Digitised historic material is bringing the past ever closer. Photos: The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts.
Every day, a team of Canberrans head into work and look at videos, music and movies – but it’s not all fun and games.
They’re responsible for digitising thousands of items, all to stop them from disappearing forever.
Their skills were recently put to the test as they worked on black and white footage of the 1964 Victorian Football League’s grand final, contested by the Melbourne Demons and the Collingwood Magpies.
National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) curator Simon Smith says the footage was a surprise find in a donation from a member of the public.
“To get something like this is quite special, because we’re talking about the early days of television … and Victorian Football League coverage,” he says.
Before now, only 17 minutes of the game had been saved.
The footage, with live commentary, has joined the NFSA’s archive of more than 2.8 million items.
Melbourne was expected to win, with the recording showing the game’s second half and how they held off the Magpies’ determined comeback to win by four points.
“It’s not like today, with exclusive broadcast deals that are sold off to specific networks,” Simon says.
“In those days, all four of the Melbourne television stations sent cameras. There would be all the different channels covering it.”
According to the NFSA Digitsation Strategy 2018 – 2025, there are more than 2.8 million items across the NFSA’s collection. That includes more than 400,000 audiovisual materials – be it film, video or sound recordings – in a non-digital format.
Digitising them starts with a health check, where each donation is inspected and “ultrasonically cleaned”. The archivists pass the tape through one of two preservation scanners.
“What we do is we over-scan the whole image by five per cent … every part of the frame is captured,” he says.
“Our preservation scan of anything would include all the blemishes – if there are scratches, if the colour has run … nothing is fixed.”
It gives curators a DPX file sequence in a “one-to-one” copy.
“It’s placed in a machine which takes it, effectively, from left to right,” Simon says. “The film passes over a scanner, and each individual frame is captured.”
It’s then handed over so conservators can make another copy, this time customised for people’s use.
“We might alter the colour [or] we might crop the image so that you’re not seeing outside the frame,” he says.
“That is doing what we need to do to make it presentable for possible broadcast or use on television, online or in a documentary.”
Another lower-quality version, called an access copy, is made so the material can be shared more easily.
The NFSA makes three copies at once. Simon believes it is the only cultural institution in Australia to do so.
Sometimes, the footage is popped into a fancy oven if the tape is sticking together.
“Sometimes tapes can be left in this machine for literally weeks, maybe even months,” he says.
“It’s not an overnight process. It depends on how bad the tape is and how long it actually needs [in the machine].”
Ultimately, the original material is put into cool storage so it can be left alone; future copies are made from the digital file.
Despite the challenges, Simon says digitising historic material is worth it.
“What are we without memories?
“[This material is] our culture. The bedrock of our culture is stories and the events that shaped our lives.
“It’s really important that we ensure that these are protected, for now and for the future.”
The conservation process is more than keeping Australia’s cultural history around for future generations – it’s also a race.
The process is complicated by the “obsolete, bespoke technology” that arrives at the NFSA – and because the specialised equipment needed for digitisation is also increasingly rare.
“None of the networks, broadcasters or major entertainment companies are using tape anymore. Tape is a thing of the past,” he says.
“Everything is digital now, so there’s a limited amount of machine life on any machine.”
