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  FOCAL Awards

Award for Footage Library of the Year

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Submissions details

Library

British Movietonews Limited

www.movietone.com

Reasons for Submission

British Movietonews Limited is one of world’s great cinema newsreel companies and has been in business since 1929. It traditionally supplies archive film material to most major broadcasters. In 2004 Movietone supplied material for over 70 BBC programmes.

In 2004 British Movietonews completed its on-going technical program of modernizing its filmed newsreel collection. The entire collection has now been transferred to digital tape and has also been digitised for on-line viewing. Movietone is the only newsreel archive that has painstakingly and meticulously transferred its nitrate newsreels to safety film stock. We believe that the company now offers film makers the finest quality material available for their production needs. Movietone’s filmed material is available for film researchers and producers through a custom designed database that facilitates and simplifies the complete research process. In today’s world of the mega- archive where collections include tens of thousands of hours of material, British Movietone still offers a personalized service from a small, dedicated and knowledgeable staff with over 100 years of experience dealing with our collection.

Some quote from users:

"We have just completed "Churchill: The Forgotten Years" at Blakeway productions, which will be broadcast on BBC Television in Spring of 2005.  It has been a pleasure to work with Movietonews on this project.  They provided us with the most excellent quality footage, delivered speedily and efficiently and with great charm by the dedicated library staff." Rosalind Bentley

"I know that Movietone offer fantastic service and wonderful footage, but I was delighted this year to be able to demonstrate it to an American producer I was working with on a film about Ghaffar Khan;  I am glad to say that she was equally impressed." Christine Whittaker

 

Library

Footage Farm

www.footagefarm.co.uk

Reasons for Submission

Footage Farm provides extensive and intensive information about what is available of footage in the public domain, and its pricing method makes it easier for users to budget productions in advance. Since January 2004 footage was provided worldwide to over 300 companies and over 160 separate productions. Among programmes who used Footage Farm as one of their primary sources are five of this year’s submissions to the Focal Awards category in “Best Use of Footage in a History Factual Production”:

Juniper Communications Ltd - When Black Became Beautiful; 2. Lion Television - Days That Shook the World - Attack on Pearl Harbor( and many other episodes); 3. TWI / Carlton - Japan's War, 4. Alegria - The House of Saud; 5. Looks Film & TV - Life Behind the Wall

Some quote from users:

“As a film researcher working across a number of archive heavy historical documentary programmes at any given time I find Footage Farm an invaluable archive resource. Service is excellent, knowledgable friendly and fast and of course it's the most reasonable way of accessing PD footage in this country. I have been surpised by both the quality and unexpected gems that the collection contains.” Dinah Rogers, BBC Specialist Factual Dept

“A huge thank you from all of us here on "American Colossus" for all your patience, good humour and kind help throughout the project. We're very grateful for your speedy service and helpful suggestions, which made a real difference to the programme.” Rosalind Bentley, American Colossus, Blakeway Productions

 

Library

Inamedia

www.inamedia.com

Reasons for Submission

Inamédia is the second phase Ina's digitisation plan: after preserving 200,000 hours of content (to date) Ina has developed a tool dedicated to the professional users of archives allowing them to access this treasure remotely, from a simple PC. It allows users to search the entire database, to screen the programmes, to make their own excerpts and to send this information to the Ina teams for quick processing. Furthermore, the 2,000,000 production fact-sheets are automatically translated into English to ensure easy access for all the non French-speaking users. More than 1,000 users have already made Inamédia a regular research tool. Inamédia has been developed in-house using specialist subcontractors as necessary (design / ergonomics / security…). The investment for this project, started in 1999 in parallel with the digitisation, is around 700,000 €.

With more than 200,000 hours of digitised contents Inamédia is at the moment the largest on-line database of digital archive material anywhere in the world. More than a web site, we like to consider Inamédia as a “web tool”. From anywhere in the world and with a computer connected to a high-speed Internet link, any researcher can dive into 50 years of archives in French or in English. Inamédia allows screening in a professional format, permitting users to make clips with the usual method of ‘Time-code in’ / ‘Time-code out’, to organise their work into different, user-designed ‘bins’ (saved as long as you need them) and finally to place an order. No need to go to Paris (sorry!), Inamédia provides maximum of time-saving efficiency. To us at Ina, preserving archives would be pointless if that was to keep them only for a “happy few”. It is Ina's mission to communicate and make this vast wealth of archive images as widely accessible as possible using the latest digital technology, yet preserving them as the nation's heritage for future generations.

Some quote from users:

Inamedia is a web site giving a second life to Historical documentaries…. Sarah Catel (Researcher)

We, at the TSR, are are envying you to have developed such a tool. We do hope to have some day the same level of service for our customers. Patricia Herold (Researcher)

Inamedia is just fantastic – Ina is fantastic Thank you C. Stoebelen (Researcher)

Inamedia is a major revolution regarding the on-line access to data and contents (../..) Inamedia is the first archive source to be able to offer quick, simple and efficient access to: descriptive information

  • on line screening (footage AND programmes)
  • tools and options to process the searched and screened contents.

Inamedia, with its permanent development and increase in functionalities has given Ina a real competitive edge on an international basis. Valérie Massigon (Xyzebre) :

Inamedia is really one of the best online Archives. With the efficiency of its bi-lingual system, one can find everything both in French and in English. Beside that fact, Ina is absolutely reliable and has a pleasant service. Hansjörg Schump (Hoferichter and Jacob Film and TV production Company - Germany)

Inamedia is an extremely convenient tool in my archival research work. The fact that I can go online, screen everything I am interested in, save it in my basket, and the order it makes it invaluable. It saves both time and money. It is also very user friendly. I can always find easily what I am looking for. INA has so much remarkable material, and it is very useful to have such an uncomplicated access to it. Tamara Rosenberg - Channel Thirteen/WNET in New York

Inamedia is a major improvement in French footage research. Quick and easy to handle, it allows immediate answers to our queries. As a very important part of INA archive has been digitised, we are able to screen the programs or segments we are looking for through Inamedia, as well as choose in and out timecodes for clips we need. Less expensive and much quicker, this database gives us a wider access to remarkable television and 1940s newsreel archives. Valérie Combard, Researcher

 

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