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A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

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Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#61

Post by eesmith »

eesmith wrote: post #12
speakspokespok wrote: post #6

This is tangential to the article but when ever I read about a lost film being found there’s always mention of how it was found in a vault. I can’t help but always try to imagine what that is. Can anyone describe what these vaults are like? People can reference a data center but most probably have never been in one. However I’m very familiar with the slightly dusty smell, the whine of fans and HVAC, the odd people th…

The article said it was in the George Eastman Museum. The site has a virtual tour at https://www.eastman.org/virtual-tours which includes a link to the "Technology Vault", at https://goo.gl/maps/CXX9qDt7JemuASss5 . It uses Google Maps Street View to move around inside the vault. EDIT: having gone through it, that vault appears to contain machines - "technology". I didn't see anything which looked like a large film st…

Video tour of the Eastman nitrate vault at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qcDoWau0EU .

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#62

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #49
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you willing to pay for it? I'd be happy for some of my tax money to go to a historical preservation project. Maybe it'd be feasible to get members of the public to volunteer to do some of the digitisation - that should reduce costs, but I can imagine it would be difficult to keep track of where all the originals are and quality of the digitisation.

Some of your tax money—assuming you pay US federal taxes—is! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Film_Preservation_Fou...

I'm in the UK, so I'm not contributing towards that.

We've got the British Film Institute (https://www.bfi.org.uk/) but that's a charity and part funded by funds from the National Lottery (that I don't play as it seems to be a voluntary tax on the poor).

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#63

Post by eesmith »

nukeman wrote: post #56
eesmith wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article said it was in the George Eastman Museum. The site has a virtual tour at https://www.eastman.org/virtual-tours which includes a link to the "Technology Vault", at https://goo.gl/maps/CXX9qDt7JemuASss5 . It uses Google Maps Street View to move around inside the vault. EDIT: having gone through it, that vault appears to contain machines - "technology". I didn't see anything which looked like a large film st…

I wonder what the other three places are that store nitrate film? I would guess the National Archives and some facility in Southern California. Where else though?

I found five others in the US:

UCLA Film and Television Archive in Santa Clarita, with 120 vaults - https://www.dailynews.com/2019/08/12/uclas-film-television-a...

PRO-TEK’s nitrate film services, "PRO-TEK is one of the few places left in the world that manages nitrate film vaults for clients. The nitrate vaults are located several miles away from our Burbank campus." - https://protekvaults.com/blog/nitrate-film-preservation/

The notes about one of the nitrate shows at https://www.cinematary.com/writing/2019/5/9/2019-nitrate-pic... says:

> Putting this festival on requires a great deal of inter-archival cooperation--prints were sourced from across the United States (the Big Five archives for nitrate are the Academy, UCLA, MoMa, the Library of Congress, and the Eastman itself) and from international archives, notably the Swedish Film Institute (supplied Strandhugg), KAVI in Helsinki (supplied Ihmiset suviyössä), and the Austrian Film Museum (supplied The Nevadan)

Using those as search terms:

The Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center at Wright-Patterson AFB. "Today, under the stewardship of M/B/RS, the nitrate film holdings, dating from the 1890's through 1950, exceed 100 million feet." - https://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/mpcc.html

I verified that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nitrate film, because https://www.oscars.org/film-archive/collections/iron-mountai... lists some of them, but I wasn't able to figure out where they are stored.

MoMA has nitrate prints. From https://clui.org/ludb/site/museum-modern-art-film-archive :

> There are only a few film archives in the country that store nitrate film, and they include the major film archives in the nation: the two Packard archives (Culpeper, Virginia, and Santa Clarita, California); the George Eastman House’s Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center in Chili, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art Film Archive, in Hamlin, Pennsylvania. MoMA’s collection is the largest private film collection in the world. Most of it is located in this purpose built 33,000 square foot, two-building, partially underground compound on 37 acres of woodland and meadows in the Pocono Mountains. Also known as the Cesleste Bartos Film Preservation Center.

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#65

Post by naikrovek »

hexane360 wrote: post #51
naikrovek wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about a shock wave, but a pulse wave. would you feel the event from a reasonable distance? true shock waves will generally kill you because they move faster than sound.

I can't quickly find any resources that distinguishes between a 'shock wave' and a 'pulse wave' in the context of explosions. Do you have some resources? If you're defining pulse wave as a sub-sonic pressure wave, deflagarations can definitely produce those, even with relatively poor fuels (e.g. wood dust). Why do you expect nitrocellulose couldn't? Not enough gas volume?

a shock wave is propelled outward by the explosion itself; a shock wave is part of the explosion, the actual gases produced by the explosion being pushed outward. a shock wave moves faster than sound and is usually fatal if you are struck by one.

pulse waves move at the speed of sound and are not propelled by the explosion. an air compressor tank rupturing would produce a pulse wave. pulse waves alone are not fatal to humans, though you definitely feel them and hear them.

Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault

#66

Post by hexane360 »

naikrovek wrote: post #65
hexane360 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't quickly find any resources that distinguishes between a 'shock wave' and a 'pulse wave' in the context of explosions. Do you have some resources? If you're defining pulse wave as a sub-sonic pressure wave, deflagarations can definitely produce those, even with relatively poor fuels (e.g. wood dust). Why do you expect nitrocellulose couldn't? Not enough gas volume?

a shock wave is propelled outward by the explosion itself; a shock wave is part of the explosion, the actual gases produced by the explosion being pushed outward. a shock wave moves faster than sound and is usually fatal if you are struck by one. pulse waves move at the speed of sound and are not propelled by the explosion. an air compressor tank rupturing would produce a pulse wave. pulse waves alone are not fatal t…

I have two questions: - If pulse waves 'aren't propelled by the explosion', what propels them?

- Why would seeing a pulse wave in nitrocellulose prove that it's an explosive (as you claim), if you're defining pulse waves as any sonic wave?

I'm having a hard time understanding your position, or your reasoning for why nitrocellulose isn't an explosive. I also still haven't been able to find any resources that corroborate what you're saying.

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