Running Head: The Gatekeepers of Digital

The Gatekeepers of Digital

Heather Fucinari

San Jose State University, School of Library and Information Science

LIBR 259 Preservation Management, Fall 2007

Abstract

Recently, Sun Microsystems and Elektrofilm created an answer to the issue of born digital film decaying rapidly after creation. These new digital repositories claim to be an answer to the crucial problem of saving our cultural document of film. Many archivists remain apprehensive towards digitization and digital preservation. A look at concerns, standardization initiatives and the digital repositories is analyzed.

The Gatekeepers of Digital

Since the inception of the first official archives to collect film based as art and historic record there has been debate about how they should function. Ernest Lindgren and Henri Langlois, both moving image archive vanguards of the early 1930’s, carried disparate ideas in their theories of archival practice (Kula, 2002). Today, not only are those core issues left unsettled, there is a proliferation of a very different medium which spawns a new source of contention. The moving image, which was once held on tangible media such as nitrate, acetate or videotape is now headed for the uncertain realm of bits and bytes. This move is only exacerbated by an apparent shift towards digital repositories such as Sun Microsystems Digital Content Archive products that the film and television industries are increasingly adopting. What was once the chore of traditional film archivists is moving toward the business models of Information Technology (IT) professionals and engineers.

This paper will address concerns of archivists towards digitization, initiatives that strive to address these issues through standards and what these new digital repositories are doing to mitigate these concerns. Various issues addressed, like that of authenticity, are not clearly defined as they are tied to subjective views on art. These problems are still concerns that spark controversies over digital management. This is a relatively new point in the time-line of archival theory and the dawn is upon us. All media, on any form, will eventually decay; those that care for it are charged with its best interest regardless of bias.

Moving image archiving, in its official form, has been around approximately 70 years. A phenomenon is on the rise and has called for new theories, systems and skill sets to be adopted by those keepers of our culture document of film. Born digital filmmaking is an increasingly popular form and analog film is going the way of digitization. In an answer to the demand of immense storage needs the age of the digital repository has come.

There are many companies vying in the digital repository market, but one among them has made major success in possibly saving our moving images. Sun Microsystems has developed a Digital Content Archive solution in response to the great influx of analog film digitization and born digital films. Their goal was to provide an agnostic, lossless and open source storage system to house the immense data of digital films at a lower cost than analog film archiving methods. The proposed cost of archiving two thousand digital films over a century is $150,000,000 compared to $390,000,000 for archiving analog film (Cavena et al., 2007). These figures, along with the promise of a future-proof system, can be a great incentive for studios to invest in this new business model.

The term “future-proof” is one that begs clarification. The expression is commonly used in the description of these systems and brings a smirk of disbelief on the faces of archivists. The main crux of this idea is that the digital information remains sustainable in the future by planning today. Bradley (2007) describes this idea, “A sustainable approach to repository design is one that considers, at its outset and through design and execution, future digital repository implementations that may not support or be supported by current standards and technologies” (p.8). This sounds like a vague philosophy, but Sun endeavors to give it a concrete identity when applied to technological advancements.

Sun’s proposal plans for several factors for future sustainability. One is the compression rate at which the Archive Object is stored. There is a limit to what the human eye can see which coincides with the highest resolution of High Definition (HD); the Sun system can achieve this. There is little evidence that resolution will ever go beyond that highest visual threshold of 4K. Another factor is ensuring that there is proper disaster recovery in place for the object. Sun recommends a total of four copies of the Archival Object with two held in a separate location. A third factor is the use of Error Correction Codes (ECCs) to detect and repair any bit errors that may occur. In Sun’s example, the probability of a film that has been accessed one million times being misread is 10-19. According to Cavena, et al. (2007), “The point being: it reasonably can be assumed, for the purposes of this application, that the ability to detect errors in transcription is perfect” (p. 18). It is natural for an archivist or preservationist to deeply question the realities of the future-proof claims; nonetheless, Sun’s proposal of this digital archive storage plan has come to fruition.

In April of 2007 Sun Microsystems and Elektrofilm created what is called “the first commercial effort to address the movie industry’s looming digital preservation headaches” (Cohen, 2007, para. 1). The Elektrofilm Digital Media Environment (DME) was an answer to fears of The Motion Picture Academy’s Science & Technology council that many born digital films are already beginning to deteriorate (Cohen, 2007). Phil Feiner, chairman of the council, believes this to be the birth of the new business of digital archiving. Many studios are expected to outsource their archiving to these types of companies (Cohen, 2007).

The DME is example of the changing face of archival preservation and access methods. The trend of film and television studios investing in systems such as this also shows a shift towards big business winning out over traditional and ultimately more costly methods of moving image archiving. This new era in archiving addresses immediate needs, though archivists remain hesitant towards digitization. A key concern to the moving image archivist is the use of digitization as a preservation method of these pieces of our culture.

As extremes in preservation, restoration and conservation theories and attitudes vary among the archival community there is resounding agreement that digital images should not be used for long term preservation. Margaret Hedstrom (1998) prefers the term “continuing” rather than “permanent” when defining digital preservation. She explains, “I mean the planning, resource allocation, and the application of preservation methods and technologies necessary to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable” (para. 4). Although a decade has past since Hedstrom’s definition, issues of digital preservation continue.

In 2004, a two year research project entitled Film Restoration and Conservation Strategies (FIRST) was presented at the Joint Technical Symposium. The purpose of the project was to present an overview of the current state and best practices for digitization. The recommendation was that film is the best answer for long-term preservation (Fossati, 2004). Paul Read (2004) explains the findings on digital storage for digital preservation of the moving image, “No current long term digital film data storage solution exists that fits the requirements of film archives, modern cinema film makers, rights holder, or even cinema exhibitors” (p.36). While this was the finding of the study at the time, there did not exist a system such as Sun’s to address reasoning behind the resistance of a digital storage system.

The FIRST project also describes the balance they recommend between the two schools of thought regarding business models. Read (2004) describes one extreme, “digitization should only be carried out at the optimal resolution for film and in effect digital preservation should wait until that is affordable, available and agreed” (p.37). The other viewpoint states, “The alternative view is that digitization of film is essentially for accessing and distributing images, and that it must be done directly into the most marketable format” (p.37). The Sun Microsystems model appears to strike this balance.

An alternate attempt to analyze and standardize digitization for preservation is the burgeoning Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) model. In hopes of creating a trusted digital repository the model is on its way to become an ISO standard pending updates (Fleischhaure, 2003). The Sun Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group (Sun PASIG) was formed to collaborate on best practices for archiving developed around the OAIS model (Sun PASIG, 2007). Sun is taking a proactive attempt in maintaining viable solutions to security, access and preservation of digital media.

Sun’s Digital Content Archive model was built to address the key concerns against digital archiving. The system combines a Hierarchical Storage System (HSM) which automates copying, auditing and rejecting files to eliminate the possibility of human error. The storage system relies on computer tape which is less costly and is “the current medium of choice in nearly all industries and governmental organizations for long-term storage and archive of digital data” (Cavena et al., 2007, p. 7). The Operating System is Open Source, not proprietary, which greatly extends the longevity, access and cost of the system.

In addition to concerns over digitization for preservation purposes there are far more subjective stances archivists maintain. The issue of authenticity, ethics and accessibility of these digital assets are far more difficult to tackle. This arena is where the predominant mind-set of the moving image archivist and that of IT personnel are clearly differing. To further complicate matters, these subjects pose long standing discord within the archival community itself. While technical issues can begin to be quelled by standards and best practices these points become grey.

Film archivist can be infamous in demanding the perfect simulation of the “nitrate experience” (Rutan, 2005). Some have been known to go so far as to say, “When Kodak stopped making film, the archives should stop collecting” (Walsh & Read, 2003, p. 140). It would be nice to have such luxuries of seeing a pristine original print of Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, but in the reality of the current state of film archives this is wishful thinking. Accessibility alone would be a major obstacle even if the nitrate print was kept flawless. These gifts of film are nothing to society unless imprinted on our collective consciousness. This can only be done through accessibility. At some point everything will deteriorate whether analog or digital; archivists need to ensure upkeep for either form.

The Eisenstein scenario is an extreme example of moving image archiving thought, but not too far from current debates involving authenticity questions of digitization of the moving image. Anyone standing in a grocery line or browsing the internet has witnessed what imaginative editing can be done with images. Abby Smith (1999) harkens back to the commercial depicting Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner. The moving image can be convincingly manipulated into a completely different meaning. It is very doubtful that a film would be manipulated to this extreme using a digital repository, but the possibility remains. Sun Microsystems boasts of a high level of security and attempts to cut down human interference of the image, so a worry to this extent would be almost a moot point.

Another concern regarding authenticity and the ethics is the point of the ingested or digitized object not representing exactly what the director had in mind. This problem exists among those that demand a perfect recreation of what was originally printed onto the celluloid decades ago. The issue can go so far as a born digital film that is archived on a lower or higher resolution. This is predominantly the stance of the aforementioned “nitrate experience” sector. This arena is where lines are drawn and the question of access versus preservation is blurred.

Mark-Paul Meyer (1996) explains one of the radical concerns of a film archivist, “If we consider ‘original’ in its strict sense, image and sound quality could become ‘as new’. But then one should ask whether it is desirable to strive for a perfect rejuvenation of image and sound.” (p.11). Meyer (1996) also worries, “One can try to reproduce a Gaumont Chronochrome and the result may look wonderful, but how do we know what it really looked like and whether the restoration resembled the original” (p.11). A spiral of argument and confusion is spawned from these types of questions. This is also the type of attitude that leads to low to no access of films once they hit an archive.

The Sun Microsystems Digital Content Archive proposal gets into the same ‘what if’ debate. The company questioned many scenarios of the proper final resolution to store the film. What if it was up-rezed to a different resolution? What could be the highest expected in the future? What if they saved at the highest, but the Digital Intermediate (DI) was compressed? After an explanation of current practices in analog film processing Cavena et al. states, “That we don’t do color separations on the entire footage shot, the entire unconformed OCN, is evidence that we recognize already that we need not keep every frame of every take of every movie forever” (p.9). Sun accepts they are in the business of managing degradation, but not eliminating it. Concluding on the subject of the original film copy they explain, “This is as it should be - a story is not a physical thing; why should archiving a story be reliant on the characteristics of any physical medium” (Cavena et al., 2007, p. 10). As aforementioned, Sun also concluded that they are capable of saving a film as well the human eye will ever be able to detect. Even this statement may cause alarm among archivist. What if that scratch or blip was supposed to be in the film?

Ultimately, Sun Microsystems is in the market to try and save our moving image treasures for a fee from some of the largest studios. The case of the born digital film, which has been found to deteriorate after a year in some cases, needed immediate assistance. The logistics of the way in which this is done may not suit all and the reliability of their technological claims is a wait and see process.

Most certainly there is need for a middle ground to be met between the traditional film archive profession and that of the digital repository enterprises. Regardless of the apprehensive attitude of film archivist, there is undoubtedly the need to build skills sets to deal with the inevitable digital image. Concurrently, archivist need to appreciate that, for better or worse, moving image archiving funding is becoming a business proposition. The larger studios are opting out of their in-house archives for these outsourced digital archive repositories. For now, these larger systems are a fixture for higher end film and television outfits, but eventually the cost-benefit might slant towards this adopting this new option for smaller institutions.

There is no immediate answer for these concerns as only time will tell the viability of these new “future-proof” digital repositories. Our memory’s gatekeepers can only hope this vital piece of our culture and collective memory is not spiraling towards digital doom. As moving image archivists tread in the steps of Lindgren and Langlois they can only hope that their decisions will suit future generations well.

References

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