successful earlier film Le Voyage dans la Lune...
(1904) - The Battle of the SommeThe Battle of the Somme (film)The Battle of the Somme is a 1916 British documentary and propaganda film. Shot by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, the film depicts the British Army's preparations for, and the early stages of, the battle of the Somme...
(1916) - Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des GrauensNosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauensis a classic 1922 German Expressionist horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok...
(1922) - MetropolisMetropolis (film)Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
(1927) - The Man Who LaughsThe Man Who Laughs (film)The Man Who Laughs may refer to various films, all adapted from Victor Hugo's novel:* The Man Who Laughs ** A 1909 film, made in France by the Pathé film company and produced by Albert Capellani. No copies of this film are known to survive....
(1928) - All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
- The Big TrailThe Big TrailThe Big Trail is a lavish early widescreen movie shot on location across the American West starring John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh....
(1930) - Becky SharpBecky Sharp (film)Becky Sharp is a 1935 film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Miriam Hopkins. Other supporting cast were Frances Dee, Cedric Hardwicke, Billie Burke, Alison Skipworth, Nigel Bruce, and Alan Mowbray. It is based on the play of the same name by Langdon Mitchell, which in turn is based on...
(1935) - Love Affair (1939)
- A Star Is BornA Star Is Born (1954 film)A Star Is Born is a 1954 American musical film directed by George Cukor. The screenplay written by Moss Hart was an adaptation of the original 1937 film, which was based on the original screenplay by Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell...
(1954) - Seven Samurai (1954)
- Rear WindowRear WindowRear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...
(1954) - VertigoVertigo (film)Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
(1958) - Spartacus (1960)
- Yojimbo (1961)
- Lawrence of ArabiaLawrence of Arabia (film)Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 British film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence. It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company, Horizon Pictures, with the screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson. The film stars Peter O'Toole in the title role. It is widely...
(1962) - It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
- My Fair LadyMy Fair Lady (film)My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, of the same name, based on the 1938 film adaptation of the original stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The ballroom scene and the ending were taken from the previous film adaptation , rather than from...
(1964) - PersonaPersona (film)Persona is a film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, released in 1966, and starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. Bergman held this film to be one of his most important; in his book Images, he writes: "Today I feel that in Persona—and later in Cries and Whispers—I had gone as far as I could go...
(1966) - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
- Yellow Submarine (1968)
- The GodfatherThe GodfatherThe Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
(1972) - OverlordOverlord (film)Overlord is a 1975 black-and-white film written and directed by Stuart Cooper. Set around the D-Day invasion , Overlord is a war film about a young soldier's meditations on being part of the war machinery, and his premonitions of death...
(1975) - Superman (1978)
- Superman IISuperman IISuperman II is the 1980 sequel to the 1978 superhero film Superman and stars Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Terence Stamp, Ned Beatty, Sarah Douglas, Margot Kidder, and Jack O'Halloran. It was the only Superman film to be filmed by two directors...
(1980) - RanRan (film)is a 1985 Japanese-French jidaigeki film written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film starred Tatsuya Nakadai as Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging Sengoku-era warlord who decides to abdicate as ruler in favor of his three sons. It also stars Mieko Harada as the wife of Ichimonji's eldest son...
(1985) - Većina Disneyevih ctranih filmova FantasiaFantasia (film)Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
i BambiBambiBambi is a 1942 American animated film directed by David Hand , produced by Walt Disney and based on the book Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten... - Dio Warner Bros. filmova Warner Bros.Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
/pre-1986 MGMMetro-Goldwyn-MayerMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
/RKO Radio Pictures uključujući: Gone with the WindGone with the Wind (film)Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
& The Wizard of OzThe Wizard of Oz (1939 film)The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
(1939), Citizen KaneCitizen KaneCitizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
(1941), Singin' in the RainSingin' in the RainSingin' in the Rain is a 1952 American comedy musical film starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with Kelly also providing the choreography...
(1952), and Doctor Zhivago (1965), Raging Bull (1980) among others - Nekoliko 20th Century Fox20th Century FoxTwentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
Charlie ChanCharlie ChanCharlie Chan is a fictional Chinese-American detective created by Earl Derr Biggers in 1919. Loosely based on Honolulu detective Chang Apana, Biggers conceived of the benevolent and heroic Chan as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes, such as villains like Fu Manchu...
filmova,uključujući:- Charlie Chan in London, Charlie Chan in Paris, Charlie Chan in Egypt, Charlie Chan in Shanghai, Charlie Chan at the Circus, Charlie Chan at the Olympics, Charlie Chan at the Opera, Charlie Chan at the Race Track, Charlie Chan's Secret, Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo, Charlie Chan on Broadway and The Black Camel.
'
Film decay as an artform
In 2002, filmmaker Bill MorrisonBill Morrison
Bill Morrison is an American comic book artist and writer, and co-founder of Bongo Comics . He currently serves as creative director of Bongo Comics....
produced Decasia
Decasia
Decasia is a 2002 found footage film by Bill Morrison, featuring an original score by Michael Gordon. The film is a meditation on old, decaying silent films and is similar in spirit to Lyrical Nitrate. It begins and ends with scenes of a dervish and is bookended with old footage showing how film...
, a film solely based on fragments of old unrestored nitrate-based films in various states of decay and disrepair, providing a somewhat eerie aesthetic to the film. The film was paired together with a soundtrack composed by Michael Gordon
Michael Gordon (composer)
Michael Gordon is an American composer and co-founder of the Bang on a Can festival and ensemble. His music is associated with the genres of totalism and post-minimalism.-Early life:...
, and performed by his orchestra. The footage used was from old newsreel & archive film, and was obtained by Morrison from several sources, such as the Fox Movietone Newsfilm Archives at the University of South Carolina
University of South Carolina
The University of South Carolina is a public, co-educational research university located in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, with 7 surrounding satellite campuses. Its historic campus covers over in downtown Columbia not far from the South Carolina State House...
, and the archives of the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
.
See also
- 3D LUT3D LUTIn the film industry, 3D LUTs are used to calculate preview colors for a monitor or digital projector of how an image will be reproduced on the final film print. A 3D LUT is a 3D lattice of output color values. Each axis is one of the 3 input color components and the input color thus defines a...
- Digital cinematographyDigital cinematographyDigital cinematography is the process of capturing motion pictures as digital images, rather than on film. Digital capture may occur on video tape, hard disks, flash memory, or other media which can record digital data. As digital technology has improved, this practice has become increasingly common...
- Digital intermediateDigital intermediateDigital intermediate is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. It often replaces or augments the photochemical timing process and is usually the final creative adjustment to a movie...
- Direct to Disk RecordingDirect to Disk RecordingDirect-to-disk recording refers to methods by which analog signals and digital signals such as digital audio and digital video are digitally recorded to optical disc recording technologies such as DVDs, and CD optical discs...
- Film recorderFilm recorderA Film Recorder is a graphical output device for transferring digital images to photographic film.All film recorders typically work in the same manner. The image is fed from a host computer as a raster stream over a digital interface...
- Film-outFilm-outFilm-out is the process in the computer graphics, video production and filmmaking disciplines of transferring images or animation from videotape or digital files to a traditional film print...
- InpaintingInpaintingInpainting is the process of reconstructing lost or deteriorated parts of images and videos. For instance, in the case of a valuable painting, this task would be carried out by a skilled image restoration artist...
- List of film formats
- Motion picture film scannerMotion picture film scannerA motion picture film scanner is a device used in digital filmmaking to scan original film for storage as high-resolution digital intermediate files.A film scanner scans original film stock: negative or positive print or reversal/IP...
- Orphan filmOrphan filmAn orphan film is a motion picture work that has been abandoned by its owner or copyright holder; also, any film that has suffered neglect.-History:...
- Paper printPaper printPaper prints were an early mechanism to establish the copyright of motion pictures by depositing them with the Library of Congress. Thomas Alva Edison’s company was first to register each frame of movie film onto a positive paper print, in 1893...
s - Post production
- (VirtualVirtual telecineA virtual telecine is a piece of video equipment that can play back data files in real time. The colorist-video operator controls the virtual telecine like a normal telecine, although without controls like focus and framing. The data files can be from a Spirit DataCine, motion picture film scanner...
) TelecineTelecineTelecine is transferring motion picture film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process.... - Wiping (magnetic tape)
Further reading
- Audiovisual archives : a practical reader / edited and compiled by Helen P. Harrison for the General Information Programme and UNISIST. - Paris : UNESCO, 1997.
- Cave, D. (2008). "Born digital" – Raised an orphan?: Acquiring digital media through an analog paradigm. The Moving Image. 8(1), 1-13.
- Crofts, C (2008) Digital Decay. The Moving Image. 8 (2), xiii-35.
- Gracy, K. F. (2007). Film preservation: Competing definitions of value, use, and practice. Chicago: The Society of American Archivists.
- Gschwind, R. (2002). Restoration of movie films by Digital Image Processing? In Niseen, D., Larsen, L.R., Christensen, T.C., and Johnsen, J.S. (Eds.) Preserve then Show. Danish Film Institute.
- Karr, Lawrence. Edited by Barbara Cohen- Stratyner.: Film Preservation at Preserving America’s Performing Arts. Papers from the conference on Preservation Management for Performing Arts Collection. April 28-May 1, 1982, Washington, D.C. Theater Library Association.
- Kula, Sam. Appraising Moving Images. Assesing the Archival and Monetary Value of Film and Video Records. Scarecrow Press, 2003.
- McGreevey, Tom: Our Movie Heritage. Rutgers University Press, 1997.
- Paul Read and Mark-Paul Meyer (Editors:): Restoration of motion picture film. Oxford, 2000. ISBN 0-7506-2793-X
- Read, P. (2002). Digital Image Restoration – Black Art or White Magic? In In Niseen, D., Larsen, L.R., Christensen, T.C., and Johnsen, J.S. (Eds.) Preserve then Show. Danish Film Institute.
- Slide, Anthony: Nitrate Won't Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United States, McFarland and Company, 1992.
- Walsh, D. (2008). How to preserve your films forever. The Moving Image. 8(1), 38-41.
- National Film Preservation Board
- The Film Foundation (Martin ScorseseMartin ScorseseMartin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, President) - National Film Preservation Foundation
- Video Aids to Film Preservation (VAFP)
- MIC (Moving Image Collections)
- Public Moving Image Archives and Research Centers
- Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)
- Conservation Online: Motion Picture Film Preservation
- Digital-Nitrate Prize for Film Preservation
- Collection of film restoration issues, collected by Joanneum ResearchJoanneum ResearchJOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH is one of the largest non-academic research institutes in Austria. Besides its headquarters in Graz it is also based in Weiz, Hartberg, Leoben, Niklasdorf and Vienna...
- The National Film and Sound Archive on Preservation
- The International Federation of Film Archives' Journal of Film Preservation
- The International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives
- The Film Foundation
- Film Forever: The Home Film Preservation Guide
- Australian Network for Information on Cellulose Acetate
- Bonded Services: Film and media storage and preservation
- http://www.homedvd.ca: Restoration ideas using DSP
External links