Journal of Film Preservation N° 56 - FIAF

There was this film about...
The Case for the Shotlist
Olwen Terris
Film and television archives are not only collections of complete and
incomplete works, they are also rich repositories of individual images.
The National Film and Television Archive (NFTVA) in London has preserved
millions of feet of film for the nation, and an incalculable number
of unique images. Shotlisting is all about opening to view and making an
archive’s riches accessible. It is a truism that archives and their governing
bodies cannot give access to images that they do not know they have.
Shotlisting is the only sure means of highlighting what is in store.
This fact was recognised at the outset of the NFTVA. From its foundation
in 1935 and for the first years of its existence, the aim of the Cataloguing
Department was to view and shotlist every film acquired. When the
number of acquisitions was relatively small, 100 titles a year or less, this
was feasible and the aspiration was generally met. Shotlisting was
regarded by some as a pleasant luxury, few cataloguers asked why they
were going to such lengths to document the collection.
As acquisitions grew at a rate which far outstripped the number of cataloguers
available to shotlist them, the lack of time caused the value of the
shotlist to be reviewed and priorities were set. What are the advantages
of describing the film shot by shot? Does it benefit the users of the collection
and at what cost? One of the obvious advantages of shotlisting a
film is that potential viewers may not need to see the film if it is clear
from a written description that it does not contain the sequence of
images they need. The film is spared the physical wear and tear of
another screening, a speculative viewing is avoided, transport costs are
kept down, time is saved. For example if the shotlist describes very
young girls playing in a school playground when the user wants older
boys and girls playing together in a classroom then the film is clearly not
suitable for their purposes.
Another advantage of the shotlist is that researchers may be more interested
in what they hear than what they see and if a transcript is not available
(and in many cases it isn’t) then an account or full summary of what
is being said is very useful. For example a British television documentary
produced in the early 1960s reported on the attitudes of British housewives
in a northern town to their new West Indian neighbours. The
images are not particularly striking (the women sitting in their homes
talking to the interviewer) but their comments illustrating their fears and
acknowledged prejudices make a fine historical and social record. If the
cataloguer had not described that dialogue, and had just written a brief
synopsis along the lines of `Women in a northern town talk about racial
prejudice’ the catalogue record would be accurate as far as it went but
would have far less value as an accurate account of content.
54 Journal of Film Preservation / 56 / 1998