Time to get physical.

"ALL CHANGE" © Alexander Cunningham I spent most of this weekend converting a pile of my Father in Law's old mini-DV tapes into DVD's and MP4's. Just a wee tick on my to-do list, and I thought I'd get it done whilst my 2005 Macbook Pro still feels up to it (my current editing computer lacking something as archaic and obsolete as a firewire port!) I had forgotten what a pain in the backside tape was to use. The crunchy slow loading, the spooling forth and back to make sure you've captured all you can off the tape, capturing in real time. Capturing in reel time. No fast data transfers here. A few weeks before I had telecined some super8 I had unearthed for a personal project. It transpires the 3x 200ft reels didn't have the material I was after, but hey ho, that's the nature of research and archives, sometimes you strike gold, sometimes you hit a brick wall (These reels may yet have a life, my friend Richard Weeks plans to do a proper telecine with a decent scanner, and to speak to their owner Alexander Cunningham to get their story, I'm also indebted to Graham Mellstrom for his assistance in procuring the reels) Super8 was even more of a pain than tape.. lacing the leader through the capstans and cogs jams, getting my cameras scan rate to match the projectors shutter, massive reels to spool through and back. I've shot a lot of DV tape in my time, and shot a little Super8 back when we still had the musty but magnificent '20th Century Movies' shop on Queen Margaret Drive. Obviously I'm used to setting things up, mic stands, lights, reflectors, tripods etc, so the actual media doesn't make much of a difference timewise, but for the home user it's an entirely different story. I can imagine my Father In Law Colin with his bulky camcorder, having the patience to carry it around with him over his shoulder, making sure the battery was charged, and then what to do with the tapes afterwards etc.. I think of Alexander with similar problems on super8, but an expensive 3 minute 50ft reel, the wait to get it back from the lab, only manual controls, MF through a tiny pellicle finder.. Life is certainly much easier these days. 4K on your smartphone (which you have with you anyway) with instant AF, stabilisation, exposure control, audio. All you really have to manage is to hold the phone the right way round (which most folks don't!) But as I considered this, I noticed something else.. I had in my hand a cinefilm shot 40 years ago, a mini-DV tape shot 15 years ago. They were physical bits of celluloid or acetate. They had been stored waiting to live again. From their form it was obvious what they were. The pictures came up immediately, and could be sorted, indexed, searched. They could be handled and managed and played. In 18 months time when you get your next contract for your latest smartphone will your easily captured memories be preserved? Will these moments be lost? Will a hard-drive found in an attic in 50 years time still spin up? Will it's very form inspire a future amateur family archivist to have a look through and see what's on it? We are all film-makers and photographers now. We all bear witness. It didn't happen unless it's on 'insta' whether that's the brilliant lasagne you made last night, or your first-born starting school.

But it's all I's and O's. It's only a corruption or a wipe away from disappearing. So get physical in 2019. Print. Share. Back up to DVD or pendrive. Get it on the cloud. Label it. Who's in the pics? Who'll know who those people were once you are gone?