I Don’t Own a Television

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Ellie

This post was prompted by an article by Kim Akass for the CST blog. Critical Studies in Television is a great source of musings on television, pitched between academic research and cultural commentary.

Last year marked a personal milestone as I moved out of my shared student digs and moved into a disarmingly grown-up flat with my disarmingly grown-up partner. However, I realised that I myself was not yet a grown-up: grown-ups pay Council Tax, grown-ups take bank holidays, grown-ups know where the meter is, and grown-ups have TV licences. When TV Licensing started bombarding us with the standard reminders to pay up, my partner and I discussed the matter (like grown-ups) and discovered that we were not legally required to obtain a TV licence because we don’t have a television set.

Via Roger Lancefield

There is no broadcast television in our house.

This is ironic for a number of blatantly obvious reasons:

A) I study broadcast television.

B) When not studying broadcast television, I advocate for the retention and preservation of outmoded formats, because I am a film and TV archive nerd.

C) At any given moment the BBC will be playing in our flat, via iPlayer or the DAB radio. On the bus, I’m most likely to be listening to podcasts of Thinking Allowed, Test Match Special, Words and Music or Mayo and Kermode. I would not be enjoying any of these services were it not for the good licence fee payers, many of whom also pay taxes (thank you, all).

There is an episode of Friends where Joey tries to impress a woman by mentioning his role in the soap opera Days of Our Lives.* The woman apologises, replying that she doesn’t own a TV. Joey is blindsided: ‘You don’t own a TV? What’s all your furniture pointed at?’

Last week, Kim Akass ruminated on everyday life without the crucial flow provided by television. I wonder if Raymond Williams ever considered everyday life without the TV schedule, with all its interstitials and advertisements, never mind life without the television set. It’s a weird and brave new world, and one I’m not yet ready to face. So, in Blue Peter style I crafted my own makeshift television set out of an old 22inch monitor, speakers, amplifier and a slew of wires connecting to various media players. The Xbox provides access to games, DVDs and our shared server for downloads of our music and movies. There’s also the PS3, which can play Blu-Rays. There’s the laptop, which gives us access to all free online media players such BBC iPlayer and 4OD, and the services we subscribe to like Netflix and Mubi. Lastly, there’s the DAB radio that doubles as an iPod dock, and we play the Today programme over breakfast in yet another bid to be grown-up. It looks, for all intents and purposes, like a TV set. And yes, our furniture is pointed towards it.

I grew up in the era where digital and analogue media existed side by side, and I’m constantly reminded of it. There is no reason for us to watch TV (whether DVD, streamed or downloaded) on our faux TV set, for our computer is bigger and boasts better resolution. But when you grow up with the flow of television, it becomes a complex and comforting act to settle down in front of the set. If I close the curtains, I can pretend I’m watching Doctor Who on Saturday night and not midday on Sunday.

Strangely, it’s not just the experience of watching the television that we’ve recreated. Yes, we watch things out of sync with the broadcast schedules, but there are still distinct patterns to our viewing. Of course, part of this is simply practical: my partner has a ‘proper’ job and so isn’t free to watch the goggle box until after dinner. Nevertheless, we watch the bulk of our tv shows between 7pm and 11pm on weekdays, and most of the time we just shift the schedule a day forward: Sunday is Doctor Who day; Tuesdays is Only Connect; Wednesdays is The Apprentice, quickly followed by You’re Fired. We also tend to only binge on things that we’ve seen before, like The West Wing or Community, while lazily knitting or ironing. If we miss something while it’s being broadcast, we often forget to catch up (most recent example of this is Broadchurch, because we forget that ITV player exists). We tried to frantically catch up with Arrested Development in time for the new season, but we could only handle four episodes at a time – not because it was bad, but because it was new to us, and we needed space to digest what we’d seen. Also, it was bedtime.

Not the same, is it? Via Ads of the World

Then there are the occasions when our plans are foiled by a bad internet connection. Those moments also carry a weird nostalgia for when I lived with my parents in the shadow of Alexandra Palace. While it was thrilling to live where British television began, the reception was beyond crap (well, Ally Pally is really old, it’s not too surprising). I have – honestly! – never seen a single evening’s programmes broadcast on Channel 5 because we never received it before the digital switchover. In fact, my obsessive Neighbours habit was only broken when the soap was poached from the beeb in 2008. If I don’t know it’s there, I don’t miss it.

So, in many respects, our faux TV set is doing an OK job at imitating the real thing. I miss live broadcasts sometimes, particularly the Eurovision Song Contest and the cricket. We plan on switching out the monitor for a projector someday, and then we might revisit the question of whether to get a digital television box. The choice of what to watch on it will be daunting.

*As an aside, I cannot be the only British person who assumed Days of Our Lives was a fictional soap opera, right?

Side by Side by Side

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Ellie

For every second of film there are 24 days and 24 nights.

- Peter Kubelka

It was on a whim a few weeks ago, while I was in London eking out a draft of the next thesis chapter, that I decided to escape to the BFI Southbank to catch Peter Kubelka‘s latest work Monument Film. It was sheer serendipitous luck that my trip coincided with the screening: originally scheduled as part of the London Film Festival, the introduction from BFI curator Mark Webber hinted at some unfortunate technical hiccup that caused the screening to be rescheduled (I can only hope that no film, projectors or projectionists were harmed).

Whatever the circumstances were, the implied failure of the previous attempt added a frisson of danger to this daring screening. It is, arguably, not a new work but a new configuration of old works to make a statement that is at once stark and reflective. Two projectors are mounted within the auditorium. First one projector plays Kubelka’s 1960 work Arnulf Rainer: a seemingly arbitrary mix of blank frames and black leader (not entirely certain of the tech specs, but the upshot is a mixture of blazing white light and darkness) and with alternating periods of white noise and silence (though the projector is a constant soundtrack). Hot on its heels, the second projector plays Kubelka’s 2011 work Antiphon: an exact inversion of Arnulf Rainer, where light plays in place of black, and noise occurs where there was silence.

Monument Film, picture via Viennale

After this, the show takes a break to allow the projectionists to rewind and mount the films once more. Throughout the intermission, Kubelka ruminates on the essential ingredients of cinema: light, sound, and the movement of the frame. His philosophy is grounded in the technical specifications of the medium, and he emphasises that the image does not move, but rather the projection moves it. Using a menagerie of props, Kubelka demonstrates the essence of movement, and relates the cinema’s manipulation of basic elements to the experimentations of an infant experiencing the world for the first time.

In the second act, the films are screened again, but at the same time; the projectors and speakers are moved so that the films play side by side. Another rewind break with more of Kubelka’s engaging commentary comes before the films are played one last time – projected on top of each other, simultaneously. As one film is an exact inversion of the other, the films should come together to envelop the audience in continuous white light and sound. Naturally, the weave of the projectors and the imperfectness of human synchronisation means that a perfect sync is impossible. Instead, the audience is shown something sensual, visceral and complex – an evocation of the inimitable texture of film as a medium.

Of course, there is a moral to the piece: another timely addition to the backlash against the demise of film. Peter Kubelka does not talk of the textural or elemental qualities of film’s digital successor, because that is not his medium, but in a time of seemingly endless perfectionism and complexity in filmmaking, Kubelka provided a space in which to reflect on the essential nature of film.

When the projectors parted to play simultaneously, Kubelka announced in a flourish of showmanship that the films would now play ‘side by siiiiiide’. Side by Side is also the name of the recent documentary by Keanu Reeves, though this time the phrase is used to mean the era of cinema we now live in: film and digital, coexisting in the production and distribution of cinema. In truth, though the interviewees discuss the demise of film (and every possible opinion is accounted for), Reeve’s film is a history of the rise of digital rather than the demise of film. Reeves himself conducts all the interviews (or so it seems) and remains resolutely objective, which is surprising given that he has his own views on the matter. His diplomacy and friendliness pays off in spades, as he elicits candid responses from some of Hollywood’s most famous polemicists (Scorsese, Lucas, Nolan, Boyle, Cameron and Fincher among many, many others).

My knowledge of digital filming technologies is hazy at best, and I am glad Reeves took it upon himself to become a historian documenting the period of digital expansion and change. There are a few handy infographics detailing the basics of digital sensors and the like, and a truncated chronology of CGI and digital intermediaries, but the film is really a comprehensive collection of recollections and opinions, regurgitated in chronological order with the history of digital filmmaking. Naturally, the debate surrounding digital media is every bit as important and necessary as the history of the medium. I was saddened that Nolan came across as a stick in the mud, whereas digital evangelists like FIncher, Cameron and most prominently George Lucas were more measured than I was expecting. However, the voice of Martin Scorsese transcends all the petty dogmas with his adoration of cinema in all its myriad forms. God love ya, Marty.

Absolutely the most enjoyable element of this film is the anecdotes of directors and cinematographers who grappled with the introduction of digital cameras; David Fincher’s disdain for the Panavision Genesis is deliciously bitchy.

The only way you can make sure that a film or anything on the moving image is going to be around sixty or seventy years from now, interestingly enough, ironically enough, is celluloid.

- Martin Scorsese, Side by Side

I’m glad that Reeves found the time to discuss film’s most important and yet most misunderstood role in the modern cinematic age: it remains the only filmic medium capable of preserving moving images longterm. Sometimes I feel as though we in the archiving community overstate the dangers of the digital dark age, but when a figure such as George Lucas suggests that the question of digital preservation will just resolve itself, it becomes clear that the basic tenets of film archiving bear repeating. While I’m an unashamed analogue activist, I understand that cinematic greatness can be achieved using any medium. Yet the fact remains that if you hand a person a hard drive, DCP or iPhone five years after the fact, it is impossible to know for sure that playback can be achieved. Give a person a piece of film and a light source they can see the pictures, side by side: 24 days and night in every second.

Watch This: Friese-Greene’s London a minor viral internet hit

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Ellie

I don’t know why Claude Friese-Greene’s footage of London has suddenly gone viral, but for those who don’t know that Vimeo bloke obviously ripped it off the BFI’s YouTube channel 3 years ago. He also misspelled the filmmaker’s name and got the year wrong and put a naff bit of modern music on it to boot. You can see tons more from the BFI’s ‘London on Film’ playlist or you can buy the DVD. It’s nice that early British film colour systems have gained some attention, but a lot of work went into restoring and digitising that colour system (including remastering it to not induce nausea) and all this internet karma should go to the original source.

For more info on the life and work of Friese-Greene click here.

Support your film archives, people!

Dilys, Disney and Dumbo

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Ellie

Dilys Powell was a stalwart and a powerhouse of film criticism, with a career spanning decades. She was one of the few journalists who took the job of being a film critic as seriously as any other title. More impressive is the professionalism she brought even though her tastes were originally far more literary than filmic; when given the task of writing weekly film reviews for The Sunday Times in the late 1930s, she realised that it was her duty to become an authority on cinema, in order to be the consummate critic of it.

And she did; she seriously considered questions of stardom, direction and artistry long before it was common to do so. However, she was also admirable for her pragmatism and efficiency with words (she relished the challenge of writing within strict limits), and never let any prevailing ideology cloud her immediate reactions to a film. She was unafraid to take down the epic scale and grand aesthetics of Gone With the Wind with dry wit, and was brutally honest when she felt hopelessly old fashioned (as was the case when confronted with many avant grade auteurs).

While I revere Powell’s work, I don’t always agree with her. She never cared for Brief Encounter, and was always a little too focused on script and realism for my liking. Yet she understood cinema and respected it when so few in the established arts and literature presses did.

And she loved Disney. Always one to recognise a show runner, Powell heaped praise on Walt Disney’s visionary work. Reading through her reviews from the 1930s and 40s is a reminder of just how groundbreaking Walt was. Although Dilys Powell rarely gave out unqualified or hyperbolic praise – and she generally disliked the bland cutesy-ness of Disney fare – she recognised the innovation present in the characterisation and the sheer ambition of Disney’s animation.

As I was lazily breezing through The Dilys Powell Film Reader, I stopped and read the section on Disney, and found an interesting array of opinions that demonstrate Powell’s critical eye:

Much of this is so superb in colour and rhythm that it makes me wish more than ever for one Disney cartoon conceived and executed in complete seriousness.

- On Pinocchio, 1940

Moussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’ is treated to an exhibition of devilry at once grand and horrifying in conception and design; and with Mickey Mouse as the Sorceror’s Apprentice, Dukas’s piece becomes the source of a fine comic exuberance of design.

- On Fantasia, 1941

Bambi is to be the last long Disney until after the war; the producer has, apparently, resolved to make his farewell appearance in a blaze of inoffensiveness.

- On Bambi, 1942

…OK, I’ll admit to being a little biased because I agree entirely with the relatively scathing write-up of Bambi. However, I was a little saddened to see Powell’s 1942 review of Dumbo missing from the collection. I know collected editions have to be brutal in their curation. But Powell (like me) used Dumbo as the yardstick to judge other animated features, and during the 1940s most critics held up Snow White as the masterpiece because they did not give the time or effort to form their own opinions. Like Powell, though, I would urge cartoon connoisseurs to consider Dumbo.

What is cutesy in other Disney films is emotional and real in Dumbo, and the titular character is the epitome of adorable. Powell describes the elephant as ‘small, defenceless, absurdly sensitive and infinitely pathetic’, immediately recognising the genius in Bill Tytla’s characterisation (Tytla used his own infant son as the model for Dumbo’s wordless mannerisms):

I’ve bawled my kid out for pestering me when I’m reading or something, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. He’ll just stand there and maybe grab my hand and cry… I tried to put all those things in Dumbo.

- Bill Tytla

Of course, it is also visually as spectacular as any Disney film, though it is barely an hour long and was produced on a fraction of Bambi‘s budget. Everyone remembers the pink elephants, but there was also the travel sequences where the anthropomorphic steam engine makes his way across the map, and the rain-soaked silhouettes of labourers erecting the circus tent (I was too young to get the racist overtones of the song). And while music and mouse are present to cut through the silence, the most memorable sequence is entirely without dialogue (‘Baby Mine’, *sniff*).

Dumbo then, and Dumbo now, is defined and redefined by the collective worth of Disney. In the era before the theme-parks, before home video and with only one princess to its name, Disney was not considered the super-brand as discourse has it today. Rather, it is the figure of Walt Disney himself that loomed large over the barometers of quality, success, suitability and artistry. Sadly, Dumbo suffers because it was simpler, cheaper and shorter than it contemporaries. But Dilys Powell was smart enough to see that ingenuity went a long way in animation, and she was not too snobby to say that Dumbo was the most effective Disney of the pre-war era.

–

The Dilys Powell Film Reader, ed. by Christopher Cook (Oxford: OUP, 1992)

Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life (New York: Abbeville Press, 1981)

Original film reviews available from the BFI Library, BFI Southbank. Photo of Dilys Powell also from the BFI.

RIP Roger Ebert

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Ellie

I never really knew Roger Ebert. I grew up without the memories of Ebert and Siskel and the Movies, and I won’t claim to feel the deep-seated grief that is affecting the film community across the pond.

In fact, I only really became aware of Ebert’s work as an undergraduate, around the time the botched cancer operations took away his jaw. Like any good cinephile, I went away and read many of his film reviews, but moreover his other works and writings affirmed what those who watched PBS in the 1970s already knew – Ebert was the most wonderful human being.

He loved London, and expressed it better than most Londoners ever could:

Then the 210 bus into Highgate and down to the cemetery and to the graves of Karl Marx and George Eliot, and then across the way to Old Highgate Cemetery — because, this being London, Marx and Eliot were in the new part, you see. In those days the Friends of Highgate Cemetery hadn’t yet started clearing the tangled growth that choked the cemetery during the war, when all the groundsmen were needed as air raid wardens. Tombstones leaned at crazy angles, some graves gaped open, and the Columbarium looked like a set for Hammer horror films — which, indeed, it often was.

He loved The New Yorker‘s caption competition. Finally, in 2011, he won:

He never gave a lazy, half-baked opinion. Everything he wrote had a thoughtful elegance to it (even the video games stuff). Here he is on Christopher Hitchens:

As long as he retains his thinking ability, he said, there will be no conversion to belief in God. This is what I expected him to say. Deathbed conversions have always seemed to me like a Hail Mary Pass, proving nothing about religion and much about desperation.

…And yet, he was never afraid to discuss his own mortality. He didn’t fear death. Reading about his ‘leave of presence’ just this morning, it still felt as though he cared deeply for everyone else, above and beyond himself. Here he is on his competitor and colleague, Gene Siskel (via the MetaFilter thread):

Good night, Roger. I hope the Jermyn Hotel has good hot chocolate and enough free pens and paper to keep you occupied.

The Letterheads of Southern Television’s Press Office

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Ellie

I had a fun time digging through Southern Television’s press releases recently. My aim was to figure out which local programmes and TV specials were deemed significant enough to alert the local media to ahead of broadcast. It would be easy to lose oneself in production documents and scripts, but it can be difficult to gains a sense of perspective. Which of these shows were representing the Southern Television brand? What were the flagships, the standouts? Press releases can be that missing link between source material and interpretation.

At least, that was the idea, but instead I got distracted by letterheads. Seeing as letterhead design is outside the scope of the thesis, I guess there’s no harm in sharing them here.

1959

There was only release I could find from Southern’s first couple of years of broadcast, and it is lovely to see some development in the company’s compass logo.

1961

There were a couple of letterheads used fairly interchangeably in the early sixties; maybe they had different functions or belonged to different departments (this one appears to be strictly for programming announcements).

1962

My least favourite – the simplicity of the Southern logo (which is beautiful IMHO) sits uneasily alongside the big, bold, reversed-colour type of ‘Press Service’.

1965

You can see the branding change from Southern Television to Southern Independent Television.

1974

The not-so-subtle change to incorporate the start of colour broadcasting on Southern.

1980

Stark, simple, no-nonsense, even the superfluous ‘independent’ has been shafted. I like how the proclamation of COLOUR has been replace with a functional disclaimer: ‘All programmes in colour except those marked (M).’

Sorry for the bad phone pics, I’ll swap them for better ones once I get the chance.

The Year (or Last Year) in Retro

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Ellie

I wrote this two weeks ago, but I still have issues with timely editing and posting. Grovelly apologies, etc etc…

This year did not quite match last year’s silent era lovefest. However, many of 2012’s big releases touch on the past, either in subject matter or style. Compiling my best-of list from the past year I was pleased to find musicals, melodramas and lashings of animation. Not all of these are relevant to retronauts and film archivists, but I’ve highlighted a few that play on nostalgia (and I haven’t even seen Side by Side yet).

(To clarify, I use Oscar season as my cut-off point, not the calendar year.)

Ellie’s Top 15

15. The Master

14. Beasts of the Southern Wild

13. Les Miserables

12. Moonrise Kingdom

11. Magic Mike

10. ParaNorman

9. Rust and Bone

8. Pitch Perfect

7. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

6. Song for Sugar Man

5. Wreck It Ralph

4. No

3. Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

2. Amour

1. Holy Motors

The Master

By rights this should be much further up the list. A period piece shot (and in some places screened) in 70mm, it was right up my street. Moreover, the design and the scope of the film is astounding, and I spent much of the time stunned in reverie. The sequence where Joaquin Phoenix takes studio portraits in a department store before beating a patron is superbly well-executed, and his clients look like 1940s portraits come to life. So why only number 15? Unfortunately, I am a lone dissenter in that I found Phoenix’s histrionics to be unconvincing and lacking in real depth and nuance. This year’s films have been full of broken men grappling with their sanity (Silver Linings Playbook, Lincoln, Les Miserables, er, Wreck It Ralph…) and Phoenix’s performance not only distanced me from the film, it also reminded me of Dan the creepy neighbour from BBC3’s Him and Her.

Moonrise Kingdom

Not so much retro in execution but certainly twee in flavour, Moonrise Kingdom has proven to be a favourite amongst Wes Anderson fans. I can usually take or leave the Anderson canon (though I adored Fantastic Mr Fox), but there was definitely something real, something moving in the artifice of Moonrise Kingdom. Perhaps it was the Benjamin Britten soundtrack, the gorgeous colour palette, the typography nerdery surrounding it. Or perhaps the cast – in particular the kids and Ed Norton’s harassed scout leader – gave just the right amount of character and restraint to prompt a smile. Also, the disaffected kids at camp shtick reminded me of The Addams Family Values – which is a good thing.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Despite being an adaptation of the 1930s children’s classic, Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit appears to have been conceived with an eye toward the future. Much has been said about the 48 fps format, and I don’t particularly care to rehash it all here. But, for a time the entire film community was talking format and technology in a way that only happens once in a blue moon. I loved the fact that usually format-neutral critics were actually beginning to question what made a film realistic, and what they really wanted from cinema anyway. I for one enjoyed this particular instance of high frame rate – the mixture of the televisual aesthetic, whimsy and fantasy produced a tale that is at once epic and comforting, like the BBC Sunday teatime dramas of my childhood (the presence of Ian Holm further cemented this feeling). Also, it made the 3d brighter and somewhat more tolerable. I do, however, remain sceptical with regards to high frame rates generally.

Wreck It Ralph

I am not a gamer, but even I could see that Wreck It Ralph’s eponymous hero is a version of Donkey Kong, the figure who started out as the bad guy and made it to first-player of his own beloved franchise, and Fix It Felix is Ralph’s Mario (complete with overalls and angular jumping poses). The sheer amount of thought and love that went into Wreck It Ralph is palpable. I can’t understand why film critics seem so concerned with whether an animation matches up to Pixar’s best (which, by the way, Wreck It Ralph does, and surpasses Pixar’s most recent offering, Brave). Wreck It Ralph is an adorable film that manages to fit in just the right amount of knowing nods to those of us who remember epic Street Fighter 2 battles on Gamesmaster without disrupting the story for younger viewers. It is also an artistic marvel, deftly shifting between pixels and 8-bits and three-dimensional CGI. It was a perfect composite of retro source material, modern artistry and timeless storytelling. That it’s not even my favourite animated film of the year (hurrah for Aardman) speaks volumes about the possibilities of cinema’s most dynamic medium.

Coming in just under the wire is No, the U-matic masterpiece. Normally, I hate videotape because videotape sucks. It sucks for convenience, it sucks for quality, and it sucks for preservation, but I’ll forgive it just this once. Much has been said about the verisimilitude that this format provides, but I’d go one further and say that so often historical pieces (even those that recall recent history) can feel just so alien when seen in current formats. Argo, for example, was full of fantastic design but just looked sort of synthetic (and that’s not just the polyester). In placing a person as recognisable as Gael Garcia Bernal in the physical format of the period, we as viewers start to associate ourselves with that period in time, and it no longer feels so distant. Also, it makes good, extended use of a genuine watershed moment in television, which is surely going to endear it to most broadcast historians and archivists.

On a final note, the cinema I saw No in either does not have masking to accommodate academy ratio, or they chose not to use it. Either way, that is a sad state of affairs.

The Cinematic Delights of Toronto

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Ellie

So these pictures date from last July, when I spent a weekend with the delightfully dapper Eric – the scribe behind Silent Toronto – and his equally delightful kitties, Elsa and Opal.

Eric briefly immersed us in the film culture of Toronto and hosted a lethal cocktail party where we met the organisers of the Toronto Silent Film Festival. We drank several ‘Louise Brooks-es’ and discussed the (then) upcoming Toronto International Film Festival – because we’re cool.

The next day, however, I had the opportunity to visit the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre. I have an affection for old cinema sites, be they restored to their original splendour or merely shells of their former use. According to our (British!) guide and the Ontario Heritage Trust, this restoration project was a Herculean effort:

Designed by prominent New York architect Thomas W. Lamb and built as the Canadian flagship for Marcus Loew’s growing chain of vaudeville houses, the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre contains two large theatres, stacked one above the other. Fewer than a dozen of these double-decker theatres were built, and the Toronto complex – the only one of its kind constructed in Canada – is now the last one operating in the world.

The lower house, the Elgin, originally known as Loew’s Yonge Street Theatre, opened in late 1913. Its gilded plaster details, faux marble finishes and damask wall fabrics dazzled patrons. During its 30-month restoration by the Ontario Heritage Trust in the mid-1980s, over 300,000 sheets of wafer-thin aluminum leaf were used in a seven-step process to re-gild the plaster details.

Thereafter I hotfooted it in my ruby slippers to the Bata Shoe Museum. (When I’m not researching old film and vintage television, my other hobby is adding to my shoe collection.)

That evening, I ended a lovely weekend with a screening of Conan the Barbarian (!) at the TIFF Lightbox. It may not be highbrow, but it was certainly an artefact of my youth, and it was a damn fine print to boot!

Thanks, Toronto, I promise to stay longer next time.

Kine Bi-Weekly: Hillsborough, Lee and Turner, Fujifilm etc.

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Ellie

There has a been a metric ton of movie archiving news in the past few days – check it out…

BBC News > Hillsborough Papers: Key Excerpts >> The staggering revelations from the release of the Hillsborough documents are a testament to the need for – and devastating power of – archival evidence. Would we have known how these documents were doctored if the business had been done on computer?

WSAV TV > Georgia Closes State Archives >> Obviously Georgia didn’t get the memo re: the importance of accessing archival documents. Via AMIA Newsbriefs.

BFI > World’s Earliest Colour Moving Images on View >> Amazing restoration of what is probably the earliest footage photographed in colour. See it on display at the National Media Museum in Bradford.

Fujifilm Global > Announcement on Motion Picture Film Business of Fujifilm >> Fuji has ‘decided to discontinue the sales of negative films, positive films, and some other products of motion picture in a prospect of March 2013.’

Moving Image Archive News > New Award to Honor a Valued Archivist >> AMIA announces a new award for project-archivists improving film archiving practice, named in honour of Alan J. Stark. Nominate your archivists here.

Indiewire > A Silent Star Goes Digital >> Leonard Maltin discusses the new web resource from the Mary Pickford Foundation, including ‘interesting articles, rare film clips, and more.’

Crowdrise > Motion Picture Poster Restoration >> Help George Eastman House restore a fabulous original one-sheet for Are Parents People (1925). The fundraiser has already secured the restoration of a poster for The Silent Witness (1917)!

Indiegogo > Save the Brit Archivist! >> An enterprising young AV librarian from the UK needs help to fund her work cataloguing 16mm for Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum. As a fellow Brit-film-archive-intern-US-visa-survivor, you have my support, Gem!

LA Times > Academy Offers Tours ‘Inside the Vaults’ of the Pickford Center >> Holla to my UEA and IPI co-graduate, Tessa, currently rocking film archiving at the friggin’ Academy!

Self-Styled Siren > Anecdote of the Week: “The Girl in the Black Tights” >> Me and the Siren are both massive Mabel Normand fangirls. One day I will disagree with her!

Ferdy on Films > Duck Amuck (1953) >> ‘The 1950s were the heyday of the Organization Man, with Daffy perfectly channeling the conformist worker in companies that often operated on the whims of their founders or charismatic leaders.’ Amen, Ferdy.

Spaces of Television > A new blog chocablock with findings and editorials from the talented research team behind the AHRC’s Space of Television project.

Eventbrite > Living British Cinema presents the Film Finances Archive >> ‘On Friday 12 October, the Living British Cinema forum will host at Queen Mary, University of London an afternoon that will introduce this important and, to date, private collection to film writers, archivists and scholars. It will be an opportunity to sample a treasure-trove of primary material relating to the post-war British cinema, to learn about one of the film industry’s most significant although little-known companies, and to contribute to a debate on the future of this extraordinary new resource.’ <– FREE ENTRY!

Southern Television, in Colour!

Posted on September 12, 2012 by Ellie

I am tempted to name my PhD thesis ‘Southern Television: the Monochrome Years.’

It all began with the need to carve a thesis topic from hundreds of boxes of Southern Television documents. It is nigh on impossible to condense over two decades of company history into one book; like Goldilocks, a good student has to figure out a topic whose scope is ‘just right.’ I could’ve stratified my sample of documents by genre (say, children’s TV), by topic (such as technological innovations) or by person (for instance, a case study of Jack Hargreaves).

Had I done that, however, I would have missed out on the fun of my current methodology – AKA: making it up as I go along.

OK, that’s a little unfair. I initially capped my research to the years preceding Southern TV’s switch to colour for practical reasons – pouf! 900 boxes of evidence magically becomes 300 boxes of evidence! However, I soon realised that this seemingly arbitrary distinction between regional-telly-in-black-and-white and regional-telly-in-colour has more to it; the available evidence is entirely different. The Southern Television document collection contains thousands of production documents and scripts, but only really from the 1970s. Documents pertaining to the black and white years are far more fragmentary and behind-the-scenes in nature: memos, minutes, letters, policies, etc.

Therefore, my thesis deals with those topics that can be explored satisfactorily through those documents. I’ve eschewed discussions of form and content in favour of tech specs, policy changes and the early development of key shows.

Frankly, this is more fun than endlessly rewatching crappy video copies of the same three programmes from 1974 (or whatever). I’d also argue that from an archival/historical perspective, this approach relies more on hard evidence than subjective interpretation. But mostly, it’s just more enjoyable.

However, I felt a little bereft while procrastinating over press clippings from the day Southern Television switched to colour, on Saturday 13th December, 1969. I may just have to include these as a postscript, should my meandering mess of a thesis ever proves to be publishable.

Robert Lilmay, ‘Approach of a New Decade and Southern Goes Over to Colour’, Basingstoke Gazette, 12 Dec 1969, p. 35

Southern Independent Television will sign off from the Sixties and greet the next decade in a manner appropriate to the exciting age in which we live – and reach a landmark in its 13-year history which which can seemingly never be equalled. For this month Southern goes over to colour.

‘Southern Goes Over to Colour’, Portsmouth Evening News, 13 Dec 1969, p. 3

Today is Southern Television’s C (for colour) day. At a cost of £2 1/2 m. a new complex of studios in Southampton was geared to transmit colour at 10 a.m. this morning.

WM Hill, ‘From the Weekend’, Southern Evening Echo, 15 Dec 1969, p. 3

Colour is beauty plus detail equalling reality.

‘Southern Joins the Colour Set’, Kent Evening Post, 15 Dec 1969, p. 3

The completion of colour transmitter installation work at the Rowridge, Isle of Wight, and Dover stations, means that Southern Television joins ATV, Granada, London Weekend Television, Thames Television, Yorkshire Television and Independent Television News in colour programming on the ITA network.

‘Colour Evens the Score in a Clash Between New Rivals’, Southern Evening Echo, 13 Dec 1969, p. 3

It’s a full colour weekend after all. With Southern Television’s official “C-day” comes surprise news that BBC-1 is swinging on the rainbow, too. / The news is a genuine surprise because BBC engineering men have been gloomily saying for weeks that they were lagging behind at the Rowridge (IoW) transmitter.

WM Hill, ‘Colour with a Bang’, Southern Evening Echo, 12 Dec 1969, p.3

Southern Television has burst into colour… almost literally. […] At 10 a.m. tomorrow there are the three home-grown programmes – “Wheel of Fortune”; “Out of Town” and “Houseparty”, just to start the new era. First Southern face on the colour scene will be that of their chief announcer Brian Nissen and the familiar Southern symbol will appear on a background of cobalt blue.

‘Black Start for Colour T.V.’, Kentish Observer, 16 Dec 1969

Colour television is here. On Saturday Southern I.T.V. started regular transmission in colour, but many were disappointed. […] For, despite the colossal deposit required – £60-£90 according to size – on colour sets, there is a desperate shortage.

‘Southern and STV Colour’, The Stage: Television Today, 18 Dec 1969, p. 9

With the introduction of colour on Southern and STV last Saturday, there are now 30 million people within range of an ITA 625-line UHF colour transmitter.

Gosh, it was a brave new televisual world! I may have to begin a sequel: ‘Southern Television: The Polychromatic Years’!

Kine Artefacts

archiving old film & vintage TV