Apple to Android – improving how we move our collection
Last week, the Collections Systems Team activated 12 new barcode scanners for use in the Vaults and Despatch teams at the BFI National Archive in Berkhamsted and Master Film Store in Gaydon. These teams are responsible for moving hundred of videotapes, film reels and hard drives around the BFI and beyond every day; all using barcode scanning equipment.
These new scanners are faster, lighter and have parts that are easier to replace, so changing over from our old Apple devices to these new Android ones is crucial for improving how we move our collections. We also benefit from a new version of our Axiell Move software which has a more modern design. After a test period with these teams, the scanners will be in use across the whole BFI National Archive next year. Shout out to Jennifer Macmillan for her work on this process, and all the Vaults staff for being ready to test the system.
– Louise McAward-White, Collections Data Manager
(Picture: Manny from Vaults team Berkhamsted shows the new scanner in action in the store)
End of an Era
I’ve visited several attics and basements in my time at the BFI, and this is one that really felt worth documenting even if it was only in a small way. The Educational Film Bureau was a film distribution company “collecting and distributing films of educational value to schools” that was instituted in 1928, pre-dating the BFI itself. From its London home, it moved out of the city during the Second World War to Tring in Buckinghamshire, almost a stone’s throw from the BFI National Archive’s similarly moved collection in Aston Clinton. When EFB’s founder Kenneth Paterson died in 1946, his wife Winifred took control of the business and ran from the basement of the family home in Aylesbury – where it remained until the family contacted the BFI around 2020.
I heard from Winifred and Kenneth’s son that through the 60s and 70s a series of local schoolgirls earned some spare cash by working in the basement, winding and repairing the films to get them ready to send off around the country. In some ways the company never closed, its just that people stopped requesting their 16mm prints, and the people familiar with the service retired. The set-up just gradually set itself in aspic, until I rudely came and took away a selection of the films. Something is definitely lost in the films’ shiny new cans, barcodes and orange labels, but resituated in the master film store in Gaydon, part of the Educational Film Bureau story continues.
– Jez Stewart, Curator of Animation
Anatomy of a trailer
Following on from some recent film handling training, a small group of us at the archive have been accessioning and cataloguing some trailers to put our new skills into practice.
The reel of 35mm film pictured above contains 11 different trailers, all spliced together. It came to us as a donation to the archive. The objective here is to separate them into their own reels and catalogue them as individual works. We start by winding through the film on a winding bench until we can identify the beginning and end of the next title:
The images look familiar, but we need to view it in full to make sure it is what we think it is:
Once we’ve located the beginning and end of the next trailer, we separate it from the main reel and attach a head and tail to either end (these are lengths of film attached to a reel to assist with handling and loading onto a projector). This is done using a film splicer:
With our reel prepared, we then run it on an inspection table to make sure it is what we think it is, and to ensure the picture and sound come through correctly:
This confirms it as the trailer for Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh’s warm-hearted comedy from 2008. We then enter it into the BFI’s Collections Information Database as an individual work, separate from (but linked to) the record for the full film. This is because trailers are produced as stand-alone promotional products in their own right, often by separate companies (think of it as an advert for a film that uses its footage, rather than a part of the film itself).
With the trailer catalogued, all that remains is to label it:
And finally put it in a film can, barcode it and scan it in to a location:
Some of the other trailers we’ve catalogued include martial arts classic The Raid (an Indonesian film directed by a Welshman), Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Madonna’s W.E.; an international array of films, but all trailers made by distributors for UK exhibition, and thus worthy of preservation as products of film distribution and exhibition in the UK.
An interesting and useful project on which to hone our film handling and cataloguing skills!
– Will Greenacre, Curatorial Archivist
Antiques Road Trip repeat
Fancy a bitesize jaunt to the Conservation Centre? Head over to BBC iPlayer and (re)discover an episode of the Antiques Road Trip, which was repeated on BBC One last Thursday (5 December).
Originally broadcast in December 2023, the episode features our very own Kieron Webb (on tour guide duty) and Karen Bevan, who share details about the archive’s history, our film collections and conservation work.
Antiques dealer Catherine Southon ‘takes a breather from shopping’ at 00.10:46 to drive her Morgan Roadster up the A416 to Berkhamsted. Take five minutes out of your day and have a watch here.
– Alex Prideaux, Marketing & Events Manager (Our Screen Heritage)
The Inside the Archive blog is supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.
