Content in Motion | Curating Europe’s Audiovisual Heritage Conference, December 3-4 2015; www.euscreenxl2015.eu The ADAPT project reunites old equipment with the people who used to use it, and invites them to explain and demonstrate how they used to work. The paradox of the digital archive is that it makes footage easily available, but renders that footage mysterious by depriving it of clues about how it was made. The ADAPT project, funded by the European Research Council, is making a number of simulations of the typical ways in which TV used to work. The resultant footage will be made available for integration into archive collections.

1. PROVIDING CONTEXT:
HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
JOHN ELLIS
ADAPT PROJECT
ROYAL HOLLOWAY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

2. CONTENT IN MOTION: CONTEXT FOR CURATION
PROVIDING CONTEXT: HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
When we look at archival TV, do we know how it was made?
Physical holdings give us clues
Digital holdings do not
Why does this matter?

3. CONTENT IN MOTION: CONTEXT FOR CURATION
PROVIDING CONTEXT: HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
Old television looks weird and strange
not only because of “the materiality of film”
but because of the materiality of the production process
Why is the footage so restricted? Why are shots framed that way?
Why are interviews shot in such a static and formal way?
Why is the cutting rate so slow? …

4. CONTENT IN MOTION: CONTEXT FOR CURATION
PROVIDING CONTEXT: HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
Archival TV has to be contextualised…
If it is to come alive
If it is to be used
If it is to be used as raw data
To contextualise, we need information about how it was made.
Ideally, this information should be in an audiovisual form
as well as written metadata form

5. CONTENT IN MOTION: CONTEXT FOR CURATION
PROVIDING CONTEXT: HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
The ADAPT research project, funded by European Research Council, is
creating resources to help archives to provide this information.
www.adapttvhistory.org.uk
Our ‘simulations’ reunite retired technicians with the old technologies they
used every day to make ‘ordinary TV’
They recreate how they used to work
We film the process, capturing as much as we can

6. CONTENT IN MOTION: CONTEXT FOR CURATION
PROVIDING CONTEXT: HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
ADAPT FOOTAGE CAN SHOW (1):
Technicians explaining their equipment
e.g. Brian Tufano compares 16mm cameras
(2 mins)

7. CONTENT IN MOTION: CONTEXT FOR CURATION
PROVIDING CONTEXT: HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
ADAPT FOOTAGE CAN SHOW (2):
Technicians showing how they worked
e.g. Retired BBC film crew show how they shot a 16mm
interview in the 1970s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7ik39EY1cg
5mins

8. CONTENT IN MOTION: CONTEXT FOR CURATION
PROVIDING CONTEXT: HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
ADAPT FOOTAGE CAN SHOW (3):
Technicians explaining what they did, combined with footage
(4 mins)

9. HANDS ON HISTORY CONFERENCE
https://handson2016.wordpress.com/

10. CONTENT IN MOTION: CONTEXT FOR CURATION
PROVIDING CONTEXT: HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
QUESTIONS
1. Will this be useful to you?
2. How would you like it edited?
3. Would you like to have access to the rushes with a Creative
Commons licence?
4. What other typical equipment should we film?
(our next is an outside broadcast truck from late 1960s)

11. CONTENT IN MOTION: CONTEXT FOR CURATION
PROVIDING CONTEXT: HOW TELEVISION USED TO BE MADE
THANK YOU
www.adapttvhistory.org.uk