But more on that later. You, dear reader, might be wondering why I haven't written a blog in a while, especially after I ended my last one on such an ambiguous note. Was I going to like it here? Would it turn towards hatred? Am I even allowed to speak publicly on my views of a government job? Is this blog legal?
Well, things have just been getting better and better here. I didn't update the blog because I felt like I was doing a lot of the same thing, but it hit me today how much has changed. I have a cubicle now for the first time in my life, replete with my posters for Astro Zombies, Mad Max: Fury Road, my framed original of Stunt Rock, and my new poster for a double feature of The Horror of Party Beach and The Curse of the Living Corpse. I think it's making a good impression on the folks here. I should make sure to put up a picture of my wife and kids at some point soon.
On top of that, I have a steady project that I've been working on, very prestigious and very glorious to behold. Throughout the entire history of moving images, there has been one medium that surpasses all others to become the most beautiful and transcendent form of art known to man: Public Television.
*sniff* It's beautiful. We have a vast, and I mean VAST collection from NET that dates back to the early 1950s. Unfortunately, out of all the years we had them, we've never taken inventory. UNTIL NOW. So, myself and a co-worker go into the vault for three to four hours every day and take inventory. Each row has over 1,000 films, and there are about 12 rows. Some people say it can't be done in one summer. To those people, I say feh!
I did the math today and if we keep up at the rate we're going, we'll be able to finish this project in 24 days, which is wonderful to actually finish something that you spend your whole summer working on. For some reason, this is not tedious work to me. In fact, in its own warped way, I'm kinda loving it. These are all films and film cans that haven't been opened for DECADES, and most of them haven't been touched in half a century. Hardly any of these are readily available (in fact, the whole reason we're doing this is so that we can digitize them for future use), but they have some absolutely amazing titles.
For instance, you'll get stuck on a series about science that has several unidentified cans filled with dozens of reels, but on the other hand, you could find an NET Journal on George Cukor, a 1950s Profile on Orson Welles that likely has not been seen SINCE the 1950s (this will likely go to the top of the preservation queue), and some children's series with the best names like The Adventures of Danny Dee. Not sure how, but this one ended up on Youtube. Enjoy it in all its chalky, Cold War-era glory:
So, I've been working on this for the past few weeks now, which is why I haven't updated my blog much, because this inventory is what I've been doing most every day. But you don't realize change as it's happening. As time has gone on, I've realized how comfortable I am in my little workspace here. I'm getting along well with coworkers, and I've used a lot of my free time to watch some great movies (which I'll go into more detail about in a later blog post, or possibly a later blog I've been meaning to start strictly about movies). Plus, yesterday, I finished the first rough cut of the short film I directed in May: Amateurs. It's not perfect yet, but it'll get there soon enough, hopefully.
The crazy thing that happened to me today, though (and the impetus for writing this in the first place) is that I found something bizarre in the NET collection today: Non-NET films. They had Library of Congress labels, but their catalog numbers had long since fallen off. And so, the mystery was afoot. Somehow, these poor films had lost their way. They were old super-8 reels about 1970s Chevrolet and Pontiac cars, but I knew they had to belong somewhere else.
After doing some thorough searching through the database and discussing it with another coworker, we discovered that they belonged in a small section devoted to these bizarre super-8 films. We found it, tucked away in a corner in a huge vault, and realized they had all been stacked with no regard for the three we found (It went right from number 75 to 79), and that's when it hit me: These have probably been missing for years, at least a decade, if not 40 years since they were originally copyrighted. Had it not been for me, these films may have never been found. Thanks to me, the Chevrolet Productivity Network program on the 1977 Chevy Blazer will be preserved for all mankind.
It's a little ridiculous, but that's what we're about here: Making sure that all kinds of film, be it Classical Hollywood, foreign films, educational shorts, public television, 8mm pornos (yes, there are plenty of those), and even car commericals, are preserved for the future. Every kind of moving image is a part of our history. Even an ad for the 1977 Chevy Blazer.
No comments:
Post a Comment