麻豆影院

鈥榃hat we want to do is to help build people who will actually have big job offers before they even leave CU,鈥� donor says

While the film studies program at the 麻豆影院 has a long history of making and teaching edgy, experimental and contemporary films, the program also teaches narrative and documentary films. The program has 10 tenured or tenure-track faculty and two instructors who bring rich and diverse experiences into all areas of film. (Related story听.)

With the recent gift of more than $3 million worth of professional preservation and archiving equipment from Wyndham Hannaway, a visual-effects specialist, film studies will be adding film preservation and archiving to its offerings. Hannaway鈥檚 麻豆影院 company,听, has been a leader in creating innovative professional imaging for film and media services for more than 35 years.

With this equipment in place, the CU-麻豆影院 Film Studies Program is looking at adding a certificate and perhaps a professional master鈥檚 degree in preservation, restoration and archiving.

Film studies is now poised at the forefront of this promising area of growth, making CU-麻豆影院 one of very few universities in the country with a preservation and archiving program, according to Professor Ernesto Acevedo-Mu帽oz, director of film studies.

Paradoxically, transferring from digital to 35 mm film for preservation purposes is the wave of the future, because digital formats can degrade at an astonishing speed or simply become corrupted, Acevedo-Mu帽oz says, noting that this reflects the need to back up data files.

鈥淪o, in order to 鈥榩reserve鈥� any visual image originated in any digital format, the only way to ensure that is to make aphotographic听negative on film, from which copies can be made (even if it鈥檚 to reconvert them to digital),鈥� he adds.

Hannaway, who is renowned for his expertise, concurred.听鈥淥ne of the huge failings of our wonderful digital world is that we鈥檙e currently depending on long-term storage of most data on either magnetic media or flash drives.鈥� he said. 鈥淢agnetic is fragile and flash is very expensive.鈥� He also adds that digital media鈥檚 deterioration, specifically on magnetic tape, is 鈥渟hocking.鈥� Digital tape media can be copied onto new tape media every five to 10听years, but this is expensive and does not eliminate the possibility of data corruption.

鈥淎nd so the problem remains for all of us鈥攚hether it鈥檚 credit cards or IBM or the government itself鈥攈ow do you store stuff economically and reliably?鈥�

Preserving data or images on film is an 鈥渋ncredibly durable, multi-hundred year medium,鈥� Hannaway said.

As proof, Hannaway cites a woolly mammoth.听鈥淎 wooly mammoth was found Siberia and some parts were made of collagen, similar to what some film is made of. His collagen was just fine 10,000 years later.鈥�

鈥淔ilm鈥� can record analog images and also digital data. 鈥淚f you take modern media and convert it to digits and place the digits on film, you鈥檝e kind of got the best of both worlds. It鈥檚 digital, but it鈥檚 on a medium that doesn鈥檛 require remastering every five or 10听years,鈥� Hannaway said.

鈥淓ven hundreds of years from now, whatever they use as cameras could still recover imagery from either film that held pictures or film that held bits,鈥� he said, adding,听鈥淭hat鈥檚 one of the huge potentials of what I鈥檝e donated.鈥�

Hannaway said he would like to work with the university to create an endowed chair devoted to digital curation. One intention is to 鈥渦se me while I鈥檓 available to begin to train others to understand all these old video formats, to enjoy the benefits of the multiple machines I have in every format, and to get a grasp of the maintenance and repair of the machines.鈥�

鈥淲hat we want to do is to help build people who will actually have big job offers before they even leave CU. If someone can claim that they鈥檝e been trained in my work, then the Getty (Museum), the Library of Congress and other archival organizations would be ecstatic to have somebody that鈥檚 on that threshold between film, 听television, and digital media, their archive and their formats and the future digital systems.鈥�

鈥淚鈥檝e got the deep experience鈥� 听but now we need to train some people like me.鈥�

鈥淯nlike the 97 other people out of 100 who want to be movie directors and writers and producers, the three who choose to work in media archives will be employed before they leave CU, and the others will be waiting tables on Pearl Street.鈥�

For those who are interested in archiving and curation, 鈥渢here are great opportunities and you can get large salaries for working in what I call 鈥榙igital curation.鈥� I want CU to be a leader by having what may be the first department in the country to train more people in that work.鈥�

鈥淥n the surface, it doesn鈥檛 sound very creative, but when somebody brings you (media from) the Hindenburg or the moon landing, it suddenly becomes a little more relevant.鈥�

Acevedo-Mu帽oz concurred: 鈥淩estoration and preservation are essential to all visual media, but in particular to film. More than 90 percent of the film material that existed before 1928 has disappeared. Preserving our film heritage is preserving American history.鈥�

Kenna Bruner is an editor at the听. Clint Talbott contributed to this report.

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