University of Alaska Fairbanks
Interview with Dirk Tordorf, Film Archivist
Dirk Tordoff: On preserving the history of Alaska
Dirk Tordoff is Film Archivist at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. To the job he brings an extensive knowledge in Alaskan history, an ability to gain support for what he does, and a very pragmatic approach to archiving. When Reflex Technologies started in Alaska, Dirk began sending his film there ever since he met Reed Bovee through a producer, some years ago. In December 2012, Dirk sat down to talk about his background, experience, philosophy and his advice for other archivists.
On how he got interested in old films.
I went to college pretty late in life, and, for one of my courses, I was doing some research on transpolar flight in the 1920’s. I found a catalog that referenced an unidentified arctic flight that was shot on 16mm film that had been transferred on telecine to three-quarter inch. It was a pretty rough transfer with terrible quality, but I knew instantly what it was. And I thought, “Oh crap man, how could nobody else have known what this is?” And it struck me that a lot of people who looked at this were used to working with film and with video, but they weren’t used to working with history.
That got me interested in the materials the University of Alaska here in Fairbanks had already gathered. They had a hodge-podge with one really good collection, but everything just sat in boxes. Nobody really knew what to do with it. But the more I looked into what we had, the more I realized it was such a profound, significant record of history, and it was really my dedication to not losing that history that got me into the film.
On when – and how — he got serious.
In 1994, when I was still a student, I went to the AMIA conference in Boston where the emphasis was on ‘storage.’ They said: “…if you can’t store film correctly, you’re wasting your time because your film could shrink to the point where it’s unusable…” I knew the University wouldn’t build me a new building for cold storage, so I started doing research into other businesses – meat packing plants, funeral parlors, flower wholesalers — that also had to cool stuff without having to build a new separate structure.
And I came up with the idea of doing modular installations inside our buildings and identified two locations where we could put them. So, I talked to the Rasmuson family – they’re tremendous benefactors up here in Alaska – and they bought one vault and the University bought the other one. We have one for film, the other we turned into storage for magnetic and emerging media. At that point, I knew the University would never get rid of the collection because they had the proper storage for it.
On the size of the University’s collections.
I’ve tried to make it my goal to obtain as many collections as I can find and to identify as much footage as I can. We have about 10,000 reels of original film catalogued and another 5,000 of video. Maybe 10-percent of the film has been scanned. And conservatively we have another 3,500 reels of film that have never been gone through yet and probably an equal amount of video.
I work full time and have two other people who each work half-time, so we’re a tiny staff, but that’s sort of the name of the game in archives. People say I’ve got a tough job. I tell them — you want a tough job, try putting a radiator in a Kenworth at 30-below. Compared to that, this is like taking candy from a baby.
On the uniqueness of the University’s collections.
Our entire collection is made up of things that are in, about, or pertaining to Alaska, but the real unique aspect to the collection is: all of the vast changes in ‘Alaska the territory’ – and ‘Alaska the state’ – were all during the era of motion pictures.
That’s not to malign any indigenous groups or important whaling or other activities that happened before then, but the most significant changes in Alaskan history came with the influx of the European-based population — and all that started with the Gold Rush. That began the same year – 1897 – that Thomas Edison’s motion picture photographers loaded for the Klondike so even some the Gold Rush was recorded. And to have all of that history available on film is a pretty cool opportunity.
On working with Reed Bovee and with the Reflex system.
With film, I never threw anything away – even the badly-shrunken stuff because I figured that at some point, somebody would figure out how to deal with the problem. About then, I started working with Reed and when he started developing the Reflex system, we were a really great source of crappy old shrunken film. We put him to the challenge – but he was up to it.
On the difference made by the Reflex scanner.
Up until the Reflex scanner came along, the transfers we had were like poor step-sisters to the film. We used to get film transferred for donors, and when we showed them the transfer we had to immediately apologize: “…this isn’t as good as the original was, but it’s the best we can do…”
The Reflex scanner changed that to where we can say: “…this is absolutely the best there is; there’s nothing that compares…” That’s a wonderful thing.
And Reflex is more than willing to work with the little guys. Before that, we were more a source of annoyance than anything else to the other big companies we were dealing with. And I understand that. Bringing them just 3500 feet of shrunken 16mm to transfer can be a real pain in the butt, but Reed has never had that attitude and he’s never had that barrier. They’ve made their business very small-archive-friendly.
So, that combination – they have the best scanner there’s ever been and they’ll work with the little folks – that’s unbelievable. It’s been real significant.
On the amount of work he’s sent to Reflex.
At this stage, it’s got to be in the 100,000 feet plus range, including a fair amount of film that’s shrunk 3, 4, or 5-percent and extremely brittle. I haven’t sent all of the worst we have, but I’ve sent plenty of bad film and did give them some horrible stuff with over 10-percent shrinkage, just to “…test the system…” And it comes back great.
We just look at the original film through small moviescopes and in some cases, we can’t see enough image to know for sure what it is. We’ve had two or three instances where we’ve had film that was so dark we couldn’t tell exactly what it was but when Reflex transferred it, we realized we had some tremendous material there.
In a lot of cases, we can send something to them and the digital we get back is aesthetically much stronger than the original we sent. And there were also a couple of reels I’ve had someone else transfer – and then I had them re-transferred through the Reflex operation — and the Reflex transfer showed there was a lot more content there.
On sending original materials out of state to be transferred.
Sending film down to California doesn’t make me nearly as concerned as MGM would be sending theirs up here to Alaska. And since I’m from Alaska, freight and mail has been a part of my life. Everything has to come from somewhere else.
When I do send things, I don’t want to send an entire collection, so there’s a fail-safe built in for me that way. And Fed-Ex, which we pretty much use exclusively, are so good with their tracking, I’m not too worried about that. Then I just want to know that from the time it hits the transfer company’s door until it leaves their door, it’s 100% secure – that there’s no chance they’ll lose my film.
With Reed and Reflex, there’s a tremendous amount of trust we’ve built up through the years. They take us as seriously as a very large client and they treat all of our materials as carefully and as safely.
On getting everything into a digital format.
Through this slow, steady death of film, it’s really sad to watch the film purists have to make the transition to digital. But my loyalty is to the ‘contents’, not the ‘container’ — to the history, not to any specific media. We make the transfers and move on.
I fully believe there will be improvements in the technology – there are always improvements – but when Reflex scans it, I don’t feel that we will ever have to go back and re-scan the film. This is the first company we’ve worked with where we can say: “Look, it’s archival to start with but the transfer can be used in a production twenty-five years from now and it’ll still stand up.”
The image you’re looking at is clean enough that even if a better process comes along, you won’t see enough change to justify putting any more money into another transfer. It just can’t be made significantly better. With the work that Reflex is doing, we’re there.
On what he does with the scanned originals.
For a lot of the magnetic media, especially quad tapes, 1/2-inch open reels, the really crappy ¾-inch, we don’t even want it back. Some of those when you try to play, you’ve got to clean the heads about ten times in thirty minutes. The formats are dead. It’s like looking at grandpa in the coffin. His shell is there but the important part is gone.
But we keep all the film, even after it’s been scanned. The film vault has compact shelving in it – and it became really obvious really fast that there is no efficient way to store film in different sized cans. You have to standardize the size of the storage containers to maximize the amount of material you can get into compact shelving.
So, we take a collection on a bunch of different-size film reels and go through and figure out the chronology of the collection. Then we gang it all together with leader in between each original reel to make up 1600-feet reels. We record everything that comes with it initially – everything that’s on the cans, the reels, the boxes – but then by putting all the little elements on the 1600-foot reels we —- save ourselves a tremendous amount of space.
On his major realization for archivists today.
One of the biggest realizations I’ve had is that we have to work with the absolute newest media to make the oldest media accessible.
Today, all significant history and all significant learning comes through a screen – a TV screen, an iPad screen, the screen on your home computer, or some other mobile device — and that won’t change. If you want somebody to read the Magna Charta, you had better scan the thing and put it on line. They won’t come to you for it; you need to get it to them.
That’s a problem with archives of all types. People get very parochial about the collections being theirs and not the public’s so they don’t do enough to make it accessible. But you should look at all archival materials and ask: “How am I going to provide access to them”? They’re going to have to be rendered digitally so you can get everything to the eyes you want to get them to. And now, with the Internet, access has gotten easier.
There is no value in archiving anything people can’t see because they won’t support you if they don’t now what you have. You need to put as much emphasis on providing access to the material – as you do on preserving the material. That’s what’s kept us going; we’ve made our collection accessible.
On how they’ve made their collections accessible.
At this point, we have about 10,000 original items cataloged and it’s all searchable on line. We have a YouTube site where we’ve been up since October 2009 – so that’s about three years – and we have about 500 clips up there. And as of today, we’ve had 454,000 views. And we don’t have anything contemporary. We don’t have anything that’s ‘pop culture significant’. But we get a lot of interest in the clips. I never go two days without somebody calling me or emailing me about our film and lots comes from the YouTube access and other on-line sites that we use. If that stuff wasn’t up there, nobody would be calling.
On how he decides what to transfer.
It’s all content based. I don’t want to digitize scenery, animals, or anything that doesn’t have people doing something – or something people have done. Everything that has people doing something up here is Alaska – especially if it’s culturally significant or we don’t have another example — is what I want to digitize – because that’s what people are interested in.
We do sell a fair amount of footage – we don’t charge very much for it so that’s one of the reasons producers will come to us – but selling is a nice ‘aside’ and it can’t be a motivating factor in archiving. You never know what people are going to want to buy because you don’t know what they’ll see in what you have.
Let me give you an example. I had some footage that was shot in Barrow in 1917. It showed cutting hair with an Ulu – a curved blade woman’s knife with a big handle on it – and it was really cool to see that being used for hair-cutting because you never think of things like that.
So, I’m showing this to this friend of mind whose degree is in Anthropology. He’s looking at it and all of a sudden he says, “this is great, this is fantastic. There’s a canvas wall tent back there.” The hair cutting was interesting to him for about two seconds, but the wall tent in the background was significant because he didn’t know they used wall tents up there that early.
And I thought, if I can save footage that doesn’t mean squat to me, somebody at some point will have the opportunity to look at it and see something I would have no idea to look for.
On getting support for his efforts.
Here’s another one of my great generalities: People will support the specific, but not the general.
Right now, I’m looking at some narrow-gauge footage of a railroad that was here for about ten years. In the pioneer railroad communities of the world, there are people you could approach about preserving this content and they’d be interested. But if you went to people and said, “We have this great old film, do you like old film?” And they’d tell you that they love it, that they watch documentaries and so forth, but if you asked them to support old film, you find it hard to get them behind that.
There’s a lot of government funding and philanthropic funding that’s available but you have to look at any organization and see what their preference is right now. Then look at what you’ve got, and see if you can make a match. That may not be the film you’re most concerned about transferring, but if it’s on your list, you need to promote that.
Then, it helps to also do additional research into the interests of the ‘review board’, those who are making the decisions. If, for example, you find that one of the philanthropic organization’s decision makers is a big-time skier or mountain climber, then you try to line up the kind of material their organization will fund that also includes something that will resonate with one or more of the reviewers. So, you focus on both the organization and the people making the decision and taper your submissions accordingly.
On his motivation to keep going.
My motivation is largely based on my identity. I was born in Alaska and I live in Alaska and I feel a real obligation to Alaskan content. I want to make sure that as much of the available archival material is identified and preserved, as possible. Because that’s our history and it means something to me. When you have a skill set, you’re supposed to be able to go and plug it in anywhere, but if you can plug it in somewhere that means something to you, that makes it all the more significant. And I’m fortunate to be able to do that.
National Park Service
1932 Lindley – Liek Expedition Restoration
Hi Reed,
Well done! Thank you for your efforts and professional expertise.
I played the Blu-ray discs and looked at the master files in the external hard drives. Everything looks complete and organized.
Many, many thanks for your thoughtful and exacting work on this project.
It has been a pleasure working with you, and I will recommend your services to others with similar projects.
Jane
Jane Bryant
Cultural Anthropologist
Cultural Resource & Subsistence Division
Denali National Park & Preserve
Joel Bennett Productions
Dear Reed,
What a great job you did on the film scanning. I’ve never worked together with someone so smoothly and creatively – that’s over a 20 year period of film making.
You managed to bring my film collection back to life. I guess it was good fortune to have gotten those 16mm prints back in the 80s, giving us the ability to bump them up to digital.
Thank you – more than you know. I look forward to staying in touch on this and other projects. Let’s work together again.
All the warmest wishes,
Joel
William Bacon Productions
To Reed and the crew,
Thank you for the wonderful film scanning work you have performed for me. My films have never looked better and thanks to your efforts they will now be accessible for many years to come.
I will be sending more film your way in the next few weeks and I look forward to seeing the results.
Thanks again for helping me transition into the digital age!
William Bacon, III