Nitrate Film Wind Through

Every year we 'wind through' the Archive's extensive nitrate film collection of more than 4,000 reels! 📽️ This helps keep the film in top condition and allows for assessments to be made. We explain more in our blog, and try to explode some myths (no pun intended) about nitrate's danger factor. Stay tuned, too, for another behind-the-scenes video on the importance of keeping the original film in this fast-moving digital world we live in. Check out our past uploads on our channel for more content.
Our blog: www.ngataonga.org.nz/blog/arc...
Visit us on our website: www.ngataonga.org.nz/
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision is the New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound, Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua Me Ngā Taonga Kōrero.

[@legendarygodzilla3577]

Impressed at how intact the nitrate film rolls are.

[@vanylaskywalker]

When we store film, should we take them out every year and wind them so to avoid the risk of the film sticking together and damaging the emulsion? Would that help or it's not necessary?

[@NgaTaonga]

Thank you for your comment, we do believe it is necessary to annually examine our older collections such as the nitrate films we hold. The risks with nitrate can be greatly reduced through careful monitoring and handling, storage in a safe and stable environment, and a periodic ‘wind through’ of the film. ‘Every year we do find a bit of film that needs to be disposed of, but it is less and less every time,’ explains Dr Lewis. If you are interested, we explore more on our blog 'Old frames: the nitrate wind through' which you can find a link to in the description of this video.

[@robfriedrich2822]

I would wear gloves.

[@NgaTaonga]

The topic of handling film with or without gloves does come up a lot and we thank you for bringing it up here because it is interesting. In most cases it is important to wear gloves in order to not unintentionally damage film with the oils from hands. In this case however, we find gloves can catch on any little imperfections and are likely to tear the film. Instead we wash our hands frequently and hold the film only by the edges, so we aren’t touching any emulsion side images.

[@user-mn4jo2nw8u]

Сделайте субтитры на русском языке, будьте любезны

[@MrRufusRToyota]

Тепер тільки українською.

[@ramdas363]

This job could be extremely easily automated. Crazy that they waste tax payer money to employ people to go through the reels by hand and inspect every single frame with their eyes.

[@raspberry1440kb]

You are incredibly ignorant in regards to film preservation and I dread the day when the world is filled exclusively with people who hold your same incredible ignorance.

[@Aeonterbor]

Perhaps your job could also be easily automated to save money.

[@ramdas363]

@@Aeonterbor Nope, explain how.

[@Aeonterbor]

Very easily actually it's happend to dozens of jobs, if it's retail replaced by online shopping apps & delivery bots, if it's desk work computer software nowadays is culling a lot of roles that were once taken up by people. Even Hospital, Teaching and Warehouse roles have been replaced or digitised. No corner of the industry has a role that can't be replaced by a computer one day.@@ramdas363

[@runinair12]

no, it actually can't be automated. While a machine can easily wind through film, there is much more to it than that - things that must be interpreted and determined by experience. It's not like they stop to view every single individual frame... they go through the reel and wind it fairly speedily. Also: Machine winding newer polyester based films is easy. Machine winding brittle old film that might or might not have damaged splices etc is very tricky. Hand-winding is the safest method because a skilled technician will always feel how fast you can wind the film, how much tension it can take and so on. Also, there's smell, sound, haptics and other little things that aren't detected by a machine.