Jack Dalton Brandt, “Film Archives in The Digital Sphere”
Mentor: Tami Williams, English

Orphan films can be defined as non-theatrical moving pictures, typically including educational films, travelogues, and ethnographic recordings. Despite being recognized as orphans, the growing collection of two hundred and fifty 16-millimeter film prints, housed in the Film Studies Archive, are far from lacking guardians. The mass of prints did however require the care and attention of individuals to ensure their preservation for future generations’ use. To guarantee a spot in history for each film, and the voices present within them, a series of restoration and preservation methods are applied to every print. The films are first cleaned and transferred into new archival safe reels and housings to prevent any further degradation to the medium caused by external environmental factors. It is during this process that the, often missing, titles and information regarding the films contents are searched for, and then logged within the archive’s database. The print is then ready to be housed in a temperature and humidity-controlled room until a further inspection takes place, at which point broken sprocket holes are fixed, cracks are sealed, and projection safe film leaders are added. All methods of restoration are handled in the least destructive way possible, exhausting all reversible options before making any cuts, or splices, to the medium. Unlike digital media, any alterations to celluloid film prints cannot be undone. The archive’s goal is to send as much of the original print into the future as possible. Upon completion of physical restoration, the next step is to duplicate the physical medium into an un-ageing digital file, extending the life of the print indefinitely through the digital sphere. The importance of an archive, and its expansion into the web, is more relevant than ever amidst global digitization efforts, as a result of pandemic working and media viewing conditions.