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  • "Born Digital"—Raised an Orphan?Acquiring Digital Media through an Analog Paradigm
  • Dylan Cave (bio)

The threat of the replacement of film with digital imaging technologies creates a dilemma for audiovisual archives in pragmatic and ethical terms. Basic assumptions about archival strategy and methodology are shaken by the possibility of film obsolescence. "Nitrate won't wait"—the slogan that summarized the belief that copying to preserve is the only viable method of safeguarding archival content—is still remembered, but archives are now faced with a shift in technology that ruptures traditional ways of working and questions the long-term rationale of their activity.

Digital formats are increasingly championed in the wider cultural environment as the dominant moving image technology, creating a challenge for archives with large physical collections of analog material. A public-sector organization such as the British Film Institute (BFI) National Archive has a collection that surpasses resources for total preservation by duplication.1 It also continues to acquire contemporary material on analog formats. As a result, it is caught between maintaining a duty of care to material already held and balancing this with the need to preserve both digital and analog acquisitions in the future. Between these two concerns—looking after existing collections and planning to look after future formats and media—is the day-to-day activity of acquisition in the present.

In a period when change is expected, but hard to anticipate, the archive has to continue its work. Film obsolescence is, for the moment, in the future, but "born digital" media is here now. This paper is an attempt to outline the issues facing those archives that need to provide adequate care for digitally born media as well as the thousands of film and analog videotape elements already held in their collections, and to address the technical and cultural strategies necessary in facing the prospect of a future without film.

The threat of film obsolescence presents itself to the archives in both physical and cultural ways. To date, it is the cultural argument—film's value in the digital age—on which the archives have been fighting. Recently, however, the physical aspect to this threat has sharpened, beginning with the phasing out of several lines of Eastman Kodak stock. In May 2005, for example, the ending of Super 8 Kodachrome color reversal was significant among a section of its aficionados, because its popularity proved meaningless to economic demand.2

More generally, digital technology is now emerging as an alternative format for the creation and distribution of cinema. In the United Kingdom, the Odeon and Empire Cinema chains have announced full installation of digital equipment across selected sites and now regularly present digital performances of new releases.3 Compared to a similarly seismic industrial change—the introduction of synchronized sound—the exhibitor's shift to digital technology as a delivery format has been relatively slow; years [Begin Page 2] have passed since it was introduced to the production sector. Although the promise of digital projection has long implied the end of film from mainstream exhibition, the resistance for change within the cinema industry—combined with the aesthetic differences of digital projection—has created uncertainty about its immediacy. It is only now that the change in theatrical distribution from film prints to digital cinema is gathering pace. Given that the majority of motion picture stockmanufacture is for release printing, a significant decline in demand is likely to precipitate a decline in film manufacture. This is the threat of film obsolescence that provokes anxiety in the archive community. David Walsh's article, "Do We Need Film?" posed in the Open Forum section of FIAF's Journal of Film Preservation, recently summarized the worry:

Unhappily, what we can't do without film, is find any reliable way of preserving our images. The imminent obsolescence of film is an absolute calamity-in-waiting for the archive of the future . . . Passive preservation of digital material is simply not possible . . . the twin perils of physical deterioration and obsolescence will ensure that we cannot turn our backs on it for a moment . . . Film may decompose and fade, but at least it can be stabilised through good storage.4

This is the fundamental...

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