Historical Documentary

We’ve produced or played a role in several documentaries over the years. Sometimes we provide analogue to digital conversion of source materials. Other times it’s editing, re-editing, voice-over, or other post-production work to re-produce archival materials into new and interesting programs.  Here are a few examples.

Dr. Seuss Centennial Exhibit                 Several years ago we put together a compilation of 90 minutes  of various audio-visual materials for the Dr. Seuss Centennial Exhibit in Springfield, MA.  This is a brief excerpt, but a good example of a project where we worked from multiple sources and formats and put together an informative program for museum-goers from around the world.

The 90 minute compilation was culled from many sources and formats, including 16mm film, silent 8mm film, VHS and ¾” videotape, DVD, and CD-ROM.  In some cases, such as Spies, above, different copies of the same program were combined.  The noisy and slightly distorted optical soundtrack of the 16mm film was replaced by a clean version from VHS tape.  The picture quality on the VHS tape would have been acceptable, but it lacked the cleaner and sharper quality that we got working from the 16mm print.  The fun part came in making several small corrections throughout the soundtrack to keep perfect lip-sync of the cartoon characters!

 

One of the only primary sources that documented the destruction of the Great Flood of 1936 in real time is this piece of 8mm film. Though very underexposed, we were able to get a grainy, but reasonably good transfer to video, made even better with the addition of music and voice-over by the filmmakers.