http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/
The archive is situated in the corner of a library on the
university campus. After a welcome, I was first taken round their three main
storerooms. The archive will accept film or video from anyone at all who wants
to donate, provided that it’s about Yorkshire or featuring Yorkshire people and
generally useful to them – so the first room is full of people’s donations that
are waiting to be accessioned. Graham showed me some of the reels of tape,
which had come to them in various containers such as toffee tins and tupperwares.
You could tell most of them had been dug out of people’s attics! They are all
held in this room until someone is able to check them and assess what’s on them
and their usefulness. If considered appropriate, the film strip is then transferred
to a standardised reel, labelled with an accession number and brief description
then moved to the next storeroom.
These rooms were really quite cold – definitely a lower
temperature than our stacks at the Brotherton. This is because old film is in
great danger of deteriorating. Graham showed me an example of some acetate film
that was in quite a bad state – the most obvious sign being that it smelt of
vinegar! I had meant to ask him if they had ever got anything in that was on the
nitrate film stock that can explode like in Cinema
Paradiso. I never did though.
Then I was taken to the room in which is stored the film
that has been transferred to digital tape for use by the archive. This is
incredibly expensive to do and so is only carried out on demand, for specific
projects: research, television, exhibitions and so on. In fact, the whole
archive is very expensive to maintain, considering all the specialist equipment,
labour time, and the need to keep those cold temperatures consistent, but they
get funding from various sources. Sadly, we also have to consider that
technology moves on, and the equipment used to play this tape will one day be
obsolete, meaning, presumably, another transfer to a different format and more
expense.
Graham told me quite a funny example of a recent user of the
archive: the band Metallica. They had wanted to show some film footage of fox
hunting during their Glastonbury set; it was meant to be a joke because of the
big controversy over their singer’s support of hunting. I think I’d feel
uncomfortable helping them out with something like that, but I guess you can’t
pick and choose these things!
Next we went and talked to Steve, who works with the film
itself. He views people’s donations when they come in and assesses whether they
are unusual or interesting enough to be kept, making sure that they’re
relevant. He also writes catalogue records for the film. When I’d read some of
these online, I’d been surprised that each one featured a quite detailed descriptions
of what went on in the film. I felt this must be time-consuming, but I was told
it was important so that researchers or in fact the archive themselves can find
specific parts of the film that are of interest, or can cross-reference when
doing a search. Steve was viewing a new film when I came in, on a huge
reel-to-reel machine, a lot more hi-tech than the cine-film projector in my dad’s
loft! Like many, I expect, the film seemed to feature a family holiday. He said
they get as much information as they can from the owner regarding what exactly
is happening in the film, but still it’s very often difficult for them to
ascertain what’s going on!
Finally, I went into the room where film is cleaned and
repaired – again using special equipment including quite a large cleaning
machine, as well as solvents and so on. The best part, though, came when I was
shown some of the actual films the archive themselves were producing from
pieces of footage. I had no idea they did this themselves but apparently an
editor comes in every week. I saw a short extract from ‘Filmed but Not
Forgotten’, their current, Heritage Lottery-funded project for the WWI
centenary. They have taken all the films they have from around this time –
obviously not a huge number – and remastered them so they are available for the
public to view. They’re also running a campaign to try and identify some of the
filmmakers and the people who are in the films. http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/videos/filmed-and-not-forgotten . Interestingly, the Brotherton will be
helping them out with this by digitising a programme for Ripon Sports Day from
1916.
The other two films I saw were ‘Trike to Bike’, a lovely 5-minute film they made for the Tour de France, which you can see here: http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/content/le-tour-comes-yorkshire and, excitingly, an unfinished version of the
trailer they’re making for Hull, City of Culture – more info about this is here http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/content/film-search-hull
. Everyone who might have a film about Hull is being encouraged to search their
attics, as they really want to expand this particular film collection in time for
2017.
The edited films I saw were of an excellent quality. I was really inspired,
but also moved to think that so much of this footage was recorded by ordinary
members of the public, in their back gardens, or perhaps out at a community
event. Now their images will be preserved as long as the archive lasts, going
on into the future to educate and enchant anyone who views them in the years to
come. Without even knowing it, these people have made their mark on history.
I left the archive on a real high – I’d love to work
somewhere like this some day. The staff were really nice and I’m so appreciative
of Graham for giving up his time to show me round. To anyone out there who have
a film to donate, or just want to find out more about what YFA does, I’d very
much recommend it.
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