Protecting
Your Assets
It is 10 p.m., you are starting to doze off, the TV is on, and the announcer says, "Do you know where your camera negative is? Film at 11." A few seconds later he comes back on the air with, "Oops, no film at 11, it has vinegar syndrome."
By now, a dose of adrenaline has hit and you begin wondering where those reels might be. It took a lot of sweat to get them to the big screen. They could be:
- At the lab
- At the post house
- In the garage
- In cold storage
- None of the above
- All of the above
While A, B & C, are clearly not the best answers, don’t be too smug if you answered D. Although it is the best of the bunch, it’s not necessarily the final word. And if you answered E, please send me some of that excess cash you’re throwing away every day.
In preparing this article, I conducted a non-scientific poll of several LF producers, directors, and others supposedly knowledgeable about the whereabouts of their materials. The range of responses resembled the multiple-choice answers above.
I expected to find that the LF industry was behind the curve in the archiving, preservation, and restoration of its materials. While some respondents did not think the situation was too serious, the fact remains that there is a potential for losing irreplaceable industry assets. This would deprive future generations of the ability to enjoy those films, and just as importantly, would deprive the owners of future income from those properties. I also found that most of those interviewed have never visited the facilities in which their elements are stored. Perhaps they should.
Should you be concerned about the negatives, interpositives, internegatives, sound elements, masters, scripts, etc.? The answer is yes, especially as we work harder to enhance the future revenue streams of films, an issue I addressed here in April.
One of the first projects Cinesite (my former employer) undertook was the first-ever full digital restoration of a film: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the Walt Disney Company. For me, it was the first time I fully considered the benefits of restoration. Upon completion of the restoration process, the film was re-released theatrically to an impressive box office return. The video release still ranks as one of the biggest ever in unit sales.
But what if Snow White had deteriorated beyond the ability of any restoration process, digital or photochemical, to fix it? What if the film had turned to vinegar, or worse yet, had been on nitrate stock and burned in a vault fire?
To get an idea of what can happen to films elements if proper care is not taken, I spoke with Bob Harris and Jim Katz, the team responsible for restoring some of the best known and most lucrative titles in existence, including Spartacus, My Fair Lady, and Vertigo. They are currently working on Rear Window.
While searching through old studio film vaults for negatives, old prints, mag tapes, etc., Jim and Bob have encountered the worst possible conditions. Their stories would make your hair curl. Suffice it to say they have had to work miracles on their restoration projects, which include some of the best-known commercial films of all time. If this is how valuable properties have been stored, what can have happened to less-than-top-performing films?
Although the universal adoption of proper archiving would put Bob and Jim out of business, there unfortunately seems to be little risk of that. Their mission seems to be one of prevention, along with a heavy dose of education. Their first suggestion to the LF industry is to acknowledge that there is a problem. Preservation, they say, should include all elements. And the most important protection measure? "Make separation masters."
Not surprisingly, this recommendation is echoed by Christopher Reyna both in his role as General Manager of Imagica USA and as president of the Large Format Cinema Association. Creating color separation masters on stable monochrome film (one each for the yellow, cyan and magenta layers), along with a check print, is the best insurance against color image degradation.
But it does not stop there. Rick Utley, Chief Operating Officer at PRO-TEK, Kodak’s film preservation company, believes that separation masters are an important component. However, "if they are not stored properly, then the effort was for naught," according to Rick. The next step is cold storage in a facility where temperature and humidity are properly controlled. Kodak has developed standards for storage of motion picture film, and PRO-TEK’s vaults meet these standards. Safe storage of the original negative, interpositive, and internegative in controlled conditions is also essential.
Although I had seen many climate-controlled vaults in the past, I thought it would be a good idea to check out a couple that I had not seen before.
Hollywood Vaults is located, appropriately enough, in Hollywood. President David Wexler has consulted with several of the major film studios and other companies involved in the archiving and storage of films, videos, sound elements, and other important assets. Hollywood Vaults is essentially a high-tech self-storage warehouse with climate controlled vaults suitable for film and other perishable assets.
High-tech may be an understatement when it comes to Hollywood Vaults. Doors open and close and lights go on and off as if by magic, even in the rest rooms. (I did not test what would happen if I failed to flush.)
The place is extremely secure. Electronic door locks require a PIN code for entry, allowing customers 24-hour access. Individual vaults are also secured with a PIN. The building has been constructed to withstand Southern California’s natural disasters. If I knew when the next earthquake was coming, I’d plan to be at Hollywood Vaults.
Not too far from Hollywood Vaults is Iron Mountain. This place is BIG. L.A. residents may know it from the bigger-than-life-size pictures of Michael Jordan that were hung on the building during Space Jam’s theatrical and video marketing campaigns. (Note to MacGillivray: how about a picture of Everest on Iron Mountain?)
Iron Mountain is part of a large national organization that specializes in storage. Although not self-service, the facility is set up to store materials of all kinds, from film, video, audio, and digital media to boxes of paper documents. Appropriate temperature and humidity conditions prevail According to Iron Mountain’s Jeff Anthony, "cold, dry and stable" are the order of the day. Film is stored at 45 degrees F (7 degrees C) and 35% relative humidity. Audio/video materials are kept at 65 F (18 C) and 55% relative humidity.
Bob Beitcher, CEO of Consolidated Film Industries, summed up the issue of effective preservation of LF films for me. "A lot has to be done. The results of years of neglect on the 35mm side are widely evident and the large format industry has to move forward, learn the lessons of the past and not repeat them. All of us need to believe in the long-term value of the intellectual property and then take a deep breath and spend the money to guarantee long-term, high quality preservation. If not, we are putting enormously valuable materials at risk. These films are an important part of the heritage of film art and better care needs to be taken before it is too late."
And that’s the way it is!
