Inspecting, repairing, condition reporting and cleaning film are an important parts of managing a film collection. I learned how to clean film using Solvon film cleaning solvent with a cloth on the rewind reels. It is especially important to clean film before running it through a telecine for transfer. This will remove a great deal of dust and give the best quality digital transfer possible. The solvent used to clean film is toxic and requires the use of goggles, a respiration mask and rubber work gloves. Learning Final Cut Pro 7 has been one of my biggest challenges. It has an interface that I am not at all familiar with and it is not really user friendly. Oddball Films uses Final Cut Pro to transfer archival footage on outdated mediums such as video tapes and film into digital footage. In the museum world this process is known as migration. Transferring allows for greater access and visibility. Digitizing archival footage means that preview clips can be added to their website where the public can view the archival footage and request licensing information for their film projects. Breaking up transferred master archival footage into preview clips allows for the footage to be accessed and shared more easily on the internet. The clips are smaller compressed files that are easier to send and view than the full high quality transfer master archival footage. Once these preview clips are made from master footage they are ready to be uploaded to Oddball Film’s website. I recently finished uploading clips of police training videos. These are clips that I helped transfer from 16mm film and broke up into approximately 30 second clips. Uploading preview clips is one of the ways that the public can gain access to Oddball Film’s collection. It is important for the person uploading preview clips to be as descriptive as possible and use keywords, subjects, landmarks and notable people so that the content within the preview clips is easily searchable on their website. I have found that in order to accurately describe clips I have to watch them several times. It is a slow but important process. It took me three weeks to upload Universal Pictures newsreel collection from 1937. Creating master film files and preview clips means that there is a lot of important digital data that can be easily lost if not properly saved, stored and backed up. Oddball Films uses external hard drives and an offsite storage facility to maintain their backup copies of master film files and preview clips. This is such a great practice to maintain so that all of the transferred footage is never lost if something were to happen to the archive. The unique collection at Oddball Films is used by many amateur filmmakers, documentarians and domestic and international production companies. Here is a sample list of the feature length films and documentaries in which Oddball Films has supplied archival footage. Oddball also offers film screenings in their on site screening room on Thursday and Friday evenings. Each unique screening is curated by Oddball Films and their innovative programmer, Kat Shuchter, and never shown twice. On Friday, September 30th I attended Oddball Films’ screening titled Schoolhouse Scholck, a compilation of wacky short educational films curated by Kat Shuchter. The screening room comfortably holds about 25-30 people. My favorite film was Light (1980) where Trezlar and Sandy teach us about light and rainbows. Film screenings allow the public a sneak peak into the variety of rare and unique films in the collection. I also had the pleasure of attending the inaugural seasonal seminar series Marc Huestis’ Notes from the Underground Archives: How a Tacky 50's Educational Film Found In a Trashcan Jump Started My Film Career with the legendary Marc Huestis. This event brought film students from all over the bay area into Oddball to tour the archives and hear how Oddball can be a great resource of archival film footage for aspiring filmmakers. Marc Huestis spoke about how he used an old educational film as inspiration for his cult classic Whatever Happened to Susan Jane (1982). He told of his personal connections to the film and shared his experiences in making it while also inspiring others to find their voice in the industry. This was a great opportunity to be able to hear first hand how a filmmaker might make use of the strange and weird films in the collection at Oddball Films.
2 Comments
Ashley Franks-McGill
8/12/2017 07:16:25 pm
Hello Clive, Thanks for your comment. I'd be happy to talk with you more specifically about your vinegar syndrome films if you'd like to send me an email at [email protected].
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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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