38 ROUND TABLE ONE ON ONE Content Management
MCBOOLEAN’S FOLLY We continue the exploration of our round table content management scenario with an in-depth analysis from one of the world’s top film archivists
icola Mazzanti is head of conservation at Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique (Cinematek), and has been active in film
videos or film. We assume that he may have acquired rights, too, for some things. But we don't know. Nowadays, analogue content without rights is worth literally zip. If I was an equity company like the Goody Group, I would deposit this collection with an archive, a public mission institution or a university. There is a standard deposit agreement that is used throughout the world where you can deposit content while keeping the physical and intellectual property rights you may have. And you can easily modify the contract so that eventual revenues could be shared with the deposited institute. Why? Because no way on Earth is it economically worth it to develop the infrastructure required in order to conserve this collection. You mention that some of the cans smell of vinegar. This means vinegar syndrome, which implies freezing the assets. And if the collection is vast, you need a lot of space. Building low- temperature storage for such a collection is a big enterprise. And, frankly, is not the job of an equity firm. NICOLA MAZZANTI: You might try to sell the collection. You could try archives who are desperately trying to increase their collections, particularly in the American market. But you need qualified people just to go through the paperwork and the films. Now, there is the mention of some footage of Winston Churchill in the McBoolean archive. Let me give you a Winston Churchill example that was given to me in the 1980s. In a public archive in the US, there was a piece of film that was catalogued under the title ‘Fat man FEED: Are there any realistic alternative options?
archiving and restoration for more than 30 years. He was the first film archivist at the Cineteca di Bologna and the co-founder of both the film festival Il Cinema Ritrovato and the restoration centre, L’Immagine Ritrovata, which he restored hundreds of films for. Mazzanti has served on the board of directors of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and of the European digital platform for cultural heritage (Europeana). He was also involved in Digital Cinema standardisation within the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and was president of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE). We presented Mazzanti with our hypothetical case of the Goody Group acquisition of Booley McBoolean’s massive, messy film archive. His analysis was provocative and enlightening. FEED: So, you’ve read through the scenario. What are your thoughts about the Goody Group and its attempt to monetise the McBoolean archive? NICOLA MAZZANTI: I think it is a classic scenario. But if the Goody Group is really an equity company, my answer is: get rid of the collection as soon as possible. There is no money in it. It sounds to me like the Goody Group has acquired physical objects, but doesn’t necessarily own rights to all the content. Or, at least, they are not sure they own the rights. McBoolean seems to have acquired objects: prints, copies, either analogue
VINEGAR SYNDROME: Old film archives can be money pits – they need to be stored and are potentially worthless without rights
bricklaying in his yard’. After analysis, it was discovered that the fat man bricklaying was, in fact, Winston Churchill building a wall at his countryside house. Suddenly, this totally useless piece of material became of interest. When you switch the fat man with Winston Churchill, everything has another meaning. So you need qualified people to identify, catalogue and index the content. ‘To index’ doesn’t necessarily only mean distinguishing Winston Churchill from a generic fat man. Let’s say I have acquired a print of Lawrence of Arabia . Has this print got anything interesting in it? Is it two minutes longer, or just the same? Same for The Magnificent Ambersons example cited. Is there any extra footage? Does it look particularly good? For a print to be valuable, it must be either longer or better.
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