Article

Live Taping

If the New York Times does indeed veer back towards a subscription fee or micro-payment model for their online content, I’m starting to feel more and more like I’m going to have to pay up — or at least maybe see if there’s a micro-subscription option for receiving the articles I want (movie reviews, articles about running, mentions of taxonomies, and anything about salt or chocolate — I’m a man of simple tastes). One of the hooks has been the overall fantastic, innovative work the paper does with interactive and media content, but I also think that a number of their critics are at the top of their games right now. I’ve referenced A.O. Scott several times in other posts, so I’m obviously a fan of his, and I’m always struck by the approach that Technology Columnist David Pogue takes. His review of the iPad was smart, fun, and even-handed, but two recent pieces have been especially pertinent to the work of media archivists. A blog post of his from February on reformatting his MiniDV home videos (“Why We Make Home Videos”) nicely expresses the importance of recorded media in our personal lives and provides some advocacy points for why preservation matters (and why it needs to be tackled sooner than later).

He even says “videos” instead of “movies”! [swoon]

A follow up column on the experience of migrating his MiniDV content (“Moving Taped Past to Hard-Drive Future”) takes a more technical than emotional bent on the process (though it does end with a stirring call-to-arms for everyone to start similar projects). I hope you read the article, but, in short, Pogue ran into some roadblocks with his first plan and had to go back and revise his strategy. I think it’s telling about the challenges involved in audiovisual preservation, especially as we move more into the digital realm, that what seems like a simple process (stick the tape in and let the machines do their work) brought some consternation to a tech expert (and one who gets personal emails from Steve Jobs, none the less). Yes, people should start working on reformatting their personal media collections, but there are a number of avenues, and branches of options off of those avenues, in deciding how to best do it, and not everyone has the resources at hand to help in those decisions.

I guess this is the point, then, where I should bring up some resources for people to consult about the reformatting of DVCam and MiniDV tape. They are touchy formats due to their small size and the makeup of the tape and binder, and it’s true that the formats are trending towards obsolescence, but there’s a lot of unique content out there shot on DV that’s going to need taking care of. David Rice has written a great piece about the ins and outs of migrating DV tapes, expressing the importance of capturing it as a data stream rather than as a video signal (“Digital Tape Preservation Strategy: Preserving Data or Video?”). Additionally, our free and open source DV Analyzer application is a simple tool that anyone can use to review the metadata in the DV data stream that’s carried over during a Firewire migration of DVCam or MiniDV.

(Allow me one geek moment here in response to Pogue’s article: Final Cut Pro can carry over the date and time metadata, but only if the captured stream is not re-transcoded during within the process. This may be accomplished by selecting File>Export or pulling the file from the Capture Scratch directory instead of using the Export>Using Quicktime Conversion option.)

The DV Analyzer tool also identifies and lists error codes in the DV stream that occur during playback. The garbbled video that Pogue mentions is likely a result of error concealment performed by the playback device — most typically misread data in frame being patched up with data from the previous frame — and DV Analyzer would provide the error detection code for those sections that could then be analyzed to see if it can be determined what the cause of the error was. Sometimes this is due to degradation, but often enough these errors are caused by the touchy nature of DV tapes. Many times the same errors will not appear if played through the deck again or run through another deck. Further information can be found at https://www.avpreserve.com/dvanalyzer/what-does-it-analyze/ or under the Case Studies section on the DV Analyzer main page https://www.avpreserve.com/dvanalyzer/.

A final important point from the article is how Pogue’s experience underscores how much we have to monitor and advocate for the tech companies to better understand and maintain the capabilities that enable preservation and access. The idea that professional film and television editors don’t need to know the date of when something was shot is fairly ludicrous. I doubt a news program would feel all right using footage for a story they can’t properly identify, or that film editors wouldn’t want to be able to find content from a certain date of shooting. Outside of this, the date stamp, timecode, and other metadata are absolutely necessary for the authenticity of archival materials, especially in matters of research or, increasingly, in legal matters (see this Times article about metadata as evidence). It’s maybe a tad idealistic to think we can always have an effect on corporate decisions, but a positive point is that a little vocal activity did do some good in getting Firewire ports back after Apple decided to remove them. Sure Firewire dependent devices were severely decreasing in manufacture, but there is so much out there that has been produced on those devices, and the future ability to access or capture that content for preservation extends well beyond the end of manufacturing.

— Joshua Ranger

You Have Chosen…Poorly

Sometimes I wonder if I suffer from a rare neurotic-ological disorder, one that might be termed Tom’sRestaurantaphobia — the fear of or inability to have a regular or favorite restaurant. Certainly there have been restaurants I’ve enjoyed very much and frequented over the years, each with 3-5 standby dishes I could happily and repeatedly select from based on my mood. But then something happens, and I start to fret about my patterns. Maybe I feel the staff starts to know me too well and looks down on my taste or lack of imagination. Perhaps I feel like I haven’t sufficiently explored the more esoteric corners of the menu where the really good food resides. Maybe I start to feel like too many other people start to like the restaurant as well, the experience just isn’t the same anymore, and it’s time to find something less defiled.

Or perhaps this isn’t such a peculiar condition at all. Perhaps I’m just…a critic!

Oh what a pitiful life I have wrought for myself.

Though, really, these behaviours I describe are characteristics generally ascribed to Critics — often as a few of the (manymany) given reasons people despise or denigrate such practitioners. A.O. Scott had a great apologia in the Times last week on the place of criticism and critics in the culture (“A Critic’s Place, Thumb and All”). Considering that it was syndicated and scheduled at 3 o’clock AM Sundays in many markets, you may not have heard that Scott was one of the team who took over a revamped “At the Movies” (the show Siskel & Ebert started). You may have been more likely to hear that the show has been canceled after its season ends in August. The associated post facto consternation and outpouring of appreciation has been fluttering around the internets lately.

Ah, the more things change, the more habits of mind stay the same.

Regardless, Scott is not bitter or complaining about the cancellation, rather he takes the experience, and the general demise of full time critics industry wide, and turns it into a clear statement of the Critic not as cultural definer/guardian of the gates, but as an inquisitor and conversation starter. In his view, critics do not create the canon; they use their training and skills to prompt further review, discussion, and assessment of cultural objects by the wider audience. Their opinions might stick and do some work, or they might be wholly singular and completely off base. Whatever the case, he makes a salient point that the myth of the master taste-maker has been overstated. Culture is a massive, invisible beast that no one person guides. The nature of our minds desires an identifiable causality, but the creature is participatory and collaborative in its movements.

Another reason this article stuck in my mind (the critic has done his work!) is that the, er, criticisms of criticism are similar to the worries people express about the selection process in archives or for prioritization in preservation. There is the ideal that everything must be saved because we don’t know what will be considered significant in the future (“How dare that critic try to tell me what’s of value or not”…), which is balanced by the reality that there are limited resources for doing the work of preservation that may be better used through strategic targeting (I will refrain from my own critical valuations of priority materials here and confine this to a resource issue.).

A major difference here is that if a critic’s positive valuation is initially ignored, it can always be re-evaluated at a later date as long as that object is still accessible for critique. What we select to preserve does have a clear causal effect on the development of culture because the work of criticism and dissemination cannot be done without the original materials/content.

I’m not trying to get (too) high and mighty here about how awesome archivists are, but I am trying to illustrate how important the work we do is to many sectors of society. The argument that archives and preservation should be funded because of some future good is correct, but it is a nebulous concept that does not present easily identifiable results. In order to establish the incentives for continued (and increased!) funding to archives, we need to be able to define more tangible or quantifiable results and our role in enabling those societal/institutional/monetary benefits.

And where might the answer lie for this? Well, I’m still letting the concept stew on my brain’s back burner to assess it further, but, then again, I did already tell you I’m a critic. Maybe I’m just trying to help the conversation along.

— Joshua Ranger

AVPS To Present At JTS, ARSC

April showers bring May conferences.

AudioVisual Preservation Solutions continues their dedicated involvement in the Preservation and Archiving communities with upcoming presentations at the Joint Technical Symposium (JTS) and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) annual conference.

JTS is being held May 2-5, 2010 in Oslo, Norway under this year’s theme “Digital Challenges and Digital Opportunities in Audiovisual Archiving”. AVPS Founder and President, Chris Lacinak and AVPS Senior Consultant, David Rice will be presenting on “Migration of Media-Based Born-Digital Audiovisual Content to Files” along with co-panelist Richard Wright of the BBC. As always, there are a number of fascinating, forward-thinking talks scheduled, and as an added bonus JTS is being held in conjunction with the International Federation of Film Archives Annual Congress set for May 2nd-8th in Oslo. Check out http://www.jts2010.org/ for further details — well worth the trip you can a-fjord it.

Later that month Chris Lacinak will address the ARSC Annual Conference to be held in New Orleans, May 19th-22nd. Chris and Sam Stephenson of The Jazz Loft Project will speak about the history, findings to date, and preservation related to the audio recordings that are part of this revelatory history project. A great story to be told in a fitting location. Reflective of its diverse membership, ARSC always puts together a wide-ranging and informative selection of panels — a conference that should be attended in a great American city that should be visited. More on the ARSC Conference can be found at http://www.arsc-audio.org/conference/

Marshmallowing The Troops

Little known fact: I was a middle school Chubby Bunny champion. A moment of pride? Perhaps not, but when my only other award to that date was 2nd Place Most Interesting Cake in a Cub Scout cake bake off, I was eager to win something.

I have little doubt that the stirring Chubby Bunny competition has since been banned from schools nationwide and any record of it relegated to school newspaper archives…though I hope in my case it hasn’t been (I have never claimed that all archival materials are entirely benign or significant). For those unfamiliar with the particulars, the competitors in this event vie to see who can pack the most marshmallows in one’s mouth while maintaining the ability to fully vocalize “chubby bunny”.

Like I says…

I guess I have marshmallows on the mind (though not on the tongue) in part because I’ve almost made it through another October to April confluence of my formerly beloved holiday themed chocolate covered marshmallow treats (May to December romances ain’t got nothing quite so bittersweet as that relationship). The other reason is because I caught this little (Stay) puff piece on YouTube about The Marshmallow Test, an experiment where young children were presented with a marshmallow and then given the option of eating it or of waiting 15 minutes and then receiving an additional marshmallow:

Two things immediately struck me about this experiment — besides, that is, the memory sensation of gooey sugar melting on my tongue. First was the fact that in the original experiment referenced by the news story the children were tracked to age 18 and it was found that those who waited out the 15 minutes were more likely display the greater levels of self-discipline and focus that lead to life success than those who did not. I think this speaks very well to the idea that the ability to plan and conceptualize future events and goals is an integral part to one’s overall wellness or success. Second to stand out was the association in the results of the test with the idea of instant gratification, of the mindset that what can be gained now is worth more than a greater, extensible future gain that results from more immediate short term investment.

This mindset is a major hurdle in the advocacy and support for archiving and preservation funding. As the excellent Blue Ribbon Task Force report Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-Term Access to Digital Information points out (Read it! http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf), there is great economic and cultural benefit to the preservation of materials. However, despite those benefits, there has been an overall lack of clearly defined statements outlining the value of preservation in ways that sufficiently incentivizes organizations to fund that work.

We feel it in our bones that preserving the cultural and historical record is important — that is why we became archivists in the first place — but the Big Idea capitonyms that drive us (History! The Future! Culture!), while important rallying points, often result in vague arguments for why it is Important to Preserve this Valuable Material. This passion is good, but when an organization is faced with mandates to increase revenues or cut budgets, they are going to grab that marshmallow off the plate, floor, or wherever they can find it in order to attain immediate goals, regardless of the feast of unseen marshmallows down the road that initial fluff could engender.

Our responsibility now is to articulate the reasons why the short-sighted approach to sustaining the use and quality of archival materials is wrong and what the quantifiable benefits of preservation are. These are not necessarily monetary benefits. Economics is a social science, and there are institutional benefits derived from reputation, from fulfilling mission statements, from providing education, and from other identifiable, classifiable achievements. It’s important to point out that this issue will not be addressed solely on an institution by institution basis. The bottom line is the bottom line. But there will also be the need for the incentive provided by a strong Public Policy that outlines practices, gives support, and develops the infrastructure or reasoning that enables organizations to adopt long term preservation strategies. The Blue Ribbon Task Force has hacked a trail through the brush. It’s our time to build on that.

— Joshua “chumby bummy” Ranger

A Distended Note On The Vagaries Of Access And Preservation

(A preliminary note to the following distended note: As a public response to the named article, this was written with a general audience in mind. Please add any forgiveness for basic seeming statements to the usual forgiveness requested for syntactical idiosyncracies.)

To The Editors of The New York Times,

The recent article on the International Amateur Scanning League (“Duplicating Federal Videos for an Online Archive”) was certainly a textbook case of the networked distribution of a news story, seeping outwards through the archival community like a case of vinegar syndrome in a warm room of 1970s acetate stock. I’m sure many others, like myself, appreciate the impetus behind the actions of the IASL to duplicate and distribute DVD-based content from the collections at the National Archives and fully support the idea of the improved ability to access public domain materials. I did not see equal mention of the similarly inspired work done by The Library of Congress Flickr photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/) and YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/LibraryOfCongress), Smithsonian Folkways Radio (http://www.folkways.si.edu/explore_folkways/radio.aspx), and other fine efforts. Oh, The National Archives has a YouTube channel as well (http://www.youtube.com/user/usnationalarchives), but that is neither here nor there (rather, the internet is everywhere).

Getting back off focus, what I feel should be pointed out regarding the work that IASL and others are doing is that access is one reale in the archiving treasure chest of pieces of eight. Another segment is preservation, which itself is a multi-faceted strategy of efforts that includes, among other issues, proper storage, conservation, and transfers or duplications in a series of formats destined for different purposes. It is under this scheme that DVDs or low-resolution videos (like on YouTube) are created as access copies of the original materials. What is considered the preservation master, the item that is stored away for safety, is more typically a film (very stable medium) or uncompressed digital video or some other not terribly easy to access format. While it is possible that at some point in the future only the access copies might remain and they would be considered the de facto preservation master, it’s not really a great idea to use DVDs or low-res video as the main focus of a preservation strategy. Personally I wouldn’t really want to rely on that scratched up copy of The Gods Must Be Crazy IV: Crazy in Hong Kong or a variable quality, cut-up YouTube version of Teen Witch as the sole formats to maintain my cultural heritage.

Continued access to audiovisual materials is dependent on preservation efforts, but preservation doesn’t really mean much without the ability to access. Archiving and preservation can result in flashy access-related outcomes but, as the Times article attempts to define it, they are often achieved at the expense of seemingly unexciting processes*. Preservation work can certainly be a slog at times – as is the case with certain aspects of any career – but it is much more complicated and engaging than Insert Disc Here And Turn Knob For Prize. We audiovisual archivists are proud of our professionalism and of the work we do, and are pleased to see that other people think it’s a cool enough field that they want to emulate us in their free time.

— Joshua Ranger

*(A derivative point in style and substance: Considering the extensive work NARA has done developing guidelines for architectural, storage, and environmental standards in archives, I’m not so sure of the need for anyone to have to ‘dust off’ a DVD before duplicating it as if it were some musty, forgotten item buried in the attic, as the Times would suggest. Thank you.)

Awarding The Unseen

This is not a rant about how less commercial films get little to no Oscar love. As a boy growing up I lived and died by the daily fate of the underdog Portland Trailblazers (especially in their many conflicts with the hated Hollywood cool of the Lakers), but at some point I had to mellow out and accept the minor historical significance of such events…Though just the mention of A.C. Green still gets my blood boiling red.

Nor is this a rave for Best Picture nominee The Blind Side. I haven’t seen it myself, but my dad really enjoyed it. I can’t call that an endorsement as I’m not so sure I agree with many of his cinematic tastes (sorry, dad, still haven’t watched the DVD of Tombstone you sent), but then again, I’m not so sure I would be going to things like Hausu at the IFC or W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism at BAM without having been exposed to his glee at certain films (Raising Arizona, So I Married an Ax Murderer) or without my mom’s feeding of a precocious five-year-old’s interest in Hitchcock, Godzilla, and Universal horror films.

Rather, after looking over this weekend’s nominees, and inspired by Virginia Heffernan’s recent New York Times essay about sound editing (“Sound Logic“), I began thinking about the unseen features of film.

What exactly is unseen in this what we term the most visual of media? Well, following from Heffernan’s piece, there is the obvious influence of the audio elements of a movie. These have a definite effect on the “viewing” experience, though that effect is obviously overlooked, seeing as how the Academy has to haul out the chalkboard every year during that part of the awards presentation to explain why sound design and editing matter.

But there are a whole host of other unseen factors that are a part of our ability to enjoy and access films, ranging from the crew to the film developers (or video migrators[?]) to projectionists. And if you really wanted to burrow down, you could look at the distribution channels and delivery persons and gas station attendants, lens manufacturers, raisin chocolate coaters, personal vegan chef/yoga instructor to the movie star’s dog… Truly, the film industry touches every segment of the American economy!

Seriously, though, there is a lot of unglorified (and unglamorous) works that goes on to produce and maintain the magic of the moving pictures, not the least of which is archiving and preservation. (Sorry. I love my field, but there isn’t a lot of pizazz I can impress people at cocktail parties with in discussing the normalization of first name / last name syntax.)

The simple wrap-up here is the warm fuzzy of, “Hey, we’re all winners and deserve our recognition too,” but that’s the Hollywood ending. Rather, and perhaps this is just a personal outlook meant for my own edification, there may be something positive to being “unseen” in the now. We do our work and focus on the day-to-day. Current cultural recognition does the same, unable to see the long term picture while it is awarding the moving pictures from last year. Our advantage is that we perform the Daily with an eye for the future, with the idea that the results of our work will help maintain a knowledge of the past and our present, a knowledge that will help later generations “see” what is no longer visible to them and what was not necessarily apparent to us.

With that in mind then, ultimately people will see that Sam Bowie vs. Michael Jordan was not such a clearcut pick at the time, that Goobers tasted better than they sound, and, perhaps, that Tombstone is the finest example of the Western genre ever produced.

— Joshua Ranger

Chris Lacinak To Address Blue Ribbon Task Force, Time-Based Art Colloquium

AVPS founder and President Chris https://www.weareavp.com/team/chris-lacinak/Lacinak has been invited to speak at two prestigious media preservation events in Washington, DC in the up-coming weeks.

On Thursday, March 18 Chris will present during a day of talks as part of the Collaborations in Conserving Time-Based Art Colloquium co-sponsored by The Hirshhorn Museum and the Lunder Conservation Center, Smithsonian Institution. The Colloquium will bring together “conservators, artists, curators, exhibition designers, and audiovisual specialists in a series of case studies about collaboration, designed to provoke debate about how we have cared for these works thus far.” Chris’ presentation will address digital file-based audiovisual content and the new challenges and strategies for accessioning and managing that content for preservation and access processes that include acquisition, identification, inspection, documentation, storage, preservation, administration and exhibition.

Other speakers on Thursday will include representatives from the Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The series of panels is free and open to professionals with an interest in conserving time-based art, but advanced registration is required. More information can be found at http://conservetimebasedart.eventbrite.com/

On Thursday, April 1 Chris will be addressing the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access at their symposium A National Conversation on the Economic Sustainability of Digital Information. The BRTF-SDPA was formed in 2007 to explore the challenges to the economic sustainability of digital preservation with an eye towards addressing the requirements for “new models for channeling resources to preservation activities; efficient organization that will make these efforts affordable; and recognition by key decision-makers for the need to preserve, with appropriate incentives to spur action.”

The BRTF-SDPA recently released the report on their findings, Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet:
Ensuring Long-Term Access to Digital Information, and will be conducting the Symposium to further the conversation and focus on “one of the most pressing issues in today’s Information Age: identifying practical solutions to the economic challenges of preserving today’s deluge of valuable digital information.”

The event will feature four “Conversations” with distinguished experts from the academic, private, and public sectors. Chris will be participating in the “Conversation About Commercially-owned Cultural Content” with a special representative from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Other Symposium panelists include Thomas Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy in the Office of Science & Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President of the United States; Daniel E. Atkins, Former Director of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure; Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; William G. Bowen, President Emeritus, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and Hal R. Varian, Chief Economist, Google.

Further details will be announced as they become available. Check out the entire slate at http://brtf.sdsc.edu/symposium.html.

Can Choosing The Wrong Video Format Cause Bodily Harm?

The relationship and interaction between humans and apes (a topic I’m sure my friends have much experience with) was the theme of last week’s episode of Radiolab on WNYC.

Images related to the story Lucy from Radiolab on Vimeo.

The whole episode is, as usual, quite good, but there is a poignant story at the end of the program, starting about 45 minutes in.

There’s a lot of background to the story, but the gist is that one day, two investigators at the Great Ape Trust, a research center that has raised a bonobo named Kanzi to communicate through various means, were arguing. Kanzi saw the argument and afterwards communicated with the director of research that, as the alpha male, he should go and bite the one investigator that had been arguing rather vehemently in order to put him in his place. The director said he couldn’t do that, so Kanzi threatened that if the investigator didn’t go bite the other one, he (Kanzi) would bite him, the man he was commanding to act.

The director didn’t do as he was told and went about his business. 24 hours later, the bonobo was being transported to an outside area. At this point he escaped from his handler and ran to the director’s office, bursting in and then biting his hand. The man ended up almost dying during surgery because of an allergic reaction and ultimately lost a finger.

At this point in the story, most people wonder what exactly this argument was about that caused this befingering, this violent dedigitization. The answer? The two investigators were arguing about the proper video format for archiving documentation of their research.

!

And I thought audiovisual archivists were the only ones who got that heated up about choosing formats!

Of course, being who I am, at this point in the story my mind leaps not to pondering the consequences of a bonobo bite, but rather skips directly over to the question of what video formats they were arguing about and which one they ultimately decided upon. The program gives no clue either way, and I’m left with a gnawing worry in my stomach about the end result.

But seriously, and not to take this man’s pain lightly, I find this to be an almost heartening story. First, it’s kind of nice to hear that people outside our small circle take archival issues into consideration and treat them as an important matter. Maybe that means that some of our efforts to inform the public about preservation issues are having an effect.

Second, there is solace in the fact that, no matter how much we argue back and forth about formats and archival best practices, when all is said and done at least we don’t bite each other’s fingers off… Though I think from now on I’ll keep my metal mesh gloves on when I publish these missives — you know, just as a standard safety precaution.

— Joshua Ranger

Dave Rice At Upcoming Digital Media Management Workshop

AVPS Senior Consultant David Rice will be giving a workshop entitled Media Management in a Digital Universe as part of The Sanctuary for Independent Media’s Spring 2010 workshop series. The theme of the series is “Be the Media,” and its goals are to provide “local artists, producers, and citizen journalists with opportunities to acquire and improve the skills necessary for successful and powerful independent media-making.”

Independent media is flourishing with the proliferation of affordable cameras and recorders. The ability to digitally shoot and store more material than was feasible in an analog model has been a boon, but it has also produced greater amounts of material to organize and manage, as well as engendering new sets of concerns regarding the persistence of media collections. Based on his years of experience as an archivist with community media organizations and in developing recommendations for metadata standards, Dave will be giving practical training on the management and maintenance of digital media through best practices and the nuts-and-bolts uses of metadata that will help you better organize, access, re-use, and preserve your materials.

The workshop will take place Sunday, March 14, 2010 at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, New York. More information about the workshop, including location and registration, can be found here.

The Sanctuary for Independent Media is a telecommunications production facility dedicated to community media arts, located in an historic former church at 3361 6th Avenue in north Troy, NY. The Sanctuary hosts screening, production and performance facilities, training in media production and a meeting space for artists, activists and independent media makers of all kinds. Visit http://www.mediasanctuary.org/ to learn more.

A Biopic Unexamined

In the current Newsweek Ramin Setoodeh ponders on what he claims is the death of the biopic (“Are Biopics History?“), wondering why it is that the genre seems to have died off of late. Setoodeh cites the several films from just the past year or so that have been considered financial and/or critical failures. I find his argument a bit specious on this point because many of his examples are foreign or art house type films (not traditional big money makers), but also because he refers to Julie & Julia as a recent success that thrived at the box office because the Julie half of the film panders to the narcissism of our particular cultural moment.

Yes, the film made money, but I didn’t read any reviews nor did I hear anyone claim that they were drawn in by Julie. Rather, the opposite, that the Julia Child sections were vibrant, fun, full of master acting, and that there was a noticeable downturn in audience mood when shifting away from those scenes to the present day ones.

Okay, now that I have that out of my system (Can you tell what I watched last weekend and has been on my mind? I mean, besides Ong Bak 2.) I will say that Setoodeh’s approach to his argument is specious, but he has a good point overall: Biopics are not the surefire hits we are lead to believe they are bound to be. He attributes this to present day tastes, that it used to be a popular genre but we just aren’t interested in the Famous Person story anymore, and his citation of failed films (with exceptions) is proof.

This is wrong.

Sure, for every Ray or Walk the Line there are 5, 10, 20 Amelias or Creations, but this was also the case in the past. There were Lawrence of Arabias and Pattons, but you also had your The Great Moment (sorry Preston) or your sloppy, miscast flicks like The Babe Ruth Story. These are the failed or just mediocre productions that are put out every year by studios and filmmakers. The difference is that these minor films from the past are not remembered while the flops from the past 5 years are still vague memories. Only the successes (or the mega failures) from the deeper past are recalled, giving a skewed sense of what actually happened if one doesn’t do proper research. Without that research, the half-remembered past is not a valid touchstone to base an argument on. An incomplete picture of the past creates a false interpretation of the present.

This brings to mind some topics of discussion at the talk Sam Stephenson and Chris Lacinak gave last night about the Jazz Loft Project. Sam was asked about any interesting stories from the interviews he has been doing with people connected to the Jazz Loft. His response in part was that the most interesting stories are coming from the “minor” characters involved — the mediocre or failed musicians, the peripheral non-musicians that hung out, the bartenders and shop owners in the neighborhood. He put forth that perhaps the big name musicians are not interesting interviews because they’ve been interviewed too many times, have pat answers, and have an image or story to maintain, and he feels that the deeper story of Jazz history is going to come from the bottom up. By the same token, the tapes from the Jazz Loft give a fuller picture of Thelonious Monk’s leading role in creating what have been called the Hall Overton charts for his Town Hall concert. Received wisdom has claimed that Overton produced those charts mostly on his own, but the forgotten tapes the Project has preserved tell a very different tale.

I think this approach can equally be applied to film studies and film’s relationship to cultural studies. There are stories in and from all of the people and history surrounding the creation and reception of a film. A biopic is not successful because it is a biopic, but, as with any film, because of that convergence of people, technology, and events. Lesser works are just as telling about those factors, and can also inform how we view the successful films as well as history and cultural shifts. We often argue that we have to preserve as much as possible because we don’t know what will become culturally significant in the future, but we also have to maintain the insignificant because it, too, is a piece of the picture of the past.

— Joshua Ranger

________________________________________________________
This blog post was written for the Film Preservation Blogathon in support of the National Film Preservation Foundation. The NFPF is the independent, nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America’s film heritage. They work directly with archives to rescue endangered films that will not survive without public support.

The NFPF will give away 4 DVD sets as thank-you gifts to blogathon donors chosen in a random drawing: Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934 and Treasures IV: American Avant Garde Film, 1947-1986.

Donations to the National Film Preservation Foundation can be made here.

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