Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, if I
Speaker 1: could save time in a bottle. I'm Jonathan Strickland and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to do a
Speaker 1: little bit of meta analysis about what it means to
Speaker 1: talk about the future, because on this podcast, a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, the theme is the future, but
Speaker 1: really that turns into, well, here's a scientific question that
Speaker 1: will be answered in the future, or that we're currently
Speaker 1: answering now and we'll know the answer in the future.
Speaker 1: Or here's a technology that may become more prevalent or
Speaker 1: change the world in the future. But what about the
Speaker 1: passage of time itself? What about when we turn our
Speaker 1: attention to the changing of the guard from the past
Speaker 1: to the present to the future. And that's at the
Speaker 1: heart of our topic today, which is going to be
Speaker 1: historical preservation. Yeah, and it's going to be a two parter. Guys.
Speaker 1: We we realized that we had really quite a lot
Speaker 1: to say about this, and we've already done a few
Speaker 1: episodes on the future of the history that we are
Speaker 1: creating today, because every day we create a new history
Speaker 1: for ourselves or the new little blipping it. Yeah, isn't
Speaker 1: that a wonderfully depressing thing to think about your life?
Speaker 1: You're just leaving little drops in the ocean of history.
Speaker 1: I think it would be more depressing to think I
Speaker 1: was leaving in history when you're like man today. Today,
Speaker 1: I cataloged my perfume. You're welcome. Future. Is funny that
Speaker 1: we want privacy from the people who are alive today,
Speaker 1: but we want the people of the future to know
Speaker 1: everything about us. Do not notice how many public posts
Speaker 1: on Facebook? I'm like, look at these. Of course I
Speaker 1: want to be in all the and all the history
Speaker 1: books of the future. That's why you never shut your curtains.
Speaker 1: Shut my mouth do weird stuff? Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: like to live out there is what I do. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so other than Jonathan's open curtains, we have talked
Speaker 1: on this show about what what the ruins of today's
Speaker 1: society might look like. Sure. Yeah, our friend Christian Sager
Speaker 1: came on the show one time to talk with us
Speaker 1: about that, about what the buildings that are out there
Speaker 1: today are going to look like in a hundred years.
Speaker 1: Or a thousand years. You can find Christian Sager on
Speaker 1: a show called Stuff to Blow Your Mind Now with
Speaker 1: with Joe McCormick, who we are sitting in a studio with,
Speaker 1: So if you want to tune into that podcast, you can,
Speaker 1: uh we We also did a couple episodes on how
Speaker 1: we can preserve the safety of nuclear waste sites in
Speaker 1: the future. The answer is poorly yeah, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: but mostly because of difficult political and cultural issues, not
Speaker 1: just the physical limitations right right, But today we wanted
Speaker 1: to get more in to some of those physical limitations
Speaker 1: of preserving actual objects. We wanted to talk about the
Speaker 1: future of historical preservation, how we can make lovely important
Speaker 1: cultural objects last, you know, books and films and art. Sure,
Speaker 1: so this is a problem because objects on Earth tend
Speaker 1: to deteriorate. We witness it in our own bodies through
Speaker 1: the process of aging. We witness it. If you're a homeowner,
Speaker 1: you know, you see the condition of your house deteriorate.
Speaker 1: Overscience episode is just going to continue to depress Bate,
Speaker 1: both an old person and an homeowner. But Jonathan, yes,
Speaker 1: there is hope because there are steps we can take
Speaker 1: that we've discovered through years of technological development to stay
Speaker 1: the advances of time, to hold back the creep of decay,
Speaker 1: and to make the things that we love last long
Speaker 1: into the future. And to be fair, we also have
Speaker 1: a greater awareness now as our modern sensibility as such
Speaker 1: that we are starting to realize more within our own
Speaker 1: time the importance of things we create. Whereas if you
Speaker 1: look at ages past, often the things that we hold
Speaker 1: up as the artifacts of the past were the utilitarian
Speaker 1: stuff or in some cases the works of art of
Speaker 1: people who weren't necessarily thinking how can we preserve this
Speaker 1: so that future generations will have access to it? Right,
Speaker 1: Sometimes they were, but lots of times it was just
Speaker 1: kind of the ephemera of the day, and you're interested
Speaker 1: in it, But yeah, yeah, how would you have known
Speaker 1: back then, like, who's going to be interested in this? Pot? Sure?
Speaker 1: And so although it is scientific that things fall apart,
Speaker 1: it is also scientific that we can kind of help
Speaker 1: them hold together a little bit here and there. And
Speaker 1: this might be of waited interest to the three of
Speaker 1: us sitting in this room, because we are all writers
Speaker 1: and storytellers, and so we have a especially vested interest.
Speaker 1: I would say in preserving that kind of culture, including
Speaker 1: our own. Uh and and and it's a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a huge field, and it's one that's largely invisible
Speaker 1: to the general public because if a conservationist is doing
Speaker 1: her job really well, you never see it. You just
Speaker 1: get to continue enjoying the lovely objects that she's working with.
Speaker 1: That's a really great point. I've heard a similar thing
Speaker 1: said about like the directors of movies. The movies that
Speaker 1: have really great direction are the ones where you don't say,
Speaker 1: I'm really noticing the direction, but yeah, let's jump right
Speaker 1: into it. If if you guys are ready, I'm curious, Like,
Speaker 1: let's say there is a beautiful oil painting. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: a beautiful oil painting. There's a beautiful oil painting hanging
Speaker 1: up in your house because you stole it from a museum, right,
Speaker 1: And you're like, okay, I know I can love this
Speaker 1: painting better than the museum would. What a long What
Speaker 1: would you do to protect this painting, to make it
Speaker 1: last a thousand years, to make it last as long
Speaker 1: as you possibly could take it into the future. And
Speaker 1: this is something where we've developed the techniques based upon
Speaker 1: years of various collections and museums, learning the best ways
Speaker 1: to take care of these often priceless artifacts. I mean,
Speaker 1: you mean, you could argue you could put a price
Speaker 1: on them, but they they're astronomically priced. So well. Well, Also,
Speaker 1: most of the people who created these things aren't around anymore,
Speaker 1: so you can't just ask them like, hey, can you
Speaker 1: touch this up? Yeah? Are like, hey, could you just
Speaker 1: make another? Do you still have the the exact paints
Speaker 1: that you used to create this masterpiece? Like, hey, get
Speaker 1: to work on this forest? Da Vinci? We were really lacking.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do know the guy, but he's kind
Speaker 1: of busy. So there's certain rules that are going to
Speaker 1: come up again and again as we talk about different
Speaker 1: types of stuff we want to preserve um. And it
Speaker 1: shouldn't come as a surprise because, like Joe was saying,
Speaker 1: the stuff on Earth does degrade over time. There there
Speaker 1: are very few materials that we have that are going
Speaker 1: to withstand the ravages of time, even if you are
Speaker 1: taking the best of care with that object. Ultimately, stuff
Speaker 1: does tend to tend towards intropyte they break down. But
Speaker 1: if you are trying to extend the life of something
Speaker 1: like an oil painting, first keep it out of sunlight
Speaker 1: in particular. Uh, don't expose it to a lot of
Speaker 1: light in general. Yeah. Have you ever seen these scenes
Speaker 1: in a museum where somebody's trying to take a bunch
Speaker 1: of pictures of a painting with a flash camera and
Speaker 1: they say, no, no, no, no, don't do that, right,
Speaker 1: Or even older buildings, like if you go through Europe
Speaker 1: and you are walking through you'll see in castles, You'll
Speaker 1: see in in churches, cathedrals, that sort of stuff, even
Speaker 1: ones that are no longer actively being used. They'll say,
Speaker 1: don't use flash photography. Yeah, and UV light is the
Speaker 1: worst ultra violet light in general. But but any kind
Speaker 1: of light, you know, is going to start deteriorating some
Speaker 1: of the pigments in in those paints and other materials. Right,
Speaker 1: It can cause oxidization and which ends up well, it'll
Speaker 1: make stuff fade or change color. Ultra Violet light in
Speaker 1: particular does this. And when you think of something like
Speaker 1: incandescent lights, which most art preservationists say is the best
Speaker 1: of the choices right now, maybe LEDs, but we still
Speaker 1: have to do a little more research to make sure.
Speaker 1: But incandescence tend to be uh, the safest because they
Speaker 1: emit very little ultra violet. They do emit some, but
Speaker 1: it's not much, uh compared to say, fluorescence um which
Speaker 1: do much more. And so you don't want to have uh,
Speaker 1: those or halogen's necessarily near your paintings. And you definitely
Speaker 1: don't want sunlight hitting those paintings because otherwise you're going
Speaker 1: to get these effects, including things like the paint drying
Speaker 1: up and flaking off or cracking, which you've probably seen
Speaker 1: if you've looked at some older paintings that have been
Speaker 1: around for a really long time. Yeah, somehow, I guess
Speaker 1: it would also be a bad idea to aim an
Speaker 1: X ray machine or something producing gamma rays that you're painting. Well,
Speaker 1: only if you, I mean, obviously, if you want the
Speaker 1: subject within the painting to turn into the incredible Hulk,
Speaker 1: which would be amazing I hope called the Pearl Earring
Speaker 1: would be phenomenal. You know, We've had to make this
Speaker 1: point several times on this podcast, but I'll say it again.
Speaker 1: Gamma rays don't give you special powers. They just killed you.
Speaker 1: It's true, right, unfortunate but true. Yeah, pretty much. Anyway
Speaker 1: you would get a superpower in a comic book would
Speaker 1: be would be to some degree fatal in the real world.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure there are other environmental conditions that matter absolutely.
Speaker 1: Temperature and humidity the two big ones. You want the
Speaker 1: temperature to be cool, so um, probably around the sixty
Speaker 1: five degree fahrenheit range, because anything warmer than that that's
Speaker 1: kicking up my energy bill. Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I stole a painting. I gotta live with
Speaker 1: the consequences. I mean, if you don't care about how
Speaker 1: long it lasts, go ahead and you know, knock that
Speaker 1: back up to like seventy eight or something. No, sixty
Speaker 1: degrees fair. The reason being that that paintings are made
Speaker 1: up of a multitude of materials, right, It's not just canvas.
Speaker 1: There's the frame, there's all this other stuff, and all
Speaker 1: of those materials will expand at different rates when exposed
Speaker 1: to warmer temperatures. So if it is exposed to fluctuating temperatures,
Speaker 1: so you know, the temperature goes up and down multiple
Speaker 1: times throughout the year, this creates a constant stress on
Speaker 1: the painting and decreases its lifespan. Oh yeah, you're you're
Speaker 1: gonna get more flaking of the paint or more separation
Speaker 1: of the chemicals in the paint or etcetera. And if
Speaker 1: you have a painting that's on linen, for example, lenin
Speaker 1: can expand in heat. So you may have sometimes seen
Speaker 1: a painting that had looked like a fold in it,
Speaker 1: like it was a little the it looked like the
Speaker 1: frame might be too small that you needed to put
Speaker 1: it in a larger frame to stretch it out. But
Speaker 1: you should absolutely not do that because if you were
Speaker 1: to do that with a linen painting, once the temperature
Speaker 1: goes down, then the material would start to try and
Speaker 1: pull away from the frame because it was trying to
Speaker 1: move back to the shape it was before it expanded
Speaker 1: in the heat. So you want a nice, stable, cool,
Speaker 1: relatively dry but not too dry environment. Um if it's
Speaker 1: if it's a human environment, that can mean that you
Speaker 1: could have mold growing on your painting, which is not
Speaker 1: good for the longevity of the painting. If it's too dry,
Speaker 1: it can make it's bad for things rule of thumb,
Speaker 1: and unless you're swamp thing, in which case it just
Speaker 1: adds mass. And then if you if it's too dry,
Speaker 1: can make the material brittle. So you you have to
Speaker 1: have this kind of very delicate balancing act, which is
Speaker 1: why museums and other collection areas like you'll you'll see
Speaker 1: things in case so that they preserve a particular relative
Speaker 1: humidity to keep the material in good shape. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can imagine that the invention of digitally controlled HVAC
Speaker 1: systems has greatly assisted in this over the past decade
Speaker 1: or so, everything from the actual control to the sensors
Speaker 1: of that. You you have a very good idea of
Speaker 1: what the temperature and relative humidity are at any given time,
Speaker 1: so you can make those minute adjustments or even have
Speaker 1: it programmed in as an algorithm so that it maintains
Speaker 1: that relative to the environment, so that you know you
Speaker 1: have the ideal conditions to preserve that material. Okay, but
Speaker 1: here's an issue. I would imagine that the conditions in
Speaker 1: which we store our priceless works of art, Like if
Speaker 1: you say there's an oil painting that comes from the Renaissance,
Speaker 1: we're probably better at controlling those conditions and taking care
Speaker 1: of it today than we have ever been before. Yea,
Speaker 1: the Italian Renaissance HVAC systems were crap exactly right. So
Speaker 1: if you had an oil painting from the Renaissance hanging
Speaker 1: up in less than ideal conditions for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it became it deteriorated, it became damaged, degraded over
Speaker 1: that time. Is there anything we can do now to
Speaker 1: try to restore it to its more pristine state? How
Speaker 1: classically we would try to restore paintings physically by either
Speaker 1: applying more paint or trying to remove areas of damage,
Speaker 1: or even just like blueing little flakes of paint back
Speaker 1: on as they kind of fell off, and and and
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, those are very permanent ways of
Speaker 1: dealing with with a with an artwork, because that's you
Speaker 1: can't go back. Once you've added more paint onto something
Speaker 1: that's basically it, you've changed it forever. And so it's
Speaker 1: considered unethical these days generally to do that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: The extreme cases, you can't ka homo exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's and if you don't know what that is, that's
Speaker 1: a reference to a failed restoration job. I'm nearly positive
Speaker 1: that if you are on the internet right now, you
Speaker 1: have seen it. Uh so, so you know your your
Speaker 1: options at this point if you have a damaged work
Speaker 1: of art are are either too like live with it
Speaker 1: being damaged, put it in a closet and never displayed again. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I don't like like eat it, like just throw
Speaker 1: it away, But no, I mean, and you know, none
Speaker 1: of those are really the preferred way of dealing with
Speaker 1: something that you want to keep and enjoy. But there
Speaker 1: are some things that people are doing these days to
Speaker 1: more safely and gently restore paintings. There was one collaborative
Speaker 1: project that was presented during the meeting of the American
Speaker 1: Association for the Advancement of Science usually called the A
Speaker 1: A S, which is a lot it's actually it's kind
Speaker 1: of easier to say, I don't know anyway. Uh. This
Speaker 1: project was restoring paintings for display by constructing highly detailed
Speaker 1: color correcting light arrays to be shown on the paintings. So, okay,
Speaker 1: we we've already discussed how light can be bad for
Speaker 1: paint Well, that there were these five paintings, specifically that
Speaker 1: that we're being studied hung in Harvard's Holyoakes Center since
Speaker 1: the ninet in sixties. They were Mark Rothko pieces, which
Speaker 1: are these lovely abstract expressionist kind of things, and he
Speaker 1: had happened to use a very light sensitive red pigment
Speaker 1: in them. In just a few decades of being hung,
Speaker 1: his crimsons had faded or or changed to light blues,
Speaker 1: not not what he originally intended. So this this team
Speaker 1: reconstructed faded photographs of the original pieces and then built
Speaker 1: a compensation image that could be projected onto the paintings
Speaker 1: pixel by pixel to color correct for the areas that
Speaker 1: had been damaged. And and these are huge murals, like
Speaker 1: like nine ft tall by a bunch of feet wide.
Speaker 1: You know, they all depend but so they can be
Speaker 1: displayed again and hopefully out of UV light, and and
Speaker 1: with with these particular arrays being as gentle as possible
Speaker 1: on the remaining paint Yeah, just as long as the
Speaker 1: room raiders don't come in. And isn't that what they do?
Speaker 1: And they've got that UV one over every thing is
Speaker 1: their filth? Here it fingers crossed that no one's doing
Speaker 1: that to too many of our priceless works of art.
Speaker 1: But okay, so in this case, I want to know
Speaker 1: if there's filth, don't you know, if I have a
Speaker 1: priceless work of art hanging up, just let it be filthy.
Speaker 1: There's where you just say like all right, uh this
Speaker 1: I will allow. Yeah, you know, like I'm not going
Speaker 1: to put my eyeballs on it. So I'm not really
Speaker 1: that worried about its particular cleanliness. I apologize, please proceeds.
Speaker 1: It's okay, it's okay. Uh so so we so this
Speaker 1: was this was a great project. But but the restoration
Speaker 1: was done by basically looking at these restored photographs the
Speaker 1: you know, color corrected photographs used to make colored corrected
Speaker 1: light arrays. But we don't have color photographs of every
Speaker 1: original painting on the planet. I mean, rem Brandt was
Speaker 1: a total slacker about photographing his paintings, am I right? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: none of that camera obscira for him. Uh so so
Speaker 1: so other teams are using scanning technologies to learn about
Speaker 1: the interior composition of paints in classic works and then
Speaker 1: digitally reproduce what they would have looked like. For example,
Speaker 1: electron spectroscopy can reveal the molecular composition of paints and
Speaker 1: and and even the damage that has been done to
Speaker 1: a painting can be used in order to help reconstruct it.
Speaker 1: One researcher by the name of URIs Dick from the
Speaker 1: Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, was studying the
Speaker 1: oxidation patterns on vincent vengo a k A. Since I
Speaker 1: just said a bunch of Dutch things relatively correctly vincent fungal.
Speaker 1: That's sort of close anyway, that's how you say it.
Speaker 1: I've said it wrong my entire life. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: with a kind of FV at the beginning of fun,
Speaker 1: like a baby describing a scene on the street. Then oh,
Speaker 1: he was so yours, our good buddy, yours was was
Speaker 1: was studying flowers in a blue vaz and he used
Speaker 1: micro x rays to scan and record the distribution of
Speaker 1: of this gray crust that had formed on the painting
Speaker 1: over time due to one of the yellow pigments that
Speaker 1: that van Go used. And and then he was able
Speaker 1: to three D print a reconstruction of the original surface,
Speaker 1: texture and color of the painting. Wow. Yeah, pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: I love this idea of of of incorporating new technology
Speaker 1: to preserve the old stuff. I mean, the idea of
Speaker 1: the both the lighting of the the former painting and
Speaker 1: then using three D printing to try and replicate something
Speaker 1: that had I would have just assumed had been lost
Speaker 1: to time is really phenomenal, really cool ideas for preservation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that makes me think of another area of preservation
Speaker 1: that might not be as obvious as that of the
Speaker 1: oil painting, because when you think about something like an
Speaker 1: oil painting, there you're dealing with at least probably some
Speaker 1: organic ingredients, things that are more likely to just obviously
Speaker 1: deteriorate over time. But what about film synthetic materials. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: this is an area where I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people would be surprised to learn how perilous the idea
Speaker 1: of film archiving and film storage is because we have
Speaker 1: lost tons of films. Oh yeah, well, and it's been
Speaker 1: beaten into us since childhood, those of us who certainly
Speaker 1: grew up in the seventies and eighties, I would say
Speaker 1: that that, you know, plastic is forever, Plastic doesn't go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, that's not entirely true. The it's
Speaker 1: only true about the garbage that kills ducks. Films, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, films about ducks being killed by garbage
Speaker 1: very ephemeral. As it turns out, now they film is perishable. Plastic.
Speaker 1: Film will degrade over time, it will it will rot,
Speaker 1: and it just eventually dissolves until you no longer have
Speaker 1: something that will hold an image at any you know anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: In fact, There are even classic, well loved, well respected
Speaker 1: films that do not exist in any entirely undamaged state.
Speaker 1: They've had to go through restoration projects where people go
Speaker 1: through the film and try to patch it and clean
Speaker 1: it up. And these are for films that people care about.
Speaker 1: There there are movies where there's no longer a master print,
Speaker 1: and the closest we have is a kind of a
Speaker 1: hodgepodge of the copy of a restoration of a copy
Speaker 1: right where you you would end up saying, well, the
Speaker 1: first reel was mostly undamaged on this print, and the
Speaker 1: second reel was mostly undamaged on this print. So we
Speaker 1: started to kind of splice these together to make a
Speaker 1: Frankenstein print, perhaps of the movie Frankenstein, so that you
Speaker 1: would be able to watch the whole thing and as
Speaker 1: good a quality as possible. Here's another thing is that
Speaker 1: we were talking about how in ages passed people weren't
Speaker 1: really aware that the stuff they were creating could one
Speaker 1: day be considered art or important, and therefore there wasn't
Speaker 1: this this need for preservation. The same things true with
Speaker 1: the film industry. Absolutely the case, I think especially in
Speaker 1: the silent film error and a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: like early films. I think a lot of them, the
Speaker 1: people who were taking care of them just didn't have
Speaker 1: an eye towards permanence. Well, yeah, even if you then
Speaker 1: this extends well beyond the early days of film. If
Speaker 1: you watch any documentary about the comedy group Monty Python,
Speaker 1: they talked about how their original tapes were being held
Speaker 1: by the BBC, and I think it was Eric Idle
Speaker 1: who went and purchased them from the BBC because they
Speaker 1: were scheduled to be taped over. The BBC was using
Speaker 1: the same tapes that they had used to shoot they
Speaker 1: and they had done it before, the company had done
Speaker 1: it before, because they had shot stuff before that had
Speaker 1: been That's why we don't have copies of a lot
Speaker 1: of the early doctor who's they were taking. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but see, that's the thing is that at the time
Speaker 1: you thought, well, this is something we show, and then
Speaker 1: after we show it, like, there weren't necessarily thoughts of
Speaker 1: syndication or or keeping it around for any reason. There
Speaker 1: was no home home market, so there it was kind
Speaker 1: of the need to reproduce it. We aired it once.
Speaker 1: I guess that's it. It's kind of like kind of
Speaker 1: like going to see a play, You're like, well, it
Speaker 1: was meant to be seen at this one time, and
Speaker 1: then once the play is over, then it's over. Uh,
Speaker 1: move on exactly. So if we look back at the
Speaker 1: earliest films, we have only about twenty percent of the
Speaker 1: movies produced from around nineteen ten to nineteen thirty incomplete form,
Speaker 1: So the movies completed then we either have completely lost
Speaker 1: or we only have partial prints. Um, now do we
Speaker 1: know what percentage of that was? People taping over it?
Speaker 1: Was like I need to make Harry and the Henderson's
Speaker 1: and well, some films that film you can't. It's not
Speaker 1: magnetic tape. It's it's actual film where you've well, you
Speaker 1: can tape over it, but it would produce really interesting
Speaker 1: images once you've developed it. It's done. You would be
Speaker 1: able to do multiple exposures before developing it. But yes, uh,
Speaker 1: and people did. But about half the features produced before
Speaker 1: nineteen exists in a complete form, so we've lost half
Speaker 1: of those. Uh. There's no telling how many short or
Speaker 1: independent films have been lost over time, because no one
Speaker 1: was really paying much attention to those at all, So
Speaker 1: there could be countless ones that we will never see again.
Speaker 1: They don't exist. Um, so one of the important things. Actually,
Speaker 1: the film preservation relies on three basic steps. The first
Speaker 1: is to print old film onto new film stock that's
Speaker 1: designed to last longer than the old films. So the
Speaker 1: old old films essentially the glycerin stuff that needs to
Speaker 1: be transfer or two different types of film that can
Speaker 1: last longer. That transfer process, obviously is very meticulous and
Speaker 1: you have to be extremely careful or else you could
Speaker 1: end up corrupting getting you know, yeah, yeah, you could
Speaker 1: end up really causing some severe damage. Here's another thing.
Speaker 1: What do nuclear waste and film have in common? Salt mines.
Speaker 1: They've both been stored in salt mines. Yeah. Yeah. Storing
Speaker 1: the original film and master copy in a cool and
Speaker 1: dry places absolutely necessary. So one of the and it's
Speaker 1: like we were talking about with paintings. You want it
Speaker 1: to be in a an environment where the temperature is
Speaker 1: nice and stable. It's cool, no moisture if you can
Speaker 1: help it. Salt mines great place to put these things.
Speaker 1: And there are tons of films being stored in salt mines.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's one called the Hutchinson Facility. It's in
Speaker 1: Kansas and it is the largest storage facility for movie
Speaker 1: and television film and has more than one point seven
Speaker 1: million square feet of space. That's about a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: eight thousand square meters. By the way, they have a website,
Speaker 1: so if you want to store something for posterity's sake,
Speaker 1: you can actually look into it. They have a link
Speaker 1: and everything where you can look and see. Probably not
Speaker 1: gonna be cost effective unless you're also like an enormous
Speaker 1: television studio, but I didn't go that far to look
Speaker 1: into it. So the third part of preserving film, after
Speaker 1: you know, the storage and the transfer to a stronger
Speaker 1: form of film, is providing public access through copies of
Speaker 1: the film. So you've got a lot of societies and
Speaker 1: organizations that are dedicated to preserving film. And in every
Speaker 1: case I came across, one of their major points was
Speaker 1: that they had to allow for public access. Otherwise you're
Speaker 1: just storing something you're hoarding like the bureaucrats at at
Speaker 1: the end of waters at the last start top top
Speaker 1: top top man, yeah, top gun. Yeah. It was a
Speaker 1: little more straightforward. It was. It was not not as
Speaker 1: many mavericks in that one. Alright. So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I was looking into this and preservation of a single
Speaker 1: film is not cheap. According to the National Film Preservation
Speaker 1: Foundation in two, if you wanted to preserve a seven
Speaker 1: reel black and white silent feature film, which is just
Speaker 1: a standard length silent film, it would cost eighteen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for that one film. And that's that. That's just
Speaker 1: the transfer process. Uh, that's without any restoration work. So
Speaker 1: if you need to do any restoration work, that would
Speaker 1: add obviously to that to that fee. If you wanted
Speaker 1: to make a digital video copy of that so that
Speaker 1: people could actually watch it, because obviously, if all you
Speaker 1: have is the master print and then the copy print,
Speaker 1: people are not going to be lining up at the
Speaker 1: salt mine in order to get a look at this movie.
Speaker 1: So if you wanted to make it available by creating
Speaker 1: a digital copy, that would add another three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to the total. And keep in mind that's for one,
Speaker 1: that's the process for one silent film. If you wanted
Speaker 1: to do a feature that had sound, it would cost
Speaker 1: more because there's more information that you have to preserve,
Speaker 1: and so you have to be even more careful and
Speaker 1: meticulous in the process of transferring it over into a
Speaker 1: new form of film. Uh, and this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is non trivial. Is is difficult, and it's expensive,
Speaker 1: and it's if you don't do it right, then you
Speaker 1: lose it. Sure. Now, I think with movies there are
Speaker 1: two different levels of preservation to talk about, um. I mean,
Speaker 1: one of them would be preservation of the film at
Speaker 1: you know, the way it was intended to be seen,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, on the original type of film
Speaker 1: at its peak level of quality, against a screen that
Speaker 1: literally has silver woven into it, reflective, not necessarily, but
Speaker 1: you know, preserved in its pristine state. What about the
Speaker 1: possibility of films that essentially still exist but not in
Speaker 1: a very good way, Like what if there's a film
Speaker 1: that you can own we find through a VHS copy?
Speaker 1: So you know, this is where we bring up my
Speaker 1: rant about the movie the cheap B movie horror film
Speaker 1: that I was in, Blood Salvage, as the example. I use, yeah,
Speaker 1: because Blood Salvage, I mean, I honestly don't know what
Speaker 1: the status is of this movie in the sense of
Speaker 1: I don't know if anyone owns the print anymore. I
Speaker 1: don't know where the print is. So it was shot
Speaker 1: on film. It was shot on film. Now this is
Speaker 1: before digital video was really a thing. Shot on film.
Speaker 1: It seems like everything is digital now. Well, yeah, this
Speaker 1: was done back in the early nineties, so shot on film.
Speaker 1: And then when it came to making a home theater version,
Speaker 1: a lot of people say, well, home theater, that's kind
Speaker 1: of an act of preservation. Not really, because it's dependent
Speaker 1: upon whatever the medium is that the film has been
Speaker 1: committed to. Right, So in this case VHS tapes, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, but clearly the type of media that
Speaker 1: we watch things on in our homes never changes. It
Speaker 1: changes so fast. And that's the problem, right, That's why
Speaker 1: I still watch everything on Beta Max. And that's boy.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you I cannot wait for Star Wars
Speaker 1: Episode seven to come out on HD DVD. Uh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's there. There's so many formats that either fail or
Speaker 1: they just become obsolete because some other more you know,
Speaker 1: superior format comes out. Uh And though they can always
Speaker 1: mount a comeback for nostalgic or irony basis. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I do love VHS tapes, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I think they look better. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying they're fun. It's fun to hold a VHS tape
Speaker 1: of Teenagers Mutant Ninja Turtles three in your hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you're Joe or you live in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: then obviously they's a big import No. I I agree.
Speaker 1: I Actually I still own VHS tapes, although I don't
Speaker 1: have a VCR that works anymore. Um, but there's the
Speaker 1: tape still sit there. That's a big problem. That means
Speaker 1: that you no longer have access to that media. You
Speaker 1: may still have the media itself, but you don't have
Speaker 1: the access to what's on there. Yeah. I've got a
Speaker 1: friend who keeps a bunch of laser discs handy just
Speaker 1: because it's funny. He doesn't have his laser disc layer
Speaker 1: hooked up. Yeah, Yeah, I mean I can completely identify
Speaker 1: with that, and that there's there might be an emotional
Speaker 1: attachment to the physical form there, whether it's whether it's
Speaker 1: serious or not. There can be a real kind of
Speaker 1: sentimental attachment to this stuff. But it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the art itself is accessible. And and as much as
Speaker 1: I'm joking about Blood Salvage in particular, like I said,
Speaker 1: it only ever came out on VHS, and it only
Speaker 1: came out for rental companies, so it's never intended to
Speaker 1: be purchased for the home. In fact, if you ever
Speaker 1: looked up at the price, it was like because it
Speaker 1: was just meant for rental facilities. Um, I mean, I
Speaker 1: can imagine a lot of things surviving like this in
Speaker 1: the digital age where we what we end up having
Speaker 1: is a fairly low quality, compressed file version of a movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it exists digitally, makes many cop pieces you want,
Speaker 1: you're not really scared about losing them, right, But it's
Speaker 1: not what it originally was. It would be like it
Speaker 1: would be like you got a picture of someone's polaroid
Speaker 1: photo of the Mona Lisa. That's what your version of
Speaker 1: the Mona Lisa gets to be from that point forward.
Speaker 1: Because that's essentially what we're talking about here. So for example,
Speaker 1: if you really really wanted to see Blood Salvage, you
Speaker 1: could go to YouTube. It's actually on there, the whole movie.
Speaker 1: It's a terrible transfer. And uh, it's also got a
Speaker 1: different title because it's under the UK title, which I
Speaker 1: think is mad Jake. So if you if you really
Speaker 1: want to see it, it's out there, but it's not
Speaker 1: the experience that I would want it to be. So
Speaker 1: that is one of the things We also have to
Speaker 1: keep in mind is that the it's not just preserving
Speaker 1: the media, it's preserving the way we access that media.
Speaker 1: You were in a movie with John Saxon, Yes, I was.
Speaker 1: Vander Holyfield was also in that, as was Ray Walston,
Speaker 1: my favorite Marshall. Yeah, Mr hand, I'll tell you all
Speaker 1: about it later on. Okay, okay, So anyway, really really
Speaker 1: important to again stress that it's not just the media,
Speaker 1: it's also the equipment we we used to access because
Speaker 1: that's going to come up again later. And so I
Speaker 1: think we're gonna in there for today. But this is
Speaker 1: not the end. It is never the end, except for
Speaker 1: those bits of film that we lost forever sorry bits
Speaker 1: of film. No, no, no, uh, it is not the
Speaker 1: end because this, as I said, is just part one
Speaker 1: of our two part episodes. So be sure to tune
Speaker 1: in next time to hear the second half of the story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if you guys have any suggestions for our future
Speaker 1: episodes of Forward Thinking, whether it's something similar to what
Speaker 1: we're covering today or just you know, whatever you were wondering,
Speaker 1: like was that going to be like in the future,
Speaker 1: send us a message. The email addresses FW thinking at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, where you can drop us
Speaker 1: a line on Twitter or Google Plus or Facebook. Twitter
Speaker 1: and Google Plus we're w Thinking. Search for us on
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Speaker 1: You can leave us a message and we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this topic in
Speaker 1: the future of technology, I'll visit forward Thinking dot com.
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