Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- List of Tables and Figures
- 1 Digital Film Production Studies
- 2 Digital Film Production People
- 3 Digital Film Production Time
- 4 Digital Film Production Space
- 5 Digital Film Production Representations
- 6 Digital Film Production Preservation and Access
- 7 Epilogue
- Practitioner Filmography
- Ginger & Rosa Full Credit List
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Digital Film Production Preservation and Access
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- List of Tables and Figures
- 1 Digital Film Production Studies
- 2 Digital Film Production People
- 3 Digital Film Production Time
- 4 Digital Film Production Space
- 5 Digital Film Production Representations
- 6 Digital Film Production Preservation and Access
- 7 Epilogue
- Practitioner Filmography
- Ginger & Rosa Full Credit List
- Filmography
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
This Chapter turns to the consideration of the processes of representation that are endemic in the historicisation of film production, through an investigation into the manifestation of ‘representational attenuation’ in emergent film archival paradigms at the ‘pivotal point in historical research and the future interpretation of history’ (Velios 2011: 257). Given that the film archive preserves, curates, presents and frames what are essentially representational texts, I propose a mode of exegesis that enables us to look beyond the obvious in our analysis and interpretation of film archival practices. Within this Chapter, I consider the notion of a film archive in its broadest sense to include physical, digital, online repositories, websites, platforms, and apps, essentially any curatorial entity which presents and enables access to the materials of film production.
I will take forward the questions identified in the conclusion of the previous Chapter: how can the representational and simulated materials of film production support or hinder future retrospective historiographical production studies? And how do archival structures, principles and practice contribute to cultures of representations of film production at a moment of convergence?
Just as the digital production apparatuses that were examined in Chapter 4 were imbued with the aesthetics of the celluloid film, I examine how film archives come to be characterised by the transitional aesthetics of the archival moment. I consider how the ‘Production Aesthetic’ of a particular film, author or canon, is transmogrified into a ‘production legacy aesthetic’. I identify a production legacy aesthetic as that which (either authentically or erroneously) reveals the provenance of the archival asset (or the way in which it is framed) that enables it to be placed in its historical continuum.
In what follows, I underscore the significance of the archive as a representational object of study in and of itself through the demystification of ‘archival legacy aesthetics’ – which are the result of the rendering of organisational hierarchies and organisational principles as archival asset frames. I do so using the approach that I refer to as a ‘structural archival analysis’ – a media archaeological (Huhtamo and Parikka, 2011) approach which is focused upon the archival system itself, or to borrow Joel Katz’ term - an ‘archiveology’ (Katz, 1991). As we shall see, the archival legacy aesthetics of the film-to-data transitional moment are rife with digital-to-film atavisms which implicitly communicate the structures, conditions of production and politics of digital film.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Film Practice to Data ProcessProduction Aesthetics and Representational Practices of a Film Industry in Transition, pp. 178 - 205Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2017