Preliminary Session Panels & Presentations

PRELIMINARY SESSION PANELS & PRESENTATIONS
Topics and speakers subject to change – Session Schedule will be posted in August

 

 

As part of the 2016 program, the conference offers four curated streams of programming.

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In addition, there are two days of pre-conference workshops and symposium – November 8-9.

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The Eames Film Collection at the Library of Congress
Chair and Speakers

  • Amy Gallick, Library of Congress
  • Mike Mashon, Library of Congress
  • Eames Demetrios, Eames Office

Charles and Ray Eames’ contribution to furniture design and architecture are legendary, and some of their films — often sponsored by corporations like IBM — were distributed for educational and industrial audiences.  The Library of Congress has undertaken film and digital preservation of the Eames Collection, from some of their well-known titles like Powers of Ten to their unpublished titles and their multiscreen presentations.  Amy Gallick, Preservation Specialist, and Mike Mashon, Head of the Moving Image Section, from LoC will discuss the collection, its acquisition and preservation challenges.

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Alternative Archives: Inserting African-American Stories back into the Narrative
Chair and Speakers

  • Candace Ming, University of Chicago
  • Karida Johnson, University of California-Los Angeles
  • Zun Lee
  • Rhea Combs, The National Museum of African American History and Culture

Alternative Archives will explore the intersection of personal narrative and moving image archiving. African-Americans are often written out of the narrative of history, but renewed interest in oral histories and home movies have provided a platform for an important conversation on the role archives play in documenting and preserving the personal histories of African-Americans. Inherently structured differently than traditional moving image archives, archives that collect home movies or oral histories develop more personal relationships with their donors and their communities. We also face different challenges in preserving and sharing our material. This panel will examine the great benefits and rewards of collecting personal histories, but also tackle the challenges and roadblocks that housing such rich material activates.

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Archiving In A Production Environment Is An Ever-Changing Process
Chair and Speakers

  • Karma Foley, Smithsonian Channel
  • Mette Charis Buchman, Danish Broadcasting Corporation

Working as an archivist in a production/media environment is in many ways a different experience and requires a somewhat different skill set than working as an archivist in a cultural heritage setting. It is an ever-changing process. Archival conventions and traditional standards often do not apply. A production archive must be adaptable, flexible, and inclusive in order to fulfill its mission and meet the needs of its users. Mette Charis Buchman, Senior Manager at The Archive at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation and Karma Foley, Director of Library & Archives at Smithsonian Channel will elaborate on the particular challenges and opportunities of archiving in a production/media environment. The session will allow for information sharing among production archives and may spark ideas for archivists working in other environments.

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A screening of La Belle at the Movies, and salon-stye conversation
Speaker

  • Kate Pourshariati, Penn Museum

This is a special film screening session. The film La Belle at the Cinema is about the lack of any remaining cinemas in Kinshasa, capitol of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The filmmaker takes a wider view of filmmaking in this central African country, interviewing filmmakers from the Congo and visiting several film libraries languishing in poor storage in national television stations. This is a great film for archivists; it addresses the meaning of cinema in culture and considers the loss of the collective viewing experience, which is fairly common in Africa today and increasingly common in the USA.

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Claiming Tech: Women, Technology, and the Spotlight
Chair and Speakers

  • Liz Coffey, Harvard
  • Lauren O’Connor, Bay Area Video Coalition
  • Kara Van Malssen, AV Preserve
  • Diana Little, The Media Preserve
  • Lauren Sorensen, UCLA

While a large number of AMIA members are women, and many do “techie” work, we do not often see them leading the discussion, or being deferred to as experts. Female faces are often absent from the presentation side of our technological symposia. We want to find ways to encourage women in our field to become leaders, through presenting at technology-oriented events, writing for our periodicals, organizing events at our conference, or speaking up on the list-serv and in public. This open discussion is an opportunity to investigate the problems we are facing, and to identify solutions. Why are women underrepresented? What can we do to change that? We believe an open forum will lead to creative thinking and problem solving, possibly a new network of support, and will shine the light of personal experience on a neglected topic. We hope the issues raised in will flavor conversations during the conference.

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Envisioning Pittsburgh
Chair and Speakers

  • Steven Parr, Oddball Films / San Francisco Media Archive
  • Timothy Wisniewski, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
  • Miriam Meislik, University of Pittsburgh
  • Greg Pierce, Orgone Archive / Andy Warhol Museum

This screening will showcase the rich collections and creativity of the conference’s host city,  highlighting archival film rarities that imagine Pittsburgh from a multitude of cinematic genres,  presented with live scores by local musicians. The films present Pittsburgh’s industrial legacy, its  unique neighborhoods and people, and embody the region’s rich tradition of documentary and  experimental filmmaking. The program will be culled from collections as diverse as the University  of Pittsburgh, including their KDKA and WTAE news film collections and the Pitt Parade collection; and  the private Orgone Archive, including a remarkable 1957 Kodachrome sponsored film Gateway to the  Future, created for the Pittsburgh centennial. Historical figures Lyndon B. Johnson and Eleanor  Roosevelt are among the featured luminaries. Live scores to the films will be provided by composers and multi-instrumentalists Ben Opie and Colton Harper.

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It Happened in 16mm: A Night of Regional Film
Chair and Speakers

  • Taylor McBride, Smithsonian Institution
  • Siobhan C. Hagan, Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive (MARMIA)
  • Kelly Haydon, BAVC
  • Emily Davis, Carnegie Museum of Art; Three Rivers Archivists
  • Amy Ciesielsk, University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collection

The Small Gauge Amateur Film Committee (SGAFC) and the Regional Audiovisual Archives Committee (RAVA), together with Three Rivers Archivists, invite you to the third annual small gauge regional film screening. The program will be curated from the collections of RAVA’s institutional members and local regional archives and will feature 16mm film highlighting content of the Mid-Atlantic region.

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Hidden Cinema: Beyond Medicine
Chair and Speakers

  • Angela Saward, Wellcome Library
  • Timothy Wisniewski, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
  • Sarah Eilers, National Library of Medicine

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This session will examine the shared experiences of three major repositories in the health field* (Johns Hopkins, National Library of Medicine, and Wellcome Library) in managing material one might not expect to find in medical archives. Unique materials such as home movies, travel, ethnographic, archeological*, and research films are often created or collected during the course of clinical, epidemiological, or other work. These films present challenges for curators, who must decide whether and how to prioritize, catalog, and digitize this unusual material within established workflows, and how to develop and engage new audiences for it. The session will be enlivened and evidenced with examples of unusual films from the three archival film collections.

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Magnascope: Researching & Recreating Early Widescreen Cinema
Chair and Speakers

  • Anthony L’Abbate, George Eastman Museum
  • Kyle Westphal, Northwest Chicago Film Society
  • David Pierce, Media History Digital Library

The forerunner of today’s IMAX system, the Magnascope process provided silent-era audiences with a greatly enlarged picture during select sequences through the use of a short focal length lens. Unlike later widescreen systems that used new film gauges, modified projector gates, or anamorphic lens attachments, the Magnascope system was relatively cheap and could be used in conjunction with existing 35mm prints. Introduced by Paramount Pictures with the 1926 release of “Old Ironsides,” Magnascope was long assumed to have petered out after a handful of releases. New research indicates that the process lingered on for two decades, with Magnascope-branded presentations continuing at the discretion of individual exhibitors. Renewed interest in this variated and localized exhibition history brings together scholars, archivists, and repertory programmers. Many archives already possess titles that were originally exhibited in Magnascope and can recreate the Magnascope experience for modern audiences without undertaking additional preservation or digitization initiatives.

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From Mass Digitization to Description: Indiana University’s Strategy to Overcome the Next Great Challenge
Chair and Speakers

  • Chris Lacinak, AVPreserve
  • Jon Dunn, Indiana University

Over the past decade much focus has been placed on mass digitization of legacy audiovisual collections. With progress on this front, today there is a new focus emerging: mass description.    In 2014 Indiana University (IU) began an effort to digitize hundreds of thousands of hours of audiovisual materials from across campus, leading to the challenge of describing this extraordinarily diverse set of materials both at scale and at a sufficient level of granularity to enable meaningful and effective discovery. In 2015, with the support of AVPreserve, IU began a strategic planning project to research, analyze and report on technologies, workflows, staffing, timeline and budgets to address this challenge.    With presentations from Jon Dunn and Chris Lacinak this session will offer insights into the leading-edge work occurring at IU and present some of the newest technologies and workflows available for rich description of, and improved access to audiovisual collections.

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Overcoming Rights Paralysis: Practical Approaches to Providing Access
Chair and Speakers

  • Chris Lacinak, AVPreserve
  • Greg Cram, New York Public Library
  • Jay Fialkov, WGBH

This session will provide insights from rights experts working within two leading organizations digitizing many thousands of hours of audiovisual content with accessibility as a primary goal. Presenters will include Greg Cram, Associate Director of Copyright and Information Policy at New York Public Library and Jay Fialkov, Deputy General Counsel at WGBH. Each speaker will offer an overview on the relevant history and context within their organization, and the philosophy and realities that guide their approach to providing access in a responsible way. This will be followed by the specific challenges, strategies, practices and systems being used within each organization to navigate and manage their determinations on rights, permissions and access. This session will provide a refreshingly pragmatic look at this topic, offering three different perspectives from organizations on the path to making large quantities of content in their collections accessible.

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Archiving between Studios – Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek
Chair and Speakers

  • Chuck Woodfill, Paramount Pictures
  • Charlotte Johnson, Paramount Pictures
  • Phil Bishop, CBS
  • Jeffrey Osmer, Paramount Pictures

The panel will delve into the history of Star Trek on both television and screen, along with the history of its elements from an archival standpoint. Perspectives will come from both the Paramount and CBS archives and how each archive has handled splitting the catalog between the two studios.  Attendees will gain an understanding of the challenges faced with a shared rights catalog.   They will also journey through several case studies, including the remastering of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and behind the scenes of the collaboration between CBS & Paramount as they prepare to celebrate the iconic series – sharing marketing, interviews and special features.

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The National Archives, Historypin, and WWI: Anniversaries, Apps, and Audiences
Chair and Speakers

  • Criss Kovac, National Archives
  • Kerri Young, Historypin
  • Breandán Knowlton, Historypin

Almost two years ago, NARA and Historypin launched a project to digitize the largest WWI film collection in the US in order to increase the creative reuse and impact for the 100th anniversary of WWI. Based on extensive research to bring this content to multiple audiences, NARA is launching an app to deliver moving images and photos to museums, teachers, and coders. Come learn about the process we followed and the app we’ve built!

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Thinking Broadly/Digging Locally: Pittsburgh’s Hidden Media History
Chair and Speakers

  • Devin Orgeron, NCSU
  • Melissa Dollman, UNC-CH
  • Stephen Parr, Oddball Films
  • Greg Pierce, Warhol Museum/Orgone
  • Emily Davis, CMOA
  • James Lewis, The MediaPreserve

Focused on materials from the greater Pittsburgh region, this panel urges us to think about the hidden media histories of any locality. This will be screening-intensive with an aim towards getting audience members to think more carefully about their own region and the complex nexus of media at the heart of every locality.

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Black Films & Blu-ray:  Strategies for Producing Home Video Packages
Chair and Speakers

  • Jacqueline Stewart, University of Chicago
  • Ron Magliozzi, Museum of Modern Art
  • Charles Musser, Yale University
  • Jan-Christopher Horak, UCLA Film & Television Archive
  • Amy Heller and Nina Collins, Milestone Films

Home video packages offer exciting opportunities to provide wide access to archival collections.  This panel features presentations by archivists, curators, distributors and scholars who have worked on recent DVD and Blu-ray projects.  Panelists will describe every step of the process:  what it takes to fund, research, curate, package, release and market home video packages.  They will describe the technical issues involved in “restoring” and digitizing film elements for the purposes of disc and streaming presentation, and explain issues such as remastering and frame rate adjusting.  They will also talk about the “extras” these packages enable, from music and commentary soundtracks to interviews, still images, and other primary documents.    The panel’s focus on African American film packages will open up the conversation to consider the benefits and challenges of working with materials that have received scant archival, scholarly and public attention, and strategies for reaching diverse audiences.

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The MTV Vault Project- Archiving the History of Music Television
Speaker

  • Jamie DiVenere, Viacom

The MTV Vault project, started in 2013, is the initiative to transform the footage tape library, which consists of production source tapes, master tapes and audio source tapes, into a curated digital library. The MTV Vault project allows Viacom the ability to better leverage the value of their content for reuse and provides the opportunity to increase revenue while preserving the Music Group legacy. The project is broken out into 3 tracks: 1. Researching and Discovery of the Most Valued Tapes for Digitization. 2. Encoding Tapes Externally. Tapes 3. Metadata- Standardization and Logging at Clip Level. In this case study we would like to present the steps that were taken in order for Viacom to support the digitization and preservation of these assets and look at the logistical, operational and technical strategies we employed to get us to where we are today. We’ll outline processes, the teams, the technologies. In addition, we’ll recognize our successes combined with project challenges both present and past.

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Quad at 60: Preserving Local 2” Videotape
Chair and Speakers

  • Jeff Martin, Archival Moving Image Consulting
  • Mark Quigley, UCLA Film and Television Archive

Launched in April 1956, 2” quad videotape became the dominant broadcast format for more than two decades. Networks were the first adopters, but as early as 1958 local stations were taping their own programming—everything from documentaries to breaking news to performances by local musicians. The economics of 2” tape, however, meant that tapes were frequently re-used by local producers, and thus are now relatively rare. This session, marking the 60th Anniversary of videotape, will give a technical and historical overview of the format, but more importantly, showcase a diverse array of newly-discovered and preserved local programming that originated on 2”, from stations across the country.

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Re-Envisioning Japan: Ephemeral Film Recuperation, Restoration, and Digital Curation
Chair and Speakers

  • Joanne Bernardi, University of Rochester
  • Josh Romphf, University of Rochester
  • Nora Dimmock, University of Rochester

“Re-Envisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in Visual and Material Culture” (REJ) is a multimedia digital archive of tourism, travel and educational ephemera documenting changing images of Japan and its place in the world in the early to mid 20th century. The recuperation and digital presentation of small gauge ephemeral films in context is a key objective of this collaborative project between faculty and library staff at the University of Rochester. Now in its 5th year as a large-scale, ongoing project, REJ had humble beginnings. It is a useful case study for colleagues similarly working at the intersection of academic and archival practice. Topics include the creative digital curation of ephemeral films for research, teaching, and general interest, the innovative use of open-source tools for digitally restoring and presenting films, and solutions for successfully planning and developing similar projects in the context of a library digital humanities center.

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FAIL: Learning from Past Mistakes in Ingest Workflows
Chair and Speakers

  • Julia Kim, Library of Congress
  • Blake McDowell, National Museum of African American History and Culture
  • Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution
  • Walter Forsberg, National Museum of African American History and Culture

This panel presentation looks at the Smithsonian’s NMAAHC and the Library of Congress to discuss real-world challenges in maintaining fixity across a large-scale, multi-year, cross-institutional, oral history video production project. It considers the example of 8TB (+800 files) of born-digital video content from 2012 wherein major data portions were discovered in 2016 to be corrupted. While digital preservation practices change rapidly, this “FAIL” case study highlights the need for mature repositories to revisit previously ingested content to ensure quality control protocol that includes navigating changes in staff. In analyzing the successful file recovery, the panelists will detail the variety of quality control tools and practical workflows used by each institution to ingest and recover corrupt files. Lack of documentation regarding file provenance along with their workflow history made locating the point of failures a very challenging process, requiring a variety of investigative methods, both technical and manual. In analyzing the points of failures, both institutions gained a greater understanding of how their respective repositories manage and care for files, leading to broader knowledge of the different approaches and micro-systems that digital collection ecosystems employed at various institutions.

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Capturing Captioning: Problems in Preservation and Presentation of Timed Text
Chair and Speakers

  • Kimberly Tarr, New York University Libraries
  • Michael Grant, New York University Libraries
  • Lauren Alberque, RIT Archives
  • Carleton L. Jackson, UMD Libraries

Developed in the 1970s as a method for providing expanded access to television programming for the hearing-impaired, closed captions (CC) are carried in line 21 of the NTSC video signal. When analog video is converted to an uncompressed digital file, closed captions are preserved. They can, however, become scrambled when compression is introduced, which presents a key challenge to institutions interested in preserving CC functionality in access copies of preserved video. This panel explores three institutions’ CC struggles and solutions in preserving video collections, serving a large base of deaf and blind users, and handling CC in library streaming. This session will focus on the technical issues including transfer workflows, hardware and software considerations, and creating access copies both in-house and with a vendor. Lastly, the session aims to broaden the moving image archival community’s interpretation of access.

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Don’t Sell Shorts Short:  Preserving and Curating Shorts Collections
Chair and Speakers

  • Laura Thornburg, Paramount Pictures
  • Helen Edmunds, BFI National Archive
  • Mike Mashon, Library of Congress
  • Todd Wiener, UCLA Film & Television Archive

Short subject collections represent a tremendous range of eras, genres, subjects, technologies…and challenges.  The panel will delve into both historical context and practical issues of managing a large collection of short features.  Perspectives will come both from private/corporate archives and larger public archives, and will cover cataloging, rights issues, preservation, access and programming.  Specific case studies will be included, as will examples of rare, preserved titles.

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Opportunity, Law, and Ethics: Researching, Contextualizing, and Recirculating Nontheatrical Films
Chair and Speakers

  • Marsha Gordon, North Carolina State University
  • Allyson Nadia Field, The University of Chicago
  • Skip Elsheimer, A/V Geeks
  • Brian L. Frye, University of Kentucky College of Law
  • Mark Quigley, UCLA Film & Television Archive
  • Mark Williams, Dartmouth College

This panel brings together archivists and scholars to discuss the process of identifying, finding, working with, and documenting the filmmakers, subjects, and other personnel involved in producing nontheatrical films. Through specific cases and representative anecdotes, panelists will focus on the opportunities, challenges, legal issues, and ethics involved in such work. We will also explore the use of technological tools (such as the Media Ecology Project and other database systems) in working with nontheatrical film and how we might best go about the labor of documenting hitherto undocumented films, which often suffer from a unique form of neglect and a lack of context that differentiates them from most of their their theatrical counterparts.     More of a discussion session than a series of formal presentations, each panelists will briefly share some experiences regarding the overarching panel topic and will then take place in a discussion, including participation from attendees, with regard to best practices for archivists and scholars working with undocumented nontheatrical film history.

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Collecting “Community Copies” of Orphan Works: Technology, Archives, and Access
Chair and Speakers

  • Martin Johnson, The Catholic University of America
  • Molly Rose Steed, University of Utah
  • Emily Vinson, University of Houston Libraries Special Collections

Starting in the late 1990s, scholars, archivists, and, most importantly, grant makers became interested in preserving orphan films. But the national movement to preserve orphan works missed the fact that many of the films they made prominent, including local films, homes movies, and amateur films, were already circulating, as VHS tapes and, later, DVDs, in the communities where they were made. In this panel, we will explore strategies for identifying, processing, and preserving these “community copies,” and the lessons they impart for making these films legible to present and future audiences.

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Preserving Nairobi Heritage Through Audio Visual Archiving: The UNH Project
Speakers

  • MARY NJOROGE, KENYA NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND DOCUMENTATIONS SERVICE
  • SUSAN KIBAARA, NAIROBI CITY COUNTY

Preserving Nairobi heritage through audio visual archiving: The UNH Project.   The Unlocking Nairobi Heritage (UNH) project is aimed at giving the key to the world, it will help unlock the Nairobi they don’t know, the Nairobi they know and the Nairobi they would like to remember.   The Audio visual collection at the Nairobi City County Government has not been given the deserved attention. Currently, the audio visual records are decentralized and some might be lost for lack of knowledge on how to handle them for the purposes of preservation and continuation of the County’s heritage. The County has records that span from the Council era 1950 till 2012 before the County Government was formed, hence the dire need to properly preserve them as they form the rich history of Nairobi City.   A virtual Archive link has been created in the Official Website where all the relevant images and video recordings are being uploaded.   The presenters, as they make their presentation, will communicate the efforts being put in place at Nairobi County in the preservation of AV records for posterity.

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Documenting Provenance: Out of Our Heads and into the Database
Speakers

  • Mike Brostoff, Academy Film Archive
  • Stephen Danley, Academy Film Archive

At the Academy Film Archive, everyone agreed that the history and overview of a film collection was as essential as information about its physical items.  Yet, our collection management system was filled with descriptive and technical metadata about our holdings, while the collections’ provenance and significance remained in staff members’ heads, personal filing systems or as unasked questions.   Getting this information into our database required a conscious and coordinated effort by all staff, especially since our workflow was centered on processing our holdings as individual items.  This panel discussion will describe the steps the Archive took to organize staff into collection teams with the goal of documenting the collection’s provenance; followed by a discussion of the inhouse cataloging standards we developed to enter this information

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Digitization and Reassembly of Eyes on the Prize Interviews
Chair and Speakers

  • Nadia Ghasedi, Washington University
  • Emily Halevy, Crawford Media Services, Inc.
  • Jim Hone, Washington University
  • Irene Taylor, Washington University

Regarded as the definitive work on the Civil Rights Movement, the documentary series, Eyes on the Prize, has been seen by millions since its PBS debut in 1987.  However, what remains unseen is the nearly 85 hours of interview outtakes that provide further insight into the series’ original stories of struggle, resistance, and perseverance.  Through the Eyes on the Prize Digitization and Reassembly project, funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Washington University Libraries is making the complete, never-before-seen interviews and synchronized transcripts freely accessible through its newly developed Hydra digital repository. Crawford Media Services, Inc. completed the digitization and the digital reassembly was completed in-house. This session will provide both archivist and vendor insights into planning, workflow management, and the related challenges of implementing large-scale digitization projects.

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Planning for Preservation in Public Media: An AAPB NDSR Update
Chair and Speakers

  • Rebecca Fraimow, WGBH
  • Selena Chau, Pacifica Radio Archives
  • Lorena Ramirez-Lopez, Howard University Television (WHUT)
  • Kate McManus, Minnesota Public Radio
  • Tressa Graves, WYSO

In this session, a panel of American Archive of Public Broadcasting National Digital Stewardship residents will present on their work developing preservation infrastructures at seven public media stations around the country. The residents will use their experiences working on distinct public media projects to discuss the common challenges that public media stations are facing and the resources that they have discovered to be most effective in addressing those challenges. From developing workflows, to auditing metadata standards, to querying file-based collections, this session will cover a number of important areas and exciting projects in audiovisual stewardship from the perspective of nonprofit organizations working to integrate preservation best practices into a broader mission.

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Kartemquin and Media Burn: A Collaboration Between Archivists and Producers
Chair and Speakers

  • Sara Chapman, Media Burn Archive
  • Nancy McDonald, Kartemquin Films
  • Carolyn Faber, Kartemquin Films

Throughout 2015 and 2016, Media Burn Archive collaborated with Kartemquin Films to create the first public access to collections of camera-original footage from KTQ’s archive. Since 1966, KTQ has been making documentaries that examine and critique society through the stories of real people. Their films, such as The Interrupters and Hoop Dreams, are among the most acclaimed of all time, leaving a lasting impact on millions of viewers.     The panelists will discuss the rationale for prioritizing the preservation of camera-original footage and ways to engage the public with the digital access, the risk factors specific to the long-term survival of independently produced work from the videotape era, the complexities of creating and sustaining a formal archive at an active production company, as well as how to frame a mutually beneficial structure for an archive to create access to a collection held by an outside organization.

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Where Is My Digital Original Negative?
Chair and Speakers

  • Sean Vilbert, Paramount Pictures
  • Josh Haynie, eFilm
  • Marcie Jastrow, Technicolor
  • John Nicolard, Fotokem

The original digital intermediate was defined and used as a tool to aid in the creative color and visual effects processes for features shot on 35mm film.  It was commonly delivered in 2K resolution in 10bit LOG DPX format representing film density in order to create film outs for theatrical exhibition.  For these titles, this deliverable represented the highest quality picture asset and can be used to support future distribution needs.    Today, production is a mix of digital and film based capture and commonly includes advanced visual effects.  With the transition to digital cinema, the Digital Intermediate has skewed towards delivery in P3 color space, which may not preserve the highest resolution, color or dynamic range of the production sources.  This limitation could impact the ability to service higher quality standards in the future.

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Further Freaky Film Formats: Mad Scientists Edition
Chair and Speakers

  • Snowden Becker, UCLA Dept. of Information Studies
  • Dino Everett, USC Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive
  • Marsha Gordon, NCSU
  • Susan Etheridge, UCLA Film & Television Archive

Join us for another #FFFF panel, where we explore the forgotten (and misbegotten) formats of yesteryear! In this edition, we’ll focus on the Dr. Frankenstein types who recombined film production technologies and formats in surprising new ways. SEE John Cunningham’s 9.5mm Kinemacolor process, with separate 16mm mag soundtrack! HEAR Martin Harper’s two-films-in-one process, with 35mm soundtracks on 16mm film! MARVEL at the 8mm Cinemascope achievements of Richard Orton, Paul Grenadier, and their Erector set anamorphic antics!    Endorsed by the Small Gauge and Amateur Film Committee.

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Ongoing Intermediations: Preserving Jud Yalkut and Nam June Paik
Chair and Speakers

  • Tom Colley, Butcher Shop
  • John Klacsmann, Anthology Film Archives
  • Jon Dieringer, Electronic Arts Intermix
  • Gregory Zinman, Georgia Institute of Technology

How do we best make sense of past hybrid media forms in the present? This panel, investigates theoretical and practical approaches to understanding and preserving the moving image through the work of pioneering media artists and frequent collaborators Jud Yalkut (1938-2013) and Nam June Paik (1932-2006).

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Project Update: Richard E. Norman and Early Race Filmmaking
Chair and Speakers

  • Brian Graney, Black Film Center/Archive, Indiana University
  • Megan MacDonald, Black Film Center/Archive, Indiana University

In this session, archivists from the Black Film Center/Archive (BFC/A) at Indiana University will report on the progress of the Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking: Reprocessing and Digitization project, initiated in 2015 with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Preservation and Access.  Following the reintegration of Norman’s dispersed holdings and the publication of a new finding aid in 2015, work is underway on a collection-wide digital access project, making the collection available freely online, including personal and business correspondence, distribution records, censorship reports, photographs, production documentation, and promotional and exhibition materials created between 1912 and 1954.  In addition to reporting on the current digitization project, the BFC/A aims to open discussion with session attendees of how this new body of digital raw material might provide a foundation for building new inter-institutional collaborations to facilitate advanced digital scholarship on early African American cinema and movie-going.

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Reclaiming Indigenous Sacred Moving Images in Public Collections
Chair and Speakers

  • Hanni Nabahe, University of Arizona
  • Jennifer Jenkins, University of Arizona

We explore handling and access issues surrounding historical moving image records of Native sacred ceremonies. The Yaqui Easter ceremonies in Southern Arizona and Northern Mexico were recorded by tribal invitation by ethnographic filmmaker Tad Nichols in the 1940s. Those films entered into University general collections and have been reproduced as new formats came available. Since NAGPRA (1996) and the issuance of the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials (2008), tribal peoples have sought to reclaim sacred images, both moving and still, as a matter of sovereignty. A larger collection of educational, industrial, and amateur films, the American Indian Film Gallery, also contains footage of sacred ceremonies, many filmed without permission or in direct defiance of tribal wishes. We examine contemporary best practices documents and compare content management systems as means of reclaiming image sovereignty.

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Standards, AXF & designing data for long term survival
Speaker

  • James Snyder, Library of Congress

Standards created the content we preserve.   Standards are now shaping the data sets now being created.  How to design a data set for long-term survival both at the content and the data set level will be covered.  The new data archiving standard AXF (the Archive eXchange Format, SMPTE standard 2034-1) and how it is being implemented will be covered.  Ideas on how to choose technologies and/or data set vendors will be presented.

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Competency-Based Frameworks for Moving Image Archiving Education: A Progress Report
Speaker

  • Karen F. Gracy, School of Library and Information Science, Kent State University

This session will report on progress made by the AV Competency Framework Working Group (AVCFWG) to develop competencies for education in moving image image archiving.  Its scope includes graduate level program programs, specializations, and certificates, as well as continuing education offerings for archivists, librarians, academics, and others working in cultural heritage environments. Karen Gracy, chair of the AVCFWG, will summarize recent research on pedagogical environments and employer needs conducted via literature reviews, analysis of employment advertisements, and other data collection methods. She will also provide opportunity for audience questions and reflection on ways in which competency-based education can inform curriculum development and revision, as well as fostering good relations with the various constituencies that employ and consult with moving image archiving professionals.

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From Virtual to Reality: Dissecting Jennifer Steinkamp’s Software-Based Installation
Speaker

  • Shu-Wen Lin, NYU MIAP

Time-based and digital art combines media and technology that challenges traditional conservation practices while requiring dedicated care. As a pioneer in media art, contemporary artist Jennifer Steinkamp is critically acclaimed for her abilities to weave digital media into large-scale installations that envelop the audience vis-a-vis streams of moving images. In this paper, I use Steinkamp’s animated installation Botanic that was exhibited in Time Square Arts: Midnight Moment as a case study. Through carefully disassembling the artist’s creation process, I attempt to focus on the internal structure and relationship between Maya, After Effects, scripts, and final video. I strive to provide a risk assessment that will enable museum professionals as well as the artist herself to identify sustainability and compatibility of digital elements in order to build a documentation that can collect and preserve the whole spectrum of digital objects related to the piece.

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Automated QC Tools Analysis For a Better and Brighter Future
Speakers

  • Morgan Oscar Morel, George Blood Audio/Video/Film
  • Brendan Coates, University of California Santa Barbara

Dave Rice’s/ BAVC’s QCTools software has provided the A/V preservation community with an invaluable tool for analyzing digitized media. This presentation discusses open-source, python-based tools have been built to read and analyze QCTools reports in order to help automate and streamline the process of video analysis for digitization workflows. This panel will introduce tools that may provide an open-source alternative to QC software systems that are too costly or difficult to implement for smaller institutions, as well as provide an opportunity to advance the discussion of what it means to control for quality when digitizing archival AV materials. The panel is made up of two digitization/ preservation professionals, one from a university library and one from a vendor. The target audience is anybody looking to integrate QCTools into their video workflows, as well as anyone interested in advancing the art of quality control.

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Traumatic Archives: Ethics & Accessibility
Speakers

  • Rebecca Dillmeier/ Lindsay Zarwell, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  • Lindsay Zarwell, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Traumatic Archives: Ethics and Accessibility looks at why United States Holocaust Memorial Museum makes its digitized oral history and films collections available on the web. Much of the collection contains sensitive material that can be difficult to watch.The Museum is unique in how accessible it has made its oral testimony and historic films, particularly in the field of Holocaust history.     Film archivist Lindsay Zarwell brings years of experience collecting and cataloging this traumatic material. Rebecca Dillmeier is the digital collections manager for oral history and historic film and has been involved in discussions regarding why certain oral testimony collections should be accessible onsite only as well as helping to audit release forms and donor records. They have helped shape the institution’s policies regarding accessibility. This discussion allows for the audience to grapple with issues of institutional loss of control over a narrative and what role an institution plays in mediating graphic material.

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Opening the Archive: Mobile Media Preservation and Collection Strategies
Speaker

  • Natalie Cadranel, OpenArchive

A presentation for moving image archivists interested in collecting, preserving, and amplifying audiovisual mobile media. Citizens armed with mobile devices are becoming history’s first responders, amassing rich, contextualized, and crucial historical documentation. However, the media they create is incredibly fragile and difficult to verify, often disappearing as a result of privacy concerns, data loss, or a lack of affordable, secure cloud storage; if shared, the most common destination for this media is on social media platforms that can chill free speech and are not committed to privacy, authentication, or long-term preservation.     Attendees will learn about the mobile application OpenArchive, which aims to foster a virtual commons where civil liberties are protected, and media retains its provenance once shared online.

 

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