National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to Preserve Hearst Newsreels

A precedent setting preservation and restoration project being undertaken by UCLA Film and Television Archive has been awarded a grant of $255,000.00 by the National Endowment for the Humanities. "The 1930's: Prelude to War" is a three year long newsreel preservation project focusing on critical events and conditions leading up to World War II. The project will set several precedents both at UCLA and in the field of non-fiction film preservation in the United States. NEH support will insure that the portion of the Hearst Metrotone News collection selected as part of this project will be preserved and made available for research and study.

Because of the ever increasing cost of preservation, and the fact that several million feet of both released and unreleased "raw" footage from the 1930's remains to be copied, UCLA is developing a comprehensive plan to create priorities for the selection of film to be preserved. "The 1930's: Prelude to War" is the first step in a plan for the eventually preservation of all 10 million feet of nitrate film in the Hearst collection.

The overall goal of "The 1930's: Prelude to War" is twofold: To preserve the most vulnerable and historically important newsfilm from the Hearst Collection's 1930's materials, and to encourage the instructional and research access to historic newsfilm, some of which will be made available for the first time. Specifically, the project will involve the selection and preservation of 37,800 feet, or 7 hours, of film each year, for a total of 113,400 feet, or 21 hours, over the three years of the project. Each year the selection will focus on one of three distinct categories of footage from the 1930's. Selections will be made using subject-based priorities, rather than in chronological order. The selection for the first year (1993-94) is titled "Regional Conflicts in the 1930's"; the second year (1994-95), "Europe Before World War II"; and the third year (1995-96), "The 1930's in America." "Regional Conflicts in the 1930's" will cover five specific military clashes of varying sizes and intensities: the Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish Civil War, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Russo-Finnish War, and the Russian-Manchukuo border dispute. "Europe Before World War II" will emphasize how European nations responded to increasing political instability, continued economic problems, diplomatic attempts to maintain the peace, and the rise of fascism. "The 1930's in America" will emphasize the impact of domestic and international instability within the United States.

The most notable precedent set by this grant is the initiation of NEH's direct funding of film preservation. In 1984, UCLA's newsreel preservation program received a grant from NEH to facilitate access to silent newsreel material from the Hearst collection. "Prelude to War" marks the first time NEH funds have been granted under the endowment's program specifically to preserve non-fiction film.

An important first for UCLA will be the creation of the Preservation Selection Committee to assist in the development of criteria to choose the footage that will be preserved and restored through the grant. This committee will consist of nationally known film and newsreel archivists, historians of the twentieth century, and documentary filmmakers who will join key Archive staff in the creation of these guidelines. The archivists will bring to the project their technical expertise and familiarity with newsreel collections, the scholars will contribute their knowledge of the historical period and insight into the academic use of newsfilm materials, and the filmmakers will share their experience with the use of archival footage in documentary production. In addition to being involved in the selection process, the Preservation Selection Committee will help the Archive in creating goals and procedures for the use of the preserved material, and in determining how best to make the preserved film available to researchers and instructors.

The final precedent this project sets for UCLA is the Archive's planned creation of a set of video cassettes of the preserved film. These video cassettes will be made available to other academic institutions, historical societies, museums and media centers. Video tape sets will include introductory essays, reference materials, printed versions of the cataloging records with a complete index, and other supplementary materials. The cataloging record for each reel of preserved newsfilm will be created by UCLA Archive's cataloging staff. Each record will provide full bibliographic description with name and subject access in the USMARC Format, using national standard cataloging tools, including Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Archival Moving Image Materials, and Library of Congress Subject Headings. Full authority work is done on each name heading assigned to a record.

All preserved material will be available through the UCLA Film and Television Archive's Research and Study Center. Cataloging information on the films will be available through the UCLA Libraries' online database system, ORION, which is soon to be accessible through INTERNET, as well as at terminals in all of the UCLA campus libraries.

The Hearst Metrotone News collection has been a part of UCLA Film and Television Archive since the announcement of its donation by the Hearst Corporation in 1981. The Hearst collection is unique among the five major American newsreels (Hearst, Fox Movietone, Paramount, Universal, and Pathe), as it was the only newsreel produced by a company based on newspaper journalism. This collection consists of surviving material from the best known and longest running newsreel series produced by Hearst, as well as some of their lesser known motion picture and television productions. William Randolph Hearst began regular newsreel production in 1914 with the release of the Hearst-Selig News Pictorial, the first news short to bill itself as a "news reel." Unfortunately, little of this early footage survives, and the majority of the Hearst collection's 27 million feet of film consists of material from those theatrically released series produced between 1919 and 1967, and newsfilm produced for television in the 1950's and 60's.

Preservation of footage from the 1930's was deemed appropriate for this project, as previous funding (primarily from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation) enabled UCLA to preserve earlier material in the Hearst collection -- those films released up to the end of the 1920's. A relatively small amount of footage survived from this early period, less than 200,000 feet out of estimates starting at one to two million. Because of this comparatively small quantity UCLA was able to complete a comprehensive preservation program of this material, which included the surviving material from the silent newsreels of the teens and 1920's as well as the first few issues which Hearst released with soundtracks starting in the fall of 1929.

The Hearst collection consists of more than just motion picture film. It also includes an extensive cross indexed card catalog providing specific subject access to the material in the collection, and a set of synopsis sheets which gives a complete listing of the stories found on each released newsreel. This documentation will be central in creating priorities, selecting film to be preserved, and in authenticating the preservation and restoration processes.

Material in the collection from the 1930's being considered for preservation and restoration includes both released and unreleased footage. Released footage consists of those newsreels Hearst produced and distributed theatrically under the name of Hearst Metronome News (changed to News of the Day in 1936.) The unreleased footage is the raw film that was never included in a released newsreel, but was considered valuable enough to be kept as part of Hearst's stock footage library.

Once individual released newsreels have been selected for preservation the goal will be to restore them to their original released forms. The synopsis sheets will be used to verify both an issue's content and the original order of its stories. This preservation and restoration process is complicated by the fact that after a newsreel was distributed it was routinely cut up into its component stories before being incorporated into Hearst's stock footage library. Every effort will be made to insure that all existing footage will be retrieved and that missing logos are replaced.

Preservation and restoration of the unreleased footage, which often was stored as unspliced trims wrapped around a removable core, will be less problematic. As the strips of film are being prepared for duplication at the lab, edge numbers will be used to verify that the film is being reassembled back into its original order. Shot descriptions on the index cards also will be consulted to see if any footage is missing.

Not only do the Hearst newsreels from the 1930's record a wealth of historical events from around the world, they show the historical development of the medium itself. During this period the sound newsreel changed in format from being basically a silent newsreel with an ambient soundtrack into the fast paced format most people think of as being typical of newsreels. The Hearst format included the typical voice over narration, and various topical divisions modeled after newspaper sections, "The Front Page," "Snapshots From Here and There," "The Women's Page," and "The Sporting Page."

"The 1930's: Prelude to War" will serve a variety of valuable purposes, including making the information on preserved and restored footage easily available, providing the widest possible access to the moving images themselves, and, most notably, insuring the preservation of endangered and irreplaceable film. Researchers will be able to evaluate how an event was reported in the context of the entire news short, and how that context changed as the sound newsreel form evolved. Comparisons will be possible between released and unreleased footage of the same event, as well as between released and unreleased film of similar events.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has provided an exciting opportunity for this ground-breaking project. UCLA Film and Television Archive is looking forward to this extraordinary challenge and will be reporting back to FIAF with the results in the future.

Blaine Bartell

Ce programme est une première tentative de définition des priorités concernant la sélection de matériel susceptible d'être sauvé (parmi plusieurs millions de mètres de matériel de la collection Hearts!) L'objectif de "Les années 30: prélude à la guerre" est double: préserver le matériel le plus vulnérable et celui qui présente le plus grand intérêt historique, et rendre accessibles les documents historiques aux chercheurs et aux enseignants.

Les sélections vont s'opérer selon des priorités par sujet plutôt que par ordre chronologique ("L"Europe avant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale", "Les années 30 en Amérique", "Conflits régionaux dans les années 30", etc.).

En outre, ce programme représente un défi important pour les Archives du cinéma et de la télévision de l'UCLA. Et ceci à plusieurs titres. C'est, en effet, la première fois que le NEH octroie une subvention directe pour le sauvetage de matériel non-fiction. Par ailleurs ce sera la première fois qu'une commission de sélection de préservation sera créée à l'UCLA (constituée d'archivistes, d'historiens et de documentalistes). La mise à disposition du matériel préservé (aussi bien celui qui a été sorti que celui qui a été tourné mais qui n'a pas été utilisé) ainsi que la disponibilité de la documentation correspondante (catalogues, études, etc.) constitueront des volets importants du programme.

Subvención para la preservación de las actualidades Hearst

El National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) acordó una subvención de 225.000 dólares al programa de los archivos de la UCLA intitulado "Los años 30: Preludio a la guerra". Se trata de un proyecto de preservación, repartido sobre tres años, de los noticiarios Hearst-Metrotone sobre los acontecimeientos y condiciones históricas que desembocaron en la Segunda Guerra Mundia.

El objetivo de "Los años 30: Preludio a la guerra" es múltiple: Preservar el material más vulnerable que presente el mayor interés histórico y permitir su acceso a investigadores y docentes.

El proyecto constituirá también una primera experiencia de definición de prioridades en la selección de material destinado a ser preservado. Una comisión, constituida de archivistas, historiadores y directores de películas documentales estará a cargo de dicha tarea de selección de preservación.

El acceso al material preservado y la publicación de la documentación correspondiente formarán parte integrante importante del proyecto.