The issues of archiving and preservation have been overlooked, or more acurately, ignored by networks and producers of television series as well. I have brought up the subject many times at the start of a new series and my question usually gets a laugh.

The concern for preservation is about as low as one gets on the priority scale. Not being cancelled and being brought back for a second season is on everyone’s mind. The quickness with which an episode is written, produced, shot, edited and aired is the engine that drives the project.

However, even in 1951 Desi Arnaz thought enough about preservation before one script was written for “I Love Lucy” that we are able to enjoy the series to this day. Broadcast standards and technology are changing so quickly that series shot digitaly today will only exist in today’s digital HD format with no allowance for future changes.

Some series like “The West Wing” were originally shot on 16mm but soon were promoted to 35mm in its first or second season. “Gilmore Girls”, a series I worked on for many seasons, was shot strictly on Super 16mm. Both of these shows were conformed and finished on tape and the negative was not initially cut. However, Warner Brothers has a policy to eventually cut the negative for archival purposes. Though certainly effects and transitions will be missing because they were originally done digitally, the optical count sheets and paperwork were turned over by the assistant editors for future use and at least all the crucial image information has a more stable home.

The more current shows are tipically shot on the Arri Alexa on a ProRes format. Even the raw data on the P2 cards, the daily originals, are erased and recycled once the day’s work has been transferred to a hard drive. These shows will exist only as long as these hard drives remain valid. That, as we all know, is a very iffy proposition. Even Japan’s tsunami took out the only factory Sony had that made the popular HD-Cam SR, spurring a run to D5 and other formats and many shows remain tape based. If someone gave me a hard drive from 1995 I doubt I would even be able to access the media in any kind of relevant shape.

There are too many shows and too much turnover for the networks to spend the capital for this kind of archiving, but it seems ironic that a show from the very dawn of the sitcom in the early 50′s has a better shelf life than many of today’s high tech, high def projects.

Raul

JOHN’S REPLY: It’s great to get this history and time line from an editor who has been working episodic in the Alexa era. It only confirms our worst fears for the future until sometime comes up with a viable and cheap archival medium. On the other hand, I have been very gratified by the many young cinematographers I spoke with during the recent ASC awards weekend who are arguing to shoot Super 16 because they believe the facts about archiving– and after all, they’d like to know that their work won’t turn into digital nitrate.