08 Feb Filmmakers Need To Future Proof Their Media

Photo by Chelsea Davis

Filmmakers need to future proof their media and according to a recent article in Variety, most aren’t even considering this.

Acad sounds alarm about fragility of digital prod’n suggests that filmmakers don’t consider future proofing, and that with our current explosion and implosion of digital standards, some films may not be accessible just months after they are made.

As someone said to me last week, filmmakers feel liberated by digital media. There is the perception that a digital file is permanent and reproducible in a whole different way from physical media. But digital media does not at all solve the archivist’s problems.

Why Do Filmmakers Need to Future Proof Their Digital Media?

Future proofing generally means taking steps to ensure that your media and data don’t degrade before you are done with them.

We could be talking about a physical issue, like the short lifespan of fax paper, or we could be talking about the lifespan of hardware or of software applications needed to access the information on media: for instance, 8-track tapes may be intact, but if you don’t have an 8-track player, you won’t be listening to the songs on them. And with digital media, if you have chosen a proprietary file format, and the software to open that file obsolesces for whatever reason, you have the same problem again.

This set of issues is as old as material culture. Do we scratch our messages in the sand or on a stone tablet? Do we write on vellum or on rice paper? If the problem isn’t clear, consider this: would you put the Kobo version of a book into a time capsule… or would you print the book on the best archival quality paper you could find? Or something in between, depending on when you thought the book would be accessed?

What does this mean for filmmakers?

1. You need active file management and a plan in place for output to archival quality media.

For example, the company that we used to work for saved all its client data files on to floppy disks. If we had those floppy disks now and found a floppy drive to play them on, we would find that the files are compiled by proprietary software. It could become illegal to break that software encoding to get the client’s material.

This is the same thing that’s happening with breaking DVD coding. There is a continual and active lobby to make it completely illegal to rip DVD files to digital files — even if you are the filmmaker or rights holder. Potentially, you might have legal rights to the media itself, but might be prevented by law from attempting to access the media, if it means circumventing a digital lock. Read more about digital rights management here.

2. If you want your media to last you have to output to a format you can conserve – such as paper or film or an open-source digital format.

3. You need to back up your data frequently and in several locations. Our guiding principles with our own media are:

• Accessibility: Can we find it when we need to? When we find it, can we open the files? Are the files well indexed and documented?
• Location: Do we have a physical backup? Is it off-site? Do we have several copies?

Here’s an article on the keys to safe data archiving that has a very useful grid that outlines some best practice file formats for archiving.

What are your methods for future proofing your digital media?