What is Film Preservation?
2007/3/1 Thursday | filmpres | trackbackWhat is the oldest film you’ve ever seen? Do you remember how you felt about it? Moving Image is a magical art. The feeling you get is always so real and touches us all, even if the film was made long before we were born, and sometimes films even change our lives. Why, by the way, can we still see such old films?
It’s because the film survived. Survived not because of the films’ own efforts, but behind the films’ survival so much effort has been put in for such a long time to keep them. Like other art forms such as paintings or architecture, in order to pass the films on as historical cultural heritage to future generations we have to undertake various long-term tasks to protect them from disasters like deterioration and loss. We suppose “Film Preservation” means these kinds of tasks as a whole.
1. Nitrate Won’t Wait
Film Preservation in this website means specifically the preservation of motion picture films.
Motion picture films consist of the plastic base side with a gelatin emulsion coating. Up until the 1950s, 35mm (theatrical use) films’ base was nitrate, which is highly flammable. Though it is said that nitrate has the greatest look and strength, unfortunately they are rarely shown in Japan anymore.
Film suffers damage every time it runs through the projector, such as scratches, broken perforations, and dirt. But it doesn’t mean that if you keep it in the can and leave it, a film stays in good condition. Especially under high temperatures and high humidity, films deteriorate without being touched.
At first, there’s mirroring, which means shiny stains appear on the surface of parts of the film. Then the whole film changes to a brownish color and shrinks unpredictably, which makes it wavy and curled. At the same time, the emulsion becomes sticky, and sometimes honey-like substances form on the roll. Finally, the roll becomes stiff like a stone, and it crumbles like sand. As the deterioration advances, the burning point gets lower, so the danger increases. Nitrate fires were recorded in so many theaters, labs, or film vaults all over the world, and countless films burned.
For this reason, nitrate was replaced by the acetate base called safety film. “Nitrate Won’t Wait” became the slogan of film archivists and to make a safety copy of surviving nitrate meant film preservation at the time. However…..,
2. Vinegar Syndrome
The safety copies in the early days had some problems such as, for example tinting or toning techniques, the original format, the sound information - silent/sound - were sometimes neglected during copying, and after copying, nitrate films were not always kept properly. Preservation techniques were not as good as nowadays, and deterioration was also printed through onto the safety print. In a lot of cases, the process of preservation was not recorded in detail.
These are not the only problems. In fact, it was revealed that acetate base deteriorates faster and more severely than nitrate. This deterioration brings a strong vinegar odour so it’s called “Vinegar Syndrome”. It’s possible to slow down the speed of the deterioration, but impossible to stop it. Once it gets smelly, you can never heal it as before.
Also color fading is a serious problem; you even find films from the 70s to 80s fading to pink if you don’t store them properly. In the 1990s, the base of the release prints became very strong polyester. There’s not yet enough information about deterioration of polyester. Rumor has it that the surface cracks, but nobody’s sure.
3. Cold & Dry
The suitable macro environment for film preservation is simply low temperature and low humidity.
The ideal temperature is said to be 4 to 10 degrees centigrade and relative humidity 20-40%. To store films in stable conditions is also important. Storing films in a climate-controlled vault and carrying out regular inspection work is the bottom line. In addition, it’s necessary to think about the material of film cans and cores, and about how to store films; emulsion/base in or out, head/tails out or in, use a desiccant (Fuji’s Keepwell is common) or not…, such concerns about micro environment are also necessary. Also, a state of the art fire hazard facility is important.
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