Preservation of Born-Digital Commercial Films

More Questions Than Answers

Defining “born-digital” for films is not clear cut.

The move from film reels to image files, cinema theatres to desktops and light to algorithms supports a general cultural trend where future technology allows content to exist without artifact.

--Dylan Cave (4)

In Brief

• Film faces many of the same challenges as other analog formats when it comes to preserving digital objects

• Industry is aware the problems exist• Several efforts are underway to find solutions• Not much in the way of definitive results as of

yet

Analog era

• In the past a film was shot on 35mm stock. • An editor took all the raw footage and literally

cut (with razor blades) together the chosen pieces into the master.

• That was “the film.”

Digital Era

• Digital technology upended film production in the 1980s with digital audio and non-linear editing.

• Now all footage is scanned into a computer. Editors use a software program like Final Cut Pro to select scenes and assemble the edit.

• “The film” is a set of digital files.

Currently

• No Hollywood film released in the last 2 decades has not been created on a computer, even if the film was shot on analog film stock.

• The edited film comes into being through computer software.

• Some films are shot entirely digitally with no analog stock used at all.

• Films with a lot of special effects obviously have many elements that only exist digitally, often created by multiple different companies. (Look at the credits of any major blockbuster.)

• Computer-generated animated films also have no analog components.

Image credit: fanpop.com

Hollywood caught on in the 1950s

• Preserving films became a vital business practice in Hollywood in the 1950s.

• Up until then only scattershot efforts to save films. Majority of pre-1950 film has been lost.– Also the film stock was dangerous to keep.

• 1950s brought television, a secondary market, creating an economic incentive to preserve your studio’s library.

$$$

• Important to remember: studios see film preservation as an economic imperative, not a cultural heritage one.

• Independent producers, documentarians, etc. who do not have massive corporations behind them lack the resources to do what the studios do.

Film as object

• A “film” used to be a 35mm print.

• There was a set of physical objects that were preserved.

• Preservation of analog film, while imperfect, has procedures and practices that are widely adopted and work well. Image source:

Wikimedia Commons

What is the object now?

• As with all digital media, the physical object to preserve has begun to disappear.

• Now a “film” is a set of files that exists on a drive somewhere.

• Including mine.• The imperative to

preserve remains.Image source: howstuffworks.com

Current preservation practice

• “The message is clear: the easiest way to hold on to all the information locked into the original film is to hold on to the film.” -- David Walsh (2).

• Right now studios create physical prints even of purely born-digital films to put into their archives. This is the safest and cheapest way to store a film for a long period.

Image source: AMPAS

Which version?

• There is never one version of a film. You may have one or all of the following:– The theatrical release– A director’s cut/extended edition– A version for television– A version for airlines– A version for foreign markets (Iron Man 3)– A video edition for WalMart, etc.

Exponential copies

• A single feature film can take 4 or more canisters of 35mm film stock to hold it.

• Preservation masters for analog film are “YCM separations” plus the interpositive print (akin to an “access copy”).

• That’s 4 copies of a single version of the film for one set of masters.

It gets worse

• Digital projection and distribution of film complicates things further– A film opening on 2,000 screens needed 2,000

physical copies to be made and shipped.– Theaters with digital projectors can just download

a Digital Cinema Package (DCP).– Right now we’ve got a mix of digital and analog

projection still, so analog copies still need to be made.

But film stock may disappear

• Companies like Kodak used to get a lot of film stock sales for those 2,000 release prints. That business has vanished.

• Producing film stock only for archival purposes may become too costly for companies.

• If 35mm film stock is no longer produced, you have no choice but to preserve film masters digitally.

• This has not happened yet, but it’s a concern.

And finally

• When a BluRay of an old movie comes out, what is one of the key criteria reviewers use to judge whether it’s worth buying?

• The extras. The interviews, behind the scenes pieces, etc. You’re reselling a movie to the same people, you need to add something new.

• Some of that material isn’t even filmed until nearly at the release date. It’s not kept with the feature film itself, even digitally.

Long tail in action

• First with television, then home video, now DVD and streaming and cable, film is one of the best examples of a long tail of value.

• That long tail depends on the extras as much as the quality of the film image.

• But those extras exist only in digital format. They are not preserved with the analog film masters.

So about that “BluRay” image

Image source: AMPAS

“High definition” has no definition

• 4K is the current high end standard for digital resolution. It may be roughly the resolution of analog 35mm film stock (no one is sure).

• Imagine you shot a film digitally only at 2K resolution. You can’t upgrade. You’re already behind the curve.

• If you have the analog masters, though, you can go back and rescan at higher resolution.

• Economic incentive to have analog masters(?)

So what do we save?

• Even in the analog era, film studios saved the theatrical version master, not all the raw footage.

• The theatrical version is obviously a priority, but do we save every version? If not, which ones are most important?

• Do we save ancillary materials? How?• What about digital effects files?

How do we save it?

• What resolution do we use for digital materials? Ancillary materials?

• What file formats?– Remember this is an industry that’s dealt with both

Betamax and LaserDisc failures. No one wants to pick the wrong technology.

• A feature film can be upwards of 2 petabytes of data just for the film itself. How do we cope with file sizes this large? Tape, disc, cloud storage?

Most crucial questions

• How do we make preservation decisions in an environment where the technology is never stable and is designed and developed to become obsolete?

• How do we preserve the potential future profits from these films?

Progress so far

• AMPAS– Digital Dilemma 1 and 2– Case Study

• Digital Cinema Initiatives• Presto Center• NDIIPP• USC• InterPARES

Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences

• (AKA “the people who hand out the Oscars”)• Science and Technology Council is working

hard on digital challenges• Two major publications: Digital Dilemma 1

(2007) and 2 (2012). – Digital Dilemma was an alarm being sounded to

the industry that these problems needed to be addressed.

AMPAS Case Study

• “Long Term Management and Storage of Digital Motion Picture Materials: A Digital Motion Picture Archive Framework Project Case Study” 2010

• Attempt to use a small film project to see what would be involved in creating a digital archive for films.

• Helped identify the challenges

Image credit: AMPAS

What would a digital film archive look like?

Image source: AMPAS

Surprises in the Case Study

• Digital film shot in 2004 on a Sony format was already inaccessible by 2009.

• Much more collaboration needed with IT professionals.

• “Job descriptions and educational requirements for digital motion picture archive professionals do not exist.” (57)

• Metadata is going to be an enormously vital component.

Workflow just for metadata

Image source: AMPAS

Without metdata

We note that in the digital world, a misplaced asset is even less likely to be rediscovered than an analogue asset, since there is nothing physical to look through in order to try and find it.

--Randal Luckow and James M. Turner, 170

NDIIPP

• National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program > National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA)

• Partnership includes AMPAS, major studios, archives and more.

• Library of Congress formats– Special section for professional film (shows

influence of studios and AMPAS on the work).

Achievments

• Everyone is aware that standards are needed.• The LOC offering is one set of options, but there

likely will never be a single default format. It will be a group of formats, wrappers, codecs, etc.

• Metadata standards are the next big obstacle.• Commercial developers don’t see film

preservation as a key market for digital asset management, so alternatives will need to be created.

• Perhaps the biggest achievements in digital film preservation so far are

1. Raising awareness of the problems.2. Getting the industry to grasp the size of the

problems.3. Prompting studios who are normally bitter

rivals to work together to solve the problems.

I am kind of wondering if I am the only one who has noticed the lack of a coherent long term vision and strategy for film preservation or perhaps better said for the content on film. I don't see it. A cold vault is not a preservation strategy for film, it has become a procrastination strategy for the preservation of film content.

--Jim Lindner, CEO at Media Matters LLC, 2/17/13