Words You Can Use: The BAVC BLOG

by Lauren Sorensen, Assistant Director / Film Traffic at Canyon Cinema
(special to the BAVC Blog)

This last week, I left my post at Canyon Cinema here in San Francisco to travel to the flickering lights of Greenwich Village, New York City to attend the Orphan Film Symposium, presented by my alma mater, NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program, and more specifically, tireless advocate and orphan film superstar Dan Streible. The Symposium is a biannual celebration, film festival, and history lesson, attended by independent filmmakers, archivists, scholars, and many other fascinating folks from around the globe. In its 6th year, last week was the first time the symposium found its home in New York City; in past years the celebration-cum-symposium has been held in Columbia, at the University of South Carolina.

When I told folks I would be attending a symposium on orphan films, I (of course) got the question - what is an orphan film? This is not surprising, considering the categories scholars and artists normally have to work with are so limited — independent, documentary, feature, — and the like. The orphan film, however, is much more inclusive:

“Generally, all manner of films outside the commercial mainstream: abandoned by its owner or caretaker. More generally, […] all manner of films outside of the commercial mainstream: public domain materials, home movies, outtakes, unreleased films, industrial and educational movies, independent documentaries, ethnographic films, newsreels, censored material, underground works, experimental pieces, silent-era productions, stock footage, found footage, medical films, kinescopes, small- and unusual-gauge films, amateur productions, surveillance footage, test reels, government films, advertisements, sponsored films, student works, and sundry other ephemeral pieces of celluloid (or paper or glass or tape or . . . ).” – Dan Streible, NYU

This years’ conference covered the gamut of the ephemeral history of moving images, from preserved nitrate films found in the NYU’s recently acquired collection of the American Communist Party, to preserved 2-inch videotapes of late night religious television program “Insight,” (very appropriately produced by the makers of the Twilight Zone) from the UCLA Film and Television Archive. (more…)

by Angelo Sacerdote, TIMA Manager and Senior Preservation Specialist

This past March 13th, I was fortunate enough to go to the opening of California Video at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles with BAVC’s Development Director, Carol Varney.

We arrived early and were given a tour of the Getty Research Institute’s video vaults and preservation set-up by Jonathan Furmanski, who does all of the video preservation work for the Institute. About half of the exhibit came from the Getty Research Institute’s acquisition of the Long Beach Museum of Art Video Archive in 2006. Jonathan came up to BAVC around then and was given an intensive training by our former preservation specialist, Jon Selsley. Jonathan said he modeled their preservation lab after ours and used their preservation lab to work on many of the pieces in the show.

We met all kinds of people including our host, Glenn Phillip—the exhibition’s curator and senior projects specialist and consulting curator in the Department of Contemporary Programs and Research at the Institute. We also met Bill Viola and Kira Perov (whose work BAVC preserves), Skip Manning, Chip Lord and Doug Hall of Ant Farm. There was a re-creation of Ant Farm’s original video installation “Eternal Frame” which included Heather Weaver’s restoration of the video (which was featured in our preservation DVD, PLAYBACK: Preserving Analog Video). (more…)

by Wendy Levy, Director of Creative Programming

As Director of Creative Programming, the focus of my attention is bringing the most promising stories and media makers, new media projects and video archives into the world of BAVC; and creating partnerships and programs that impact the field of public media and independent filmmaking. 2007 was a big year at BAVC, full of opportunities for artists and institutions to explore innovative approaches to new work, and creative solutions to challenges in postproduction and preservation. These programs included: Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, Mediamaker & Mediamaker Advance Awards, and the Womens HD Artist-in-Residence. (more…)

by Carl Weichert, BAVC Training and Curriculum Strategist

We here at BAVC have been feeling rather nostalgic of late, having recently turned thirty, turned twenty-nine, uhm, been told we don’t look a day over 26. So we decided to fix ourselves a hot toddy, wrap ourselves in our snuggliest housecoat, and make our way into the cold, dark recesses of the BAVC archive, where we store a copy of every video that’s made its way through our well-preserved youthful halls.

Once there, however, we found it to be a great temperature for archival tapes, but a bit too cold and dark for our tastes, so we skedaddled right back out of there - and sent our intrepid intern, Clay, in our place. And Oh! the memories he’s brought back! Those were the days, my friend, we say to Clay the Intern, wiping a tear from the corner of our eye as we watch three-quarter-inch tapes together; we thought they’d never end. True dat, he replies, true dat.

Here’s just one of those precious memories of days gone by, a clip from a 1991 doc named Burning Man, made by none other than Larry Harvey, one of the founders of Burning Man. This clip contains footage of one of the earlier burns at Baker Beach here in San Francisco, as well as the first burn to take place on the Playa.

That reminds us, did we ever tell you about our first Burn…..?

by Wendy Levy, Director of Creative Programming at BAVC

I admit it. I read all technology news through a distinctly independent lens. The new gadgets and functionalities and trends interest me mostly in how they can, or will, impact documentary and creative storytelling, advocacy, communities without access, and people in need. At BAVC, we regularly invite tech geeks, filmmakers and activists to sit at the same tables in the same rooms to share vocabularies and concepts in nascent stages. It’s like herding really smart, creative and sometimes resistant sheep. Things have been changing - new platforms are now more deeply connected to content and audience than ever before.

That’s a good thing.

Looking ahead to 2008, to where media technology is going, and what independent producers are thinking about and creating, I just wanted to put a flashing yellow post-it on a couple of areas that need some attention from those of us devoted to world-changing independent media. (more…)

By Angelo Sacerdote, BAVC Senior Preservation Specialist & Technology Innovation and Media Arts Department Manager

A big thank you to Frank O’Connor, Director of Engineering at MediaOne
Services here in San Francisco for having the foresight and consideration to call me and offer up one BVH-2180 1″ open reel VTR. They had to get rid of this large machine and we actually have a use for it. This VTR doubles the 1″ Type C capacity of our preservation programand gives us the added ability to play THREE HOUR LONG TAPES. WOW! The BVH-2180 turns out to be somewhat rare, a top of the line, very expensive machine in it’s day (early 1980’s), with advanced edit controls. And it is in perfect working condition. In my opinion, 1″ Type C was the best composite format ever.

(more…)

By Angelo Sacerdote, BAVC Preservation Specialist

I learned how to splice super 8 film when I was a kid. In college, I learned how to edit video with an edit controller and a pair of U-Matic decks. I’m glad I never had to work with 2 inch Quad video (we have a dusty old Quad deck in our basement, if anyone wants to make an offer).

Today, many editors are starting off with Final Cut Pro, digitizing DV tape over firewire. With the advent of formats like IMX and P2, editors are soon going to skip tape altogether.

Many of us are used to thinking about hard drives as something you buy once in a while to edit on, something to be reused after the current project is over. Now that we are starting to embark on shooting in tapeless acquisition formats, we need to think of hard drives as the new tape. Now when you start a project, you must budget in the cost of hard drives as your permanent storage. As it turns out, it is cheaper to do this than to buy traditional video tape. For every “tape” you should have a backup “tape”. (more…)

By Chris Graybill, BAVC Preservation Technician

Well, I am running the last tape from the Kitchen order. As always there is some pretty neato content. Like the rapper Fab Five Freddy, with the Rock Steady Crew on the Dance floor. Also notable was Annie Sprinkle’s Post-Porn Modernist Show. All in all a funny and thoughtful experience.

Angelo Sacerdote, Preservation Specialist

We are transferring a large number of tapes from The Kitchen’s archive. The Kitchen is a non-profit performance and media arts organization dedicated to providing artists opportunities to create and show new work. It was founded in 1971 and continues to grow to this date. BAVC has been preserving parts of The Kitchen’s archives for several years. Artists we have seen on these tapes include Laurie Anderson, The Talking Heads, Fab Five Freddy and the Rock Steady Crew and many others.

One highlight from this shipment is jazz composer and saxophone player, Julius Hemphill performing “Ralph Ellison’s Long Tongue”. Ralph Ellison was an African American author best known for his excellent book, “Invisible Man”.

Here are some informative links about Julius Hemphill:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Hemphill
http://www.gallery41.com/JazzArtists/JuliusHemphill.htm