Film Preservation Makes First Showing of the Masterpiece 'Metropolis' Possible

“Metropolis” is a legndary German silent film that has been restored and is at a new exhibition in Berlin. The film’s debut will be at the Berlin International Festival.

The showing will be held at the Deutsche Kinemathek museum for film and television . "It will be sort of a Making Of," said curator Kristina Jaspers. Filmgoers can get a glimpse of the 30 minutes of extra footage found in a film archive in 2008, some 200 set photos, as well as pieces of the city set itself, many of which were built in Berlin's Babelsberg film studio. Also on display will be the film's screenplay and original music score. The film preservation facility containing this film had to be environmentally controlled in a high security building to provide the ideal storage conditions. The climate controlled film storage facility provided the tools to assist with the enhanced restoration process.

“Metropolis” depicts a futuristic city full of skyscrapers and airplanes divided into an above ground world where the rich live in luxury, while subterranean workers toil to serve the upper class. It has been credited with inspiring George Lucas's C-3PO from the "Star Wars" films and the set from Ridley Scott's "Bladerunner."

The 1927 science fiction film directed by Fritz Lang was the most expensive film ever made, costing some 7 million Reichsmarks and including the work of thousands of people but was considered a flop and cut drastically before being released in the US.

The shorter version of the film was restored in 2001 but the original 16mm version was found last year at the film preservation facility. This version was restored by a film preservation institute achieving the highest standards of quality. It premieres at a gala Berlinale event that will also be beamed onto screens at the Brandenburg gate for the public on February 12.

Studios see dollar signs in film preservation

There are many reasons to preserve old films, such as for art's sake. Funds are raised, grants given out to ensure that even cinematic historical films from the past 60 years are given as much care and attention as the most valuable paintings or sculptures.

But the real reason more and more movies are being preserved these days is about economics. After decades of letting films decay, the industry has seen the potential profit.

The newer technology of the Blu-Ray Disc, the DVD and high-definition television has educated the consumer. The demand for high-quality images and audio has given studios an ideal economic motive for keeping their libraries in top condition. And once most consumers become accustomed to crisp visuals and booming audio, nothing less will do.

Michael Pogorzelski, director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Academy Film Archive, points to the jump from VHS to DVD as film preservation's turning point.

"The picture quality and audio quality went up so astronomically compared to VHS, everyone at the studios said, 'We've got to make sure that all the films look and sound as good as they can, and the only way to do that is to go back to the original elements.' And that's when you saw them seeing a real economic incentive to get their libraries in shipshape."

Over a decade ago after the DVD was launched, film preservation (and often restoration) is routine at Hollywood studios. Today, studios typically store multiple copies of films in climate-controlled vaults in different locations. Primary materials are stored in one film storage facility, while three duplicates are stored in others miles apart. In the event that an individual copy is corrupted or an entire facility is destroyed, the library remains intact.

The process has advanced tremendously since years ago, when prints and original negatives were neglected or lost, improperly stored, transferred to inferior stocks, sometimes destroyed. In the 1970s, filmmakers spoke out and the Library of Congress and institutions like the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the George Eastman House stepped up efforts to save and restore films. Studios were, by and large, slow to act, if they did anything at all.

Whole divisions in studios are devoted to the preservation and restoration process. They give state-of-the-art preservation treatments to every new project, while simultaneously working through older titles in the media library. Films that have a historically significance and are highly profitable on home video and across other markets get looked at first. Priority is also given to titles that are in bad condition or stored on historically unstable material.

Grover Crisp, vp asset management and film restoration for Sony, says recent advances in digital-restoration technology are inspiring his studio to go back and revisit major titles a second or third time, such as 1969's "Easy Rider," which was previously restored in the mid-1990s using both photochemical and digital techniques.

"There were serious limitations back then in terms of what we could do digitally, and because of the cost involved, it really wasn't done very often," Crisp says. "Now, we can do the entire film for a whole lot less than we did just short pieces 10 or 12 years ago."

The issue of long-term digital storage is also a big concern to the major studios, which put most of their films through a digital intermediate process that renders the final image in a data file that is then transferred to celluloid for theatrical distribution. Various groups are looking into the problem, such as the Academy's Sci-Tech Council and the industry-standards body SMPTE, but the processes for dealing with digital data are unique to each facility, and no consensus as to a solution has been reached.

For now, film archiving is the medium of choice. Film Storage done properly should last 100 years or more, compared to digital data tape, which lasts around seven to 10 years. But with the increasing number of major Hollywood films being shot digitally, the push to retrofit multiplexes with digital projection systems, and the growing popularity of viewing media on personal computers and handheld devices, one has to wonder if the idea of preserving moving images on film may soon be gone.

Achieving the standards of the highest quality, Pacific Title Archives' preservation facilities are environmentally controlled in high security buildings providing ideal storage conditions for film, video, audio and optical media assets. We provide a number of tools that assist in the re-purposing of the assets and their enhanced restoration and media conversions.

The Media Asset Manager

WELCOME to the inaugural edition of the Asset Manager, the Pacific Title Archives Alliance Network Newsletter. This will be a monthly newsletter filled with valuable information for you to apply in your business on a regular basis. We are excited to present this to you and look forward to many more editions to share.

MONITOR YOUR ASSETS FOR POSSIBLE CONVERSIONS

Although your elements are under excellent management at Pacific Title Archives, we must be ever mindful that as time goes on, technology changes. Analog and even some digital formats are already obsolete. And even under

Although your elements are under excellent management at Pacific Title Archives, we must be ever mindful that as time goes on, technology changes. Analog and even some digital formats are already obsolete. And even under ideal storage conditions, videotape will age and deteriorate over time. Bottom line; all recordings will suffer from aging and machine format obsolescence. Hence, the warning signs abound. The time to transfer your legacy videotape or audio assets is NOW. If you have the following formats, you need to migrate to newer media formats immediately:

2 “ quad
1 “ Type A

,B, C
1” IVC
1” Sony EV
3/4“ U-matic
1/2” open reel-to-reel
Panasonic MII

Other Formats to Consider:
D-1, 2, or 3
DCT
Betacam SP
Consumer formats: VHS, Betamax, 8MM Audio formats: PCM, DAT, DA-88

What Actions should you take at this time?

1. Immediately review your assets with your Pacific Title Archives Representative
2. Determine what videotape formats you currently have
3. Prioritize “at risk” material for immediate transfer
4. Establish a plan of monetizing your most valuable assets but also allow for all legacy material to be migrated before its too late
5. Start a regular examination of your archived elements to stay abreast of the changing technology and to keep ahead of obsoleting technologies

In the course of the progressive multi-media development in the film, television and recording industries it has become more and more important to administrate and monetize multimedia contents, inclusive of film, tapes, recording files, pictures, audios and videos. The media asset management process at Pacific Title Archives is designed for us to work in conjunction with the client as a partner in the identification, management and preservation of their media assets for optimal utilization. Here at Pacific Title Archives, the target of the media asset management process is to facilitate an effective and efficient management of multimedia formats and to achieve an economic benefit and competitive advantages for our respective clients.

Media Asset Management Services

Digital Archiving:

The following broad categories of digital asset management systems are offered:

• Brand asset management consultative services, with a focus on facilitation of re-purposing the content. Here the content is largely marketing- or sales-related, for example, product imagery, logos, marketing collateral or fonts, to give a few examples.

• Library asset management systems, with a focus on storage and retrieval of large amounts of infrequently changing media assets, for example in video or photo archiving. We manage the libraries of large music companies.

• Production asset management systems, with a focus on storage, organization and revision control of frequently changing digital assets, for example in digital media production. We provide tape duplication and conversion services, inclusive of analog to digital.

• Production asset management systems, with a focus on storage, organization and revision control of frequently changing digital assets, for example in digital media production. We provide tape duplication and conversion services, inclusive of analog to digital.

• Digital supply chain services, pushing digital content out to digital retailers (e.g. music, videos and games).

Business Media Storage:

We will assist you in the management of your document storage, providing reports, on-line access and rapid delivery of all business records.

Document Scanning & Imaging:

Pacific Title Archives through its alliance network specializes in providing document management technologies products and services to the film, television and recording industries, as well as business and legal organizations. In addition, we provide a full-service web-based document repository hosted in a highly secure data center facility.