Finding and Using Moving Images In Context

The Charles Gilbert Collection has been newly transferred to Digital Betacam from original 16mm film. Optimizing the moving images is one of the steps of this project–both Gilbert and Branch footage were transferred by Bob Brodsky in Rowley, Mass. (www.littlefilm.org) Uncompressed and MPEG4 video comes next week.

The nine minutes of Gilbert Collection Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing has been transferred at 16 frames per second with some intertitles slower for legibility. From Bob Brodksy’s notes:

Film handling and transfer notes
Charles Gilbert Collection Acc. 1229 “World Trip” marked selection…from a large Gilbert reel consisting of two types of material intercut: yellow base 16mm print of titles and surrounding scenes, probably made by a
commercial photographer (and perhaps sold on shipboard to round-the-world travelers). This is intercut with 16mm black and white camera original reversal film, probably made by amateur photographers traveling in the Gilbert party. The black & white original contains date codes of •••, indicating film manufacture in 1928.
The yellow print material has no date code. There was considerable shrinkage along edges, resulting in the tendency to twist. The black & white original film material is of generally low contrast and grainy. It was decided to render these yellow images as sepia, while the original material is rendered in its original black & white. Most of the print scenes were joined to one another by diagonal splices which were skipped in the transfer. This suggests that the print had been cut apart and reassembled by the Gilbert filmmakers to suit their needs.

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The physical film is clearly from two sources. This would not be evident in a digital manifestation, underlining the importance of contextual material for later viewers, indicating amateur creator and purchased material. The Gilbert family has photograph albums from the same trip also containing photographs by the Gilberts and purchased prints and postcards. Determining whether the cruise ship provided prints to its passengers for purchase, or whether the footage was bought in shops at the ports of call is somewhere in the research lineup.