• 25th August
    2011
  • 25

The Reel Thing - My Inner Nerd Shines Through

Greetings! I wanted to share my recap of The Reel Thing with all of you. As mentioned earlier, I headed to Los Angeles for a long weekend to attend this two-day symposium on all things related to film preservation, restoration, and archives. It was extremely packed to the brim of special screenings, influential seminars, and time to get to know a few people. The symposium was held at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study (an AMPAS building) in the Linwood Dunn Theater.

Some of the talks included: Dissecting Sound Preservation, Scanning for Preservation Purposes, Digitizing the History of Cinema (David Pierce), Wet-Gate Film Scanning, and some Case Studies on the shown screenings.

The screenings were delightful, and definitely my favorite part. I had the pleasure of seeing Shoes, a silent from 1922, with live piano accompaniment. A newly restored color version of A Trip to the Moon (the color had been painstakingly painted in after the release in 1902, frame by frame). The original nitrate to this film was so fragile, the reels would crumble whenever touched. The Loves of the Pharaoh, a 1922 silent directed by Ernst Lubitsch, was also shown, and we were lucky to see a special sneak peek of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which just received a nice new restoration. It looked amazing. I couldn’t believe how brilliant the color was, I think that’s what stood out the most to me. All of the screenings were wonderful to see, especially after hearing the case studies for each one. I wish there was a way I could show you the intense process and work it took to make each of these films what they are now.

My heart felt pitter pats of happiness throughout these two days, and I’m really glad I was able to experience it and talk to a few people in the business. I can’t wait to go next year and all the years after that. I also can’t wait to crack down on my research for my thesis.

  1. asillymuse posted this