On Monday, August 29, 2016 I began my Film & Media Archivist internship at Oddball Films, a stock film footage archive in San Francisco. The collection is housed on the third and top floor of a warehouse building in the Mission District and is home to over 50,000 films and video tapes used for research, preservation and providing licensing for footage to be used in films all over the world.
I became interested in this position because I want to learn more about caring for film collections. In my experience I have found that a lot of smaller archives and historical societies don’t know how to care for the film they acquire and accession into in their collections. There are so few dedicated film archives out there to gain hands-on experience and Oddball Films was offering a unique opportunity to get some hands on experience in managing their collection.
As the Film & Media Archivist intern at Oddball Films I set out to learn:
2. The best practices in making archival moving images accessible to the public
3. Make professional networking connections with Oddball Films and other related agencies My internship will be two full 8-hour days per week from August 29, 2016-December 27, 2016. Allowing me to earn course credit towards my Master’s degree in Museum Studies from John F. Kennedy University. I will be working with the founder and Director, Stephen Parr and the Film & Media Archivist, Anthony Bianco. These gentlemen have taught me so much in just two days!
Films in this collection are off-beat to say the least. They range from commercials to newsreels, documentaries and avant-garde films, not the most popular stuff. This type of collection provides an interesting peek into both our cultural history and our contemporary culture. This week I found a great commercial on the website, Sock Dance, really fun to watch! Funny to think that someone thought this would be a great ad campaign for socks. I also uploaded this newsreel to the site. My favorite part about newsreels is the voice-over narration and dramatic music.
Each day brings a new challenge and provides new knowledge. I’ve never worked with such a specialized collection and look forward to learning about its nuances. I hope to use this new knowledge about film in other institutions throughout my collections management career.
1 Comment
Adrienne McGraw
9/13/2016 03:38:14 pm
Ashley - This is a great start to a unique internship! I can't wait to see more of this treasure trove of film. Thanks for sharing!
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ASHLEY FRANKS-MCGILLI will be updating this blog periodically with posts related to history, museums, collections and professional development. ARCHIVES
October 2017
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