When digital filming began to take hold, the National Film Board (NFB) took steps to ensure the full sustainability of its in-house works. A decision that allowed it to avoid finding itself in catch-up mode.
This is what Jimmy Fournier, engineer by training and general director of the Technologies section of the public producer and distributor founded in 1939, maintains.
Mr. Fournier explains that shortly after he arrived at the NFB in 2004, he realized that the numerous and rapid changes in digital recording, broadcasting and preservation formats were going to be a challenge. “I told myself that if we didn’t manage things from the start, it would become unsustainable to ensure long-term preservation,” he says.
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The solution he put forward? To digitally copy all the steps that have long been known in the archiving of analog films (on film). This process includes the preservation of the filming material, the original negative, the interpositive, the internegative and the copies.
“We looked to our past to see how to navigate the present,” Mr. Fournier illustrates, adding that there is a “very big risk” of alteration or loss of data if we do not carefully follow the evolution of digital technologies.
PHOTO ROBERT SKINNER, THE PRESS
Jimmy Fournier, Director General of the Technologies Section of the National Film Board
Mr. Fournier did not work alone in his corner to create this new modus operandi.
Several colleagues from international forums and those from the Library of Congress in the United States have worked together. They have established a process that ensures the continuous verification of the integrity of the stored data.
Jimmy Fournier, engineer by training and general director of the ONF Technologies section
To avoid finding ourselves faced with an obsolescence problem, random checks are constantly made. “We make sure that we are always able to read the cartridges or the medium on which we write when a new technology is implemented,” says Mr. Fournier. What is good is that with each migration [des médiums de préservation]we save space.
Finally, the ONF and its partners favor the creation of so-called “open” files which are not controlled by an independent manufacturer and which are subject to an international standard.
The NFB believes that with the processes in place, it is not necessary to create and keep a film copy of films shot digitally. “The risk [de perte] is weak,” assures Jimmy Fournier.