Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Of all the films produced during the silent era (1895–
1930), approximately 95 percent have been lost. Of all
films produced during the nitrate sound film era (1930–
1955), only about 50 percent survive in any form. Even
many films from the most recent years of film history
have failed to survive, due to color fading, marginal status
(industrial films), and archaic formats (for example,
Cinerama). Probably as much as 60 percent of all television production has been lost.
Films from the entire nitrate era (1895–1955, silent
and sound) have decomposed due to poor storage conditions. In the first stage of decomposition, the film turns
sticky, while the image disappears in a gelatinous mass.
In the second phase, the film roll solidifies into a hard
disk, making the retrieval of any images virtually impossible. Finally, the material turns into a brown powder.
Since nitrate film is highly flammable, many films were
lost in fires. In fact, it was not uncommon for commercial film companies to burn their vault holdings because
they saw old films as merely a liability and an expense
once they had made their initial theatrical runs. Not until
the advent of television and later consumer video were
rereleases of economic interest to the major corporate
studios.
Other problems of film stability appeared with time.
In the 1970s, it was discovered that newer acetate films
decomposed through what was termed the ‘‘vinegar syndrome.’’ Rather than turning gooey, the films became
brittle and buckled, making them unprojectable. Color
film was also subject to decay. While the old
Technicolor films have remained relatively stable, color
film stocks from the 1950s (Eastmancolor) have been
subject to extreme fading, leaving prints and negatives
looking pink after only two decades or less. Finally, the
advent of television and video brought with it more
than three dozen television and video formats that
appeared and disappeared over the last forty years, making it necessary to preserve not only the electronic
moving images in these formats but also the equipment
that played them. For example, many two-inch quad
tapes (the first videotape format from the late 1950s)
can no longer be accessed because the large and cumbersome machines used to play such tapes no longer
exist. Unlike film material, which can be viewed
with the naked eye or with standardized projectors, videotapes are encoded and decoded by machines from
specific manufacturers and are usually incompatible
with machines from another manufacturer.
The whole area of digital information preservation
and access, whether on the Internet or on DVDs and
other new digital media, compounds issues of format
migration and is only now being confronted by moving image and sound archivists. For film and television
archivists, these new media present ever greater challenges, given a lack of standardization on the one
hand and the ephemeral nature of the media on the
other. Formats are appearing and disappearing even
more rapidly than was the case with analog video,
making preservation a complex issue, indeed.
Furthermore, many classic films still held by copyright
holders are being digitized and often manipulated in
ways not intended by the original producers, making
them more commercial but no longer true to their
original content and form. For example, recent DVD
‘‘restorations’’ of some classic Technicolor musicals no
longer look like the original Technicolor, which is
characterized by garish color and a slightly soft focus,
because it is now possible to eliminate these ‘‘defects’’
digitally.