Journal of Film Preservation N° 56 - FIAF

Wood sculpture of Brienz, France 1910
Subjective notes from the cataloguer, properly acknowledged as such in a
note, on peculiarities of performing style may also be of interest to others
and might be noted. This information is particularly useful for film historians
working abroad who may not be able to travel to undertake viewings;
in many cases a full and accurate shotlist can answer many
questions. As the century concludes programme makers are becoming
increasingly interested in the social and political history of Britain in the
1950s and 1960s. In response to this demand the NFTVA has identified
key television documentaries of the time covering such aspects as abortion,
homosexuality, race relations or Northern Ireland. Giving a fuller
account of the attitudes expressed in these programmes is proving to be
very valuable to film researchers and without doubt more of this footage
is being retrieved and re-used in documentary programme making.
In the days before video recorders and cameras
were widely available and relatively cheap, the public
had no means of capturing images of personal
interest to them. For example a talent show series
transmitted in the 1960s, OPPORTUNITY
KNOCKS, featured several acts each week: viewers
were invited to vote for the best act. Years later the
relatives of the people who first appeared in these
episodes are often anxious to see their fathers or
sisters perform their acts. It is sensible, and a helpful
public service, for the cataloguers to look at the
few surviving programmes and to list all the artists
and describe the performances. This account
enables us to respond quickly and efficiently to
requests of this kind and record a small piece of
entertainment history. It is sometimes argued that an archive needn’t
bother cataloguing television programmes in detail as the television companies
themselves should keep good records. In Great Britain some companies
do; the majority does not. And for those companies who do keep
good catalogue records it should not be assumed that a cataloguing section’s
access to them would be quick or cheap - they, like the archives,
are being urged to make money from information and may not be willing
to disseminate shotlist information free of charge. Specialist film libraries
(for example newsfilm libraries) have been generally quicker than film
archives to recognise the commercial value of the images they held. If the
cataloguers they employ use their specialist knowledge to identify people,
places, objects, events and describe and index these in great detail these
images can be quickly retrieved and re-used by film researchers. If they
hold the rights in those images so much the better. Cataloguers working
in stockshot libraries may, for example, in one shot describe each building,
the cars in the street, the weather, the clothes a person is wearing,
the facial expression they show, and the gestures they make. This is
descriptive cataloguing at its height. How much detail should a cataloguer
working in a general archive put into a shotlist? The answer is to
keep a sense of proportion and try to equate the amount of work
involved with the needs of the users and what the cataloguer wants to
56 Journal of Film Preservation / 56 / 1998