Yes, World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is a magical time of year, full of treasures revealed and correctly presented aspect ratios…But, have we become so distracted by the materiality of archiving that we have lost touch with the true reason for the season, that we have forgotten the deeper meaning of this day?

There are many lessons to draw from this, such as the correct care and handling of audiovisual materials includes not putting them in your mouth. Aside from this, however, we should also understand that Heritage is not always the transcendant pinnacle of culture. Our heritage, the products of our existence, can just as often be drivel, pablum, doggerel, dogma, pedantry, cruel, ugly, ephemeral, temporal, banal, tiresome, empty, tedious, and unworthy of notice.

That being the case, those are the things that need an equal amount of our advocacy. As caretakers, archivists are responsible for preserving the full picture of a culture, everything on the continuum from depravity to beauty, from the sophomoric to the beatific, from the “Meh” to the “Oh, man!” There is power in the content, but, as important, there is power in the audiovisual medium that reaches or affects people in untold ways, which is why our audiovisual heritage matters, whether projected on 35mm nitrate or viewed online from an uploaded cell phone video.

So today, sit back, put a nice drink in your mouth (It’s okay! I said you could!), and enjoy the mess that is being human that we try so hard to capture and define in the frame.

— Joshua Ranger

The death of film has been predicted and/or declared repeatedly over the years because of the extended slow down of stock and equipment production and the decreasing number of places to have it processed. A recent news article about the end of film print distribution in Hong Kong and Macau has many people thinking that this is the big third act coughing fit that can no longer be dismissed or fully recovered from. The topic has led to an extensive thread* on the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) listserv, producing a collective mind version of the 7 stages of mourning as people are alternatively depressed, angry, unbelieving, and hungry (hey, an archivist’s gotta eat).

A definite undercurrent to the posts is, essentially, “Film is the awesomest! Digital is a stupidhead!” (I simplify, perhaps in too many ways, to cover the large volume of responses.) A good point was made by Leo Enticknap** that the tightly clasped fist holding film to our hearts does not seem to exist in the same way with video, the response to this elicited on the listserv then being, “Well, duh.” It was expressed there (and in many places before) that film is special because one can see the image without a projector and there is magic in the creation of the image, while the invisible electrical pulses and signals of video and audio are empty and unloveable. (Sniff! As am I. As. Am. I.)

This is not true. I have a number of colleagues and friends in the field who love video and audio precisely because it is so mysterious and who find electricity magical. Also, an audio signal is at least as simplepure as the filmic image, representing exactly what occurred in actuality to create and transport sound through the air.

Of course there is no real arguing a point among formats here. –philia is –philia, and there is no logical point/counterpoint discussion and resolution to passion and faith. I think of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s writing on sacred objects***. As he states it, in either the spiritual or ethical structure within a culture, “the forms, vehicles, and objects of worship are suffused with an aura of deep moral seriousness” and “that which is set apart as more than mundane is inevitably considered to have far-reaching implications for the direction of human conduct” (126).

I would stress that the reference is not limited to objects of religious worship, but all special objects or symbols (mascots, flags, lucky underwear) that store meaning and importance in the Everyday. As Geertz goes on: “Sacred symbols thus relate an ontology and a cosmology to an aesthetics and a morality: their peculiar power comes from their presumed ability to identify fact with value at the most fundamental level, to give to what is otherwise merely actual, a comprehensive normative import” (127).

For the cinephile or audiophile or philatelophile, their particular sacred object holds a similar rightness and beauty, establishing not an utterly guiding but at least a partial value system dependent on, in Geertz’s terminology, a metaphysical referent or a system that derives from an ontologically based ethic (127). In the field of film preservation, cinephilia has often been a driving force. However, there has been a gnawing concern in the back of mind that the worm will turn…or has turned. It seems that fetishization of the object – the reification of film, video, or whatever carrier – can equally be a detriment to preservation.

Reformatting is a fact of audiovisual preservation. The carrier will not persist and the content needs to be migrated to an accessible format. Scratch that. The carrier will not persist and the business model that produces that carrier will not persist. However, we cannot, we will not let go of that original object. First of all, out of fear, fear of going down in history as that person who decided that nitrate films should be thrown in the Pacific or early television materials should be thrown in the Hudson River. Second of all, the reason is… fear, fear of losing the object. Reformatting is trending towards the digital realm and, to many, digital files are even less real or graspable than video signals. Geertz states that, while theoretically possible, no culture has established an “autonomous value system” independent of symbols and objects (127). However, conceptually, this is what digital preservation can seem to be requiring us to do.

The reconceptualization necessary here will happen over time, gradually, the birth of digital neither as hard nor fast as the death of film. What will be a bigger problem to face is what do we do with all of the physical materials once they have reached a state of advanced/absolute obsolescence and/or decay. One of the promises of digital media is cheap (and increasingly cheaper) storage (though initial cost outlay does not make it seem so). Physical storage is not getting cheaper, and costs will keep rising as organizations reformat and store their originals away. In the very near future (if not already), organizations will start asking hard questions: If we have a preservation master (with backups, stored in separate locations), and a mezzanine copy, and an access copy, why are we paying to store 15,000 tapes we cannot play internally, would cost us X number of dollars to have played by someone else, and may have decayed beyond the quality of our preservation master? At what point do we say, “Enough. We’re moving ahead with what we determined was our best option”?

Tough decision. Not mine nor anyone else’s to make for someone other, but, still, a decision we all can discuss and, hopefully, establish a reasonable set of outcomes and considerations that can inform the choices one must make. Preservation is not a single act, but a series of decisions and implications that follow the embodiment of content from object to object.

Maybe, then, as with the burial of Torahs and other sacred objects in Judaism, there needs to be some sort of ritual disposal, something that acknowledges the limitations of physicality and something that lets us say we shepherded these materials as best we could through their lifecycle so that their essence shall persist.

— Joshua Ranger

*Started by David Croswaith, [AMIA-L] Re: It’s the Beginning of the End for 35mm as Worldwide D-Cinema Roll-out Accelerates, Mon, 8 Aug 2011 14:20:01 -0700
**[AMIA-L] Reply: It’s the Beginning of the End for 35mm as Worldwide D-Cinema Roll-out Accelerates, Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:33:39 +0100
***Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books. New York, 1973.

I recall a summer job I had in college painting dorm rooms. In one building I was given a special can of paint and tasked with putting a fresh coat on all of the fire extinguisher wall units. The paint was a bright, bright red and immediately reminded me of the color of fake blood used in low budget films from the 70s, especially of the exploitation ilk. This is the red of red hots (both kinds), Red #5 (the dangerous kind, from the 50s), and Glacé fruit (the kind of fruit that is actually bad for you).

It’s a conundrum — how does one delineate the point at which something fake looks more fake than other fake things — but something about the Somebody worked a few days to research and painstakingly recreate the correct shade and splatter pattern of real blood-ness of it all just…looks…fake.

I don’t want to make this a rant about the coldness of digital versus the warmth of analog — though I do tend to admire the ingenuity and physicality of practical effects — because computer-aided effects are not across the board bad. The issue is, more so, one of shifting perceptions of what constitutes realism and what one, experientially, accepts as the norm in visual representation.

I think here of a Cosby Show episode where the adults discuss how things like rubber bats and other haunted house-y type things in movies were enough to scare the bejeezus out of them, but kidsthesedays just roll their eyes at it all. Damn you, Rudy!

To reiterate, the problem we face is what people are currently accustomed to viewing versus what people were previously accustomed to viewing. Unfortunately, in terms of moving images, these shifts are gradual and not always noticeable in degrees, like how when you see a child every day you don’t exactly note their growth over a year, but if you see them once a year they will look very different. As a simple example, placed side by side, the differences in visual quality between VHS and DVD are noticeable but can be difficult to articulate, unlike, say, comparing classical portraiture to non-representational art. Additionally, the less we view VHS the more distant our memory of the particulars of the format become. We feel things should look like DVD or Blu-Ray or H.264 now because those are what we experience.

Trying to define why “This fakery is more fake looking than this fakery” is similar to trying to define why “This format looks better than this format”. The issues compound when one takes prosumer and professional formats into consideration. The limited scope of direct exposure makes it more difficult for a wider audience to differentiate. When dealing with preservation reformatting, the challenge becomes maintaining the look of the VHS or whatever source format, but also helping people who do not recall or never experienced the qualities of the source understand that this DVD ought not to look like what they may expect. Binder formulations, monitors, playback machines, codecs, and such are the bristle, paint, and canvas types of video that produce their own quality and have their own aesthetic, which qualities need to be maintained to the best degree possible.

In short, as a human of a certain age with a certain exposure to methodologies of creating bloody messes, I maintain a certain sense of what appears the “correct” presentation format, leaning more towards Karo syrup and less towards AfterEffects. This isn’t to say that one’s taste or eye cannot change — it does shift, as in the case of video — but there is a loss in the shift. A fading of memory, an alteration in perception, a dispersal of molecules. Inscrutable, intangible things that we cannot fully grasp onto in order to keep in place. Things that go away, we know not how and we know not where.

But then again, it was AMC Original Series The Walking Dead I was watching. I guess there are certain things we don’t want sticking around forever.

— Joshua Ranger

Ah, youth! And the entertainment options of the low income college student! Anyway, one of the actually interesting things about watching Lawrence Welk was seeing all of the patterns and repetitions that occurred over the years, or even within shows: Costumes and sets re-used, camera angles and edits (and the same exact camera progression used for the first half of a song and the second half), and the Welkian set of standard songs.

Unfortunately, the same way that costumes get a little threadbare over the years, the songs, too, seemed to follow a natural rate of decay. Whereas it may start out as something actually pleasant, like this:

Neil LeVang

It would soon degrade into well intentioned kitsch, if a blandly literalized interpretation. Though you can’t help but love the twins:

Otwell Twins and Aldridge Sisters

And then finally, it stumbles into full blown Las-Vegas-pills-and-booze-bloat:

Guy and Ralna

Not sure if this is the kind of education that PBS meant to provide. Let’s leave it off with some Norma to bring a little effervescence back.

— Joshua Ranger

Portions To Be Archived: Skilled house bands
Portions To Not Be Archived: The idea that Tom Jones needs show girls to be interesting; Disinterested cover songs based on lazy, cliched selection process

Portions To Be Archived: Knowledge that if you take care of your body it will take care of you; Knowledge of the great electronics available in Argentina
Portions To Not Be Archived: Potentially world-destroying amount of sexy on one stage — remember the lessons of multiple copies in geographically separate locations

Portions To Be Archived: Crazy musical production numbers
Portions To Not Be Archived: Crazy musical production numbers; White jump suits and levers; Pirate shirts

Portions To Be Archived: Those moves!
Portions To Not Be Archived: My former memories of Mr. Jones in concert (circa mid-90s) as not so spry

— Joshua Ranger

Jive Turkey

aka Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes “It’s a turf battle over the mean streets of Harlem between Italian mobsters and the black hoodlums living in the neighborhood run by “Big Tony” (Frank DeKove). The fighting becomes intense as each side tries to push the other out, with both groups bringing in their best hit men. Watch for a brutal transvestite mobster who kills with her high-heeled shoes.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

— Joshua Ranger

Due to the susceptibility and challenges of both digital and analog carriers, data must be periodically moved from one carrier to another within a preservation process. When analog data is migrated from its original carrier to a new digital carrier, the analog data is ultimately transformed through the process of sampling. Challenges are then posed to authenticating the accuracy of such a migration. Despite the perceptual exactness of an analog source to its digital copy, the analog data and the digital data are never exactly the same. However, in the realm of file-based digital-to-digital migration, exactness can be achieved and evaluated. Within the entirely file-based environment, checksums and data comparison tools can verify that two copies are exact matches or reveal their deviation in a way that is not feasible between analog and digital environments.

In the States, VHS won out as the popular format, and Betamax is lamented as the great whatcouldhavebeen of video freex everywhere… everywhere here. However, in other places, Betamax had a much stronger hold and is looked back on as the format of 80s nostalgia. To wit:

(Rough translation of the title lyrics: “Back then there was only Betamax” [i.e., things were much simpler back in the day])

Wala pa nung, indeed, my friends. Wala. pa. nung.

— Joshua Ranger

I tend to favor the latter evaluation because, outside of a thesis on the socio-aesthetics of online catalogs, I haven’t had much chance to apply all that book-learnin’. Perhaps that’s why I was excited to read Virginia Heffernan’s recent Sunday Times Magazine piece, “How HDTV Scrambles Beauty Standards”. The problem of HDTV exposing every line, splotch, make-up-covered-blemish, facial hair, and — especially — plastic surgery scar is nothing new. What I found novel in Ms. Heffernan’s article was the discussion of how cultural beauty standards may be shaped in part by available image-producing technology. She suggests that stars such as Katharine Hepburn and Harry Belafonte who were admired for more angular looks (high cheekbones, regal noses) would not have become as well established in an HD world as they were when their star image was viewed in the realm of more contrast-y black and white shot by cinematographers well-versed in established lighting and capture techniques that simultaneously highlighted and softened. She also points out that people with contrasting coloring (dark hair, pale skin, ruddy cheeks) do not look good in HD. Stars like Montgomery Clift and Ava Gardner looked dreamy in Technicolor — their extreme coloring playing to the heightened unreal reality of the color process — but those same features can look garishly unreal in the so-real-it-hurts reflection of HD.

So what does look good in HD? Heffernan’s argument is that the format favors the monochromatic, pointing out Jessica Alba as a potential ideal. The article suggests a positive aspect of this (Alba comes from an extremely mixed cultural heritage; the ‘browning’ of America is becoming an accepted norm) but there is also a subtextual negative in her use of language: the general even-ing out of visual / artistic culture to a middle-of-the-road banality where contrast and originality are subsumed by an overwhelming sameness.

Admittedly, from the ground, that point of view sometimes seems to be the case. They don’t make stars / movies like they used to… The culture is growing dumb and lazy… Nobody cares about skill and quality… These concerns are well known. More well known than one might know. The same complaints about backsliding, the weakening of our character and culture, and the continuing downward spiral of America have been repeatedly expressed since the colonial period, most likely since the second colonizing ship hit shore. (And I won’t even get into the long-standing theories of degeneration from the purity of Native cultures or Buffonian generational decay engendered by the atmosphere of the Americas.)

I’m afeared that I’m starting to sound like a rambling old fuddy-duddy, discontented that they just don’t make ‘em like they used to. However, I run at the mouth so because I feel it’s important to be aware of these historical trends and cognizant of technological and aesthetic shifts in modes of expression. Reformatting is a fact of audiovisual preservation, and within that process is the demand to maintain the highest possible fidelity to the originating image / signal / object / etc.

The desire in this process is to keep that original looksound, the aesthetic quality tied to the historical development of the medium and related creative processes. The problem is that, first, these fidelicious attempts have a certain reliance upon human memory and human perception as part of determining the success of reformatting. This fact is what it is. Second to consider is the problem that started this whole post (remember a few paragraphs back?): the fact that technologies change and it is not always possible to capture the same intangible quality from generation to generation.

This is why we at AVPS always recommend that important originals be maintained after a preservation reformatting project — a better technology for image / signal capture may come along later; it is necessary to quality check originals versus new derivatives; etc. — but it is also why we recommend maintaining or achieving the ability, where feasible, to play back original assets. Without being able to see and assess how a particular format from a particular time period presented itself, we lose the cultural knowledge of how that content originally looked and why it was considered of aesthetic value. This isn’t to say that all people must only watch films or videos in their original format, but rather, that that original display be available so that later caretakers reformatting to new presentation technologies can develop means to emulate older styles… Or so that later content creators can learn from and artistically emulate the skills of the past. We see this in the development of .mp3 where the ultimate goal is to revise the format to the point that it can reproduce instrumental music and lower range tones as well as analog formats can. HD is here, and we need to demand that display devices be able to recreate the sharpness, contrast, and range of tones (or limits thereon) that older formats / displays produced, and we also need to expect that creators will become equally skilled with using the new medium.

Things are never the same. They never will be. Until they are, we all have the responsibility to make sure that the way things were remains an accessible knowledge source.

— Joshua Ranger

What I stumbled upon next was a video by the same performer, one which brought back a flood of memories:

Thing is, you see, “Thunderstruck” was my graduating class song in high school. I’m not quite sure how that came to pass. It was not a new song at the time, nor had it been incredibly popular like the class songs from preceding years. I’m not saying I disliked the song, but I think my submissions for consideration at that time included some Pink Floyd song, “Staying Alive” arranged for kazoos, and then probably something like Mozart’s Requiem or some such. All I’m saying is, there must have been an arranged effort to nominate an old AC/DC song to commemorate the greatest years of our lives.

It’s true that the past is a foreign country, but so, it sometimes seems now, is my hometown.

Or maybe not. I started looking around for other videos related to “Thunderstruck” and, judging from the number I viewed, found that it’s quite the touchstone for expressing one’s emotions and one’s virtuosity (that is one hell of a guitar riff). I found some fun stuff:

But things quickly degenerated from there:

(Oh, PBS, you have the greatest power to disappoint!)

And then it just started to hurt:

So all in all I had an accelerated ride over the smooth-to-pot-holed road through the neighborhoods of nostalgia, ironic appropriation, kitsch, and detritus. What I learned on my evening vacation was, really, you’ve got to hold onto the night, hold onto the memories, because, although we’ve come to the end of the road, these are days we’ll remember.

Oh — I also learned that, in spite of everything, bagpipes still kinda rock.

— Joshua Ranger