Acquiring Archival Footage on Location

G

gogglegurf

Member
Hi and thanks in advance for any guidance here. I'm currently working on an independent doc short telling the story of the birth of freestyle skiing. I will be traveling this week to acquire interview footage. I've done 3 interviews so far and some of the old hot doggers have been kind in giving me stills and slides to copy. If I can't physically take archival material with me, I'm guessing the best thing to do would be copy any photo, movie files they may have on computer to my portable hard drive or shoot them with my camera.

Has anybody been in this situation and perhaps offer advice. What should I be mindful of if I transfer to a portable hard drive (resolution, etc.). What should I be mindful of if I shoot with my camera. Finally, any thing I should instruct people attaching images for the production and sending by email.

Thanks Again! Brian
 
Never shoot them with a camera. Take a quality scanner capable of scanning slides, negatives and photos and capture them at as high a rez as you can. That will allow you to zoom & pan the images in the edit. (And why does Ken Burns get credited for that, anyway?)
 
Thanks for the advice! Any recommendations on a good scanner to bring on interviews and is there anything I should be mindful of to get the best image for my production. Really appreciate the guidance!
 
My choice would be to ask them to ship you the materials with a courier , fully insured and packaged safely. Hauling around a scanner and computer, maybe a VCR with USB output, .. pheww.. so much gear.

Ingest this stuff in a controlled environment, it will look much better in the final product.

(you pay for shipping of course). Or take a picture with a 12 MP still camera, setting all controls to manual for best quality.
 
This is the sort of scanner I mentioned. $100, 8 lbs.:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Epson+-...nner/8949944.p?id=1216424484977&skuId=8949944

Best overall advice: deal only with stills larger than your video rez (1080?) so that you will be free to crop and add movement -- especially important with dynamic visuals like that sport should have. People emailing files to you might be tempted to send down-rez'd images to speed transfer times.

More important if you don't have the capability, is finding someone to cleanly capture the analog video & film assets you might be allowed to use. And don't forget to get written permission for all images borrowed.

I'm not sure what you ask about transfer resolution to a portable hard drive. You're just copying what they already have.
 
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