Losing Independents?: The Academy Publishes Digital Dilemma 2 Report
Making its way around websites, listservs and tweets this week is the announcement of the recently published report The Digital Dilemma 2: Perspectives from Independent Filmmakers, Documentarians and Nonprofit Audiovisual Archives. As a second part to 2007's Digital Dilemma which focused on archiving and accessing moving image digital material made by Hollywood productions and other large ventures, this time around, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Science & Technology Council takes smaller, less-funded, and ultimately more vulnerable material as a focal point.
As described by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science's announcement of the report's publication:
" The Digital Dilemma 2 focuses on the more acute challenges faced by independent filmmakers, documentarians and nonprofit audiovisual archives. While 75 percent of theatrically released motion pictures are independently produced, these communities typically lack the resources, personnel and funding to address sustainability issues that are available to major Hollywood studios and other large, deep-pocketed enterprises. Independent filmmakers create – and nonprofit film archives collect and store – a sizeable part of moving image and sound heritage. The Academy partnered with the Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) to produce this new study with the conviction that these communities shouldn't be allowed to fall through the cracks.
For this report, a cross-section of independent filmmakers, distributors and marketers was interviewed and a broader online survey of independent filmmakers was conducted. In addition, a representative group of nonprofit audiovisual archives provided details on their digital preservation activities, including information about the content they receive as born digital files, their current practices for digitally reformatting content for preservation, and their overall digital infrastructure, policies and funding strategies. The report's findings show an urgent need for these diverse and widely dispersed individuals and organizations to address the digital dilemma before the cultural heritage they represent is permanently lost."
The Academy has made the this extensive and valuable report available for free download, which can be accessed here.
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