{"id":1140,"date":"2007-12-24T02:39:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-24T02:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/12\/two-articles-on-the-perils-of-film-preservation\/"},"modified":"2007-12-24T02:39:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-24T02:39:00","slug":"two-articles-on-the-perils-of-film-preservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/12\/two-articles-on-the-perils-of-film-preservation.html","title":{"rendered":"Two articles on the perils of film preservation."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

First, a Variety<\/a><\/i> story from three weeks ago:<\/span><\/p>\n

In Cannes this year, Martin Scorsese talked about the importance of preserving such films as Ahmed El Maanouni\u2019s 1981 Moroccan music documentary \u201cTrances.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he didn\u2019t mention that his own \u201cTaxi Driver\u201d is deteriorating.<\/p>\n

Although the 1976 film is part of Sony\u2019s vast library, few are rallying to its aid. The myriad film-preservation orgs throw their money and muscle behind titles that are indie, foreign or obscure. It\u2019s assumed Hollywood\u2019s majors will take care of their own films. In fact, they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

One Paramount veteran compared the studio\u2019s vault to a teenager\u2019s chaotic bedroom. In fact, a visitor accidentally stepped on the negative of \u201cRosemary\u2019s Baby,\u201d which was unspooled on the floor.<\/p>\n

With constant pressure on the bottom line, studio execs often lack the funds \u2014 or interest \u2014 to make sure their heritage is being cared for properly. Digital technology, which was touted as the salvation of film, has turned out to be deeply flawed, deteriorating faster than anyone imagined.<\/p>\n

Movies \u201cget lost in the wilderness unless (studios) pay attention to them,\u201d says Ridley Scott, who found the digital version of his 1982 \u201cBlade Runner<\/a>\u201d in fragile condition. \u201cWe discovered inadvertently that a lot of digital stuff was fading quicker than expected. We think it\u2019s safe forever on disc, but, in fact, it was actually fading.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roger Mayer, a former MGM honcho who\u2019s now chairman of the National Film Preservation Foundation, estimates each studio spends $5 million to $10 million a year to fund preservation or restoration<\/a> programs \u2014 a sum that wouldn\u2019t even cover the marketing costs of a low-budget comedy. . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Things get scarier from there. And now for a story that appeared in yesterday\u2019s New York Times<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n

But then came digital. And suddenly the film industry is wrestling again with the possibility that its most precious assets, the pictures, aren\u2019t as durable as they used to be.<\/p>\n

The problem became public, but just barely, last month, when the science and technology council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences<\/a> released the results of a yearlong study of digital archiving in the movie business. Titled \u201cThe Digital Dilemma,\u201d the council\u2019s report surfaced just as Hollywood\u2019s writers began their walkout. Busy walking, or dodging, the picket lines, industry types largely missed the report\u2019s startling bottom line: To store a digital master record of a movie costs about $12,514 a year, versus the $1,059 it costs to keep a conventional film master.<\/p>\n

Much worse, to keep the enormous swarm of data produced when a picture is \u201cborn digital\u201d \u2014 that is, produced using all-electronic processes, rather than relying wholly or partially on film \u2014 pushes the cost of preservation to $208,569 a year, vastly higher than the $486 it costs to toss the equivalent camera negatives, audio recordings, on-set photographs and annotated scripts of an all-film production into the cold-storage vault.<\/p>\n

All of this may seem counterintuitive. After all, digital magic is supposed to make information of all kinds more available, not less. But ubiquity, it turns out, is not the same as permanence.<\/p>\n

In a telephone interview earlier this month, Milton Shefter, a longtime film preservationist who helped prepare the academy\u2019s report, said the problems associated with digital movie storage, if not addressed, could point the industry \u201cback to the early days, when they showed a picture for a week or two, and it was thrown away.\u201d . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So perhaps copyright violation is really the least<\/i> of anyone\u2019s worries. Either the movies simply won\u2019t exist to be pirated in the future, or the pirates will have inadvertently filled the gaps in the studios\u2019 own archives. So democratize the process, I say.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, a Variety story from three weeks ago: In Cannes this year, Martin Scorsese talked about the importance of preserving such films as Ahmed El Maanouni\u2019s 1981 Moroccan music documentary \u201cTrances.\u201d But he didn\u2019t mention that his own \u201cTaxi Driver\u201d is deteriorating. Although the 1976 film is part of Sony\u2019s vast library, few are rallying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nTwo articles on the perils of film preservation.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"First, a Variety story from three weeks ago:In Cannes this year, Martin Scorsese talked about the importance of preserving such films as Ahmed El\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/12\/two-articles-on-the-perils-of-film-preservation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Two articles on the perils of film preservation.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"First, a Variety story from three weeks ago:In Cannes this year, Martin Scorsese talked about the importance of preserving such films as Ahmed El\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/12\/two-articles-on-the-perils-of-film-preservation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-24T02:39:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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