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Facing the Digital Dilemma
Are you creating films to stand the test of time?
(Page 2)
“The Digital Dilemma” report seems to have struck a nerve, says Maltz. “It has sparked a lot of interest and raised many questions. That was one of our primary goals. We wanted to make people both inside and outside of the industry more aware of this vitally important issue.”
The research project was launched during the winter of 2005 after Phil Feiner, chairman of the Academy’s Digital Motion Picture Archival Project Committee, proposed a summit conference with studio archivists and technology leaders and their counterparts in other organizations. The list included government agencies, the health care industry, universities and astronomers.
“It was the first time that the chief technology officers and archivists from the studios and other peer public institutions, including the Library of Congress, UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), met to discuss this issue,” Shefter says.
“The Academy is not an advocacy organization,” Maltz stresses. “We brought together people who know and care about the importance of archiving our heritage to discuss the issues and to determine the questions that needed to be asked and answered. More than 70 experts were subsequently interviewed. ‘The Digital Dilemma’ report is a summary of our findings with the goal of shedding light on an issue of general concern, so appropriate steps can be planned and taken.”
The dimensions of the challenge can be found in an annual report produced by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). More than 600 films were released to cinemas in 2006, approximately 91 percent of which were produced in 35mm format, with another three percent in Super 16 format and the remaining six percent on digital media. The unofficial estimate is that at least 350 of those films were digitally mastered, and while there are notable exceptions, the number is increasing annually.
“It is important for producers to understand that the digital master files being generated today are not an archival medium that you can take off the shelf in five to 10 years with a reasonable expectation that content won’t be lost,” Shefter observes.
The Academy report cites a consensus that, because of the degradation of signals and obsolescence of formats, digital media should be migrated every four to five years. It also cautions that a digital media hard drive can “freeze up” in as little as two years and that DVD files will eventually degrade—about half are not expected to last for longer than 15 years.
Shefter calculates that the average feature produced on film generates enough edited negative, B-roll outtakes, YCMs, interpositive film and sound tapes to fill 300 boxes along with the script and notes. The Academy report cites the annual cost for archiving those records at $1,059.
The report also cites case studies which indicate that it requires more than two petabytes (2,000 terabytes) of computer files to store all the image information generated for a movie produced in a high resolution digital format. A single terabyte is equal to a trillion bytes of computer data. The Academy report tabs the annual cost for archiving all relevant elements of a motion picture produced in digital format at $208,569 per year. It also states that a typical digital master file can be archived at an annual cost of $12,514.
“It is reasonably affordable for independent producers to archive a digital master file and protect it with YCMs,” Shefter observes. “The question that it raises is: What is going to happen in the future when someone wants to re-release a director’s cut of your movie with outtakes in the DVD format of the future?”
Feiner says that “The Digital Dilemma” was the first chapter in the quest to find practical solutions to the issues defined in the report. The next step is a continuation of the dialogue with the goal of creating universal practices and standards for digital archiving. The alternative is stated near the end of the report: “If we allow technological obsolescence to repeat itself, we are tied either to continuously increasing costs, or worse, the failure to save important assets.”
The conclusion of Cieply’s article paints an even more vivid picture: “We could be watching Wallace Beery long after more contemporary images are gone.”
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by Okey oyunu on 5/12/11 at 6:02 am
Thanks.
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- Comment by alarabforum on 6/18/11 at 4:41 pm
Thank you for your excellent article and wonderful thank you for the valuable information Technical revolution
- Comment by Elizabeth88 on 7/28/11 at 4:47 pm
I couldn’t imagine the amount of work it went into making that vault and it is important to preserve that films. I know that with San Diego Junk Removal they will bring out as many trucks they need to get rid of debris and rubble to move away as much as possible and in a timely manner.
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This story was published in the Future of Moviemaking 2008 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Facing the Digital Dilemma / Are you creating films to stand the test of time?
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