So is it in the public domain?
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
#12This 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 storage area, much less one for nitrate films.
Ah-ha! The 2020 report at https://www.eastman.org/sites/default/files/GEM_AnnualReport... mentions they had a "A Tour of the Nitrate Vault".
Using '"Rochester film museum" Nitrate Vault' as my search terms I found the article "Rochester's best kept secret: A nitrate film collection" at https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/lifestyle/2016/04... with several images in the interesting story, with details like "Only three other facilities in the U.S. can legally store this volatile film stock" and "Every five years staff goes through 20,000 reels to make sure they are not decomposing", and the quote “Because of the great amount of silver content in the emulsion, nitrate films have dark, rich blacks, and more detailed gradation. The sharpness of the edges are so crisp and there’s so much depth, it’s almost like 3-D.”
More images via DDG image search: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=%22Rochester+film+museum%22...
Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault
#13This 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? Does film have a smell? People can reference a data center but most probably have never been in one. They all have a slightly dusty smell, there’s the whine of fans and HVAC, the…
You (involuntarily) triple commented
Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault
#14> She said that in 2016 she asked archivists across the country if they had any copies of the film. She heard back later that year about one museum, the Eastman, which had a decaying copy in a vault.
> The Eastman had listed the film in its extensive online archives but the museum has so many reels that it hadn’t paid attention to “The Oath of the Sword.”
Who considered this film "Lost Forever"? It appears to just have been rare and largely forgotten. It is not listed here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/7,200_Lost_U.S._Silent_Featur...
Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault
#15It's great that they saved this one, but how many more films like this are rotting in vaults? > the museum has so many reels that it hadn’t paid attention to “The Oath of the Sword.”
Not even just films. The BBC was notorious for taping over old programmes to save money on tape and thus there's early episodes of Doctor Who that are lost along with some classics such as episodes of Hancock's Half Hour.
I'd suggest that tapes should be digitised and that way they're far easier for the public to watch and categorise them so that other hidden gems can be found again.
Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault
#16This 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…
Some are preservation vaults but the originals were fire containment boxes (basically) because that film burns insanely well.
Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault
#17It's great that they saved this one, but how many more films like this are rotting in vaults? > the museum has so many reels that it hadn’t paid attention to “The Oath of the Sword.”
Not even just films. The BBC was notorious for taping over old programmes to save money on tape and thus there's early episodes of Doctor Who that are lost along with some classics such as episodes of Hancock's Half Hour. I'd suggest that tapes should be digitised and that way they're far easier for the public to watch and categorise them so that other hidden gems can be found again.
Are you willing to pay for it?
I've been involved in getting the archives of a small-time newspaper digitized and it's not cheap in terms of either time or money.
There's a near-infinite amount of decaying and fairly rare analog media out there--and much that has been lost as companies have gone out of business, etc. It's not realistic to digitize all of it.
Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault
#18So is it in the public domain?
If it's from 1914, presumably.
Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault
#19This 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…
Some are preservation vaults but the originals were fire containment boxes (basically) because that film burns insanely well.
Original film was basically nitrocellulose - also known as smokeless powder, guncotton, etc.
So a typical reel was actually a bomb without a detonator.
Re: A 1914 silent film considered lost was rescued from a vault
#20> She said that in 2016 she asked archivists across the country if they had any copies of the film. She heard back later that year about one museum, the Eastman, which had a decaying copy in a vault. > The Eastman had listed the film in its extensive online archives but the museum has so many reels that it hadn’t paid attention to “The Oath of the Sword.” Who considered this film "Lost Forever"? It appears to just ha…
An alternative title for the article, such as "A Professor Requests a Copy of a Film from Archive", just lacks a certain je ne sais quoi (sensationalism and inaccuracy).