Dominic Dare (00:23) So welcome to the Archive Room. My name is Dominic Dare and this is my co-host, Sandra Coelho Today's guest is Andrea Kalas We are delighted to have her here She's one of the most respected figures in global film preservation. She currently serves as vice president of media and archival services at Iron Mountain, where she leads large scale preservation, digitization and access projects for some of the world's most important studios, museums and cultural institutions. Before Iron Mountain, Andrea transformed the Paramount Pictures Archives into one of the industry's most forward-thinking archive operations. Her career also includes senior roles at the British Film Institute, Discovery Communications, UCLA Film and Television Archive, and DreamWorks. She has overseen the restoration of more than 2,000 titles, from fragile nitrate material to iconic feature films. And she's also a former president of AMIA. and a leading advocate for long-term digital preservation. So, Andrea, welcome to the Archive Room. Andrea Kalas (01:28) You summed it up so well. Thank you. It's pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you. Dominic Dare (01:31) It's a hell of a resume. Thank you. So listen, just let's get going. How do you describe to people what you do? Andrea Kalas (01:42) So right now in my current role with Iron Mountain, what's amazing about my job is that I not only get to work with this incredible group within Iron Mountain of archivists like me, geeks like me that love archiving, but we also get to work with a whole range of different kinds of collections. So they could be film collections, music collections, or it could be from a corporate archive. which is fascinating because, you know, there's some corporate archives are almost like, you know, archives of history of industries, right? So that's amazing. We're working with cultural organizations that may need us to help out with a small project or a big project. It could be just moving some stuff for them, or it could be we work with them together to share our expertise on a particular digitization project. it's really, it's just wonderful. because it's a wide range of projects, but it's also listening to all these incredible archivists and all these new ideas about how they're working on things. Because I tell people that one of the things I didn't know about my career until I was into it was I had to work with really great people, right? Archivists, first of all, they have to work together. You cannot be an island if you're an archivist. You know, if you're a film archivist, somebody else might have a copy of the title you have in your collection because of split rights or because it's distributed. Or if you're working right now, there's a big with audio restoration or videotape restoration. You know, the world's machines to play those back are getting more and more scarce. So you have to work together. So that's what's really wonderful about my job. And and our clients is that constant collaboration, communication to make sure we're taking care of the world's heritage. So that's a sort of a summary of what I do and why I like it. Dominic Dare (03:42) Yeah, I mean, it's a fascinating world. I mean, you you've journeyed through UCLA, you've been through these, you know, paramount pictures. Tell us a little bit how that career development came around. You know, did you end up doing this because you wanted to or did you fall into this world? And then how have those different roles kind of shaped your vision of what preservation and the importance of archives is? Andrea Kalas (04:04) I felt like there was a little lucky star following me to UCLA when I went to grad school. Cause I knew that about UCLA film and TV archive and I'd read about film preservation. So I knew that that was going on. And when I first got to grad school at UCLA, I saw that there was a job opening to help out. It was a work study job at UCLA film and TV archive. And so I called the incredible Jerry Goulden who I got to work with for a long time. And he said, you know, this job isn't on the campus. It's out here in Hollywood and it's kind of dirty out here. And I was like, where do I sign? I'm in, right? So it was, know, because I don't mind getting my hands dirty and it sounded amazing to be just close to the collection itself. And it was, and I ended up being in that. Dominic Dare (04:38) Hahaha Andrea Kalas (04:52) after the work study job, I was offered a full-time job. And that group of people that was at UCLA at that time included Bob Gitt, who we affectionately called the Pope of Preservation, Eddie Richmond, who was a curator who had really started to develop what it was like to do more sort of professional archiving and film archiving, Robert Rosen. who was a visionary when it came to archiving and advocating for film archiving when it wasn't being advocated for that much. Martha Yee, who was a really leading light in cataloging and was figuring out then how to put the square peg of film information into the round hole of like a book catalog, right? Because that's where we started to get to, you know, it's just huge advances today. I had this amazing group of humans that were figuring out the whole thing of film archiving and they were all my mentors and I could work with them and I did, I just bothered them constantly. What are you doing? What are you working on? How does that work? And so that was just wonderful. And my first job, real job was doing newsreel preservation. And that also, it was great. My boss at the time, Blaine Bartel, just really gave me enough rope to hang on by saying, okay, Dominic Dare (06:01) Okay. Andrea Kalas (06:09) you go, you tell me why we should preserve this newsreel more than the other newsreel, and then you can do the whole step. And so I did, I had to justify what it was I was preserving. know, was it unique? Was our, you know, that material preserved someplace else? And then I had to actually do it, sit on a bench, wind through it, inspect it, and then I'd take it to a lab, see the preservation, then handle the information that I'd researched about this over to Martha Yee to catalog. So that was fantastic. Another like sort of soup to nuts training about what an archivist is and how an archivist should work. I just felt like, yeah, I had this lucky star at UCLA that really set me up for some foundational training for how to be an archivist. So that's really how, that's how I got into it. Dominic Dare (06:56) let's say, commercial imperatives. So, UCLA is kind of well funded and, there may be less commercial imperatives in other places. When you, look at the decisions that you have to make now, or companies have to make now about what to preserve and what not to preserve, I mean, are they making the right choices? And, is there a, is it financially viable for, corporate archives, for example, to be preserved? Andrea Kalas (07:18) Every archivist is always going to be challenged with fewer resources than they need. Bottom line, it's just the way it is, right? It is because it's always a challenge to make sure that whether you're a cultural institution, not-for-profit institution, or whether you're a corporate archive, there's always other agendas that are vying for those funds. Because an archive doesn't, it's not its own thing. It's always part of something else. know, an archive might be part of a university or an archive might be part of a motion picture studio. So that they have to compete for those funds against all the other competitions for budget for those organizations. That's just, that's the reality of the situation. And so that means that the job of how to spend funds is very, scrutinized. And so archivists have to learn how to make basically the skills to advocate for how they're doing that. And that goes to the prioritization of materials to preserve, right? So, and that can end up in decisions like, I know that I need to get good environmental storage for a large amount of material because I may not be able to preserve all of it right away, right? So, That was one of the things we did at Paramount Pictures is we built out a vault that was below freezing and with a very controlled humidity. Because we knew at that environment, nothing changes, right? No more deterioration, no color fade. So it stops, it doesn't go back in time, unfortunately, but it stops things so that it doesn't advance. So that then you can look at other factors. that are involved in your preservation prioritization. So that's a good, that's one thing people do is like, what can we do to stop the bleed? And then we can take a look more intelligently. And so the other factors could be like, there's only one copy in the world, right? And in fact, I learned a phrase from a colleague at the British library this morning that I told him I was going to steal. So I'm still, he knows I'm stealing, which is one copy is no copies. That's a great phrase, right? Because Dominic Dare (09:27) Hahaha Sandra Coelho (09:28) you Andrea Kalas (09:33) a single point of failure, that's not a copy. It's not a single copy is almost like an oxymoron, right? So, you know, the idea of replication and keeping a second copy of things is always a really strong archival principle, especially when you have a, you know, duplicate of media. So that's one prioritization part. And then, of course, there's other cultural, financial, other issues that come into play, of course. You know, if you work in a motion picture studio, it's not going to be as difficult to argue for the restoration of the Godfather as it is for a smaller, you know, C title, right? Because there's interest in that, that's going to have financial payback. That makes sense, right? And it's those smaller things that may, you know, will they find an audience? Will you be able to do it? Will you justify it? And I think, you know, to me, I just preach and preach and preach, especially when people own the rights to something that I think they, I believe they have a duty of care, right? Like you have a duty of care. If you're like, if you are a state owned cultural institution, you have a duty of care to those materials that are available for the public, right? That's your job. And the government needs to fund you and find that even though that's not always easy either, but that's, that's the reason they do that. And I don't think it's any different. I think in my opinion, this is what I always sort of flew the flag for Paramount and other for-profit corporations is that you have a duty of care to take care of the things you own. You maintain your house, you take care of your car. These are stuff you own, so take care of it. So that's the other part of it. You don't necessarily, and you can have different levels of preservation and restoration too that cost more or less that you can apply. But I think, yes, the cultural impact, the financial value, and the risk to the material itself, right? Is it at risk? Are there reasons? And there's a billion different reasons why something could be at risk. A digital asset may have different at risk factors than a nitrate negative, right? So it's knowing what those risks are probably the most important part of an archivist's toolkit, right? so that they can assess that and make those arguments correctly. Dominic Dare (11:48) And we're entering, well, we've entered fully into this sort of digital realm. Is there a fragility to, it's digitized now, we're done. I mean, is it future-proofed? Andrea Kalas (12:00) I don't think so. I think, you know, it's really trying to think through the issues of digital preservation, I think is an absolute must for any archivist. And we're seeing that happening more and more all the time. And there is not a single way to implement digital preservation. It's really knowing about the principles of digital preservation. It goes back to replication again, have multiple copies, have as many copies as you can afford, three or four. it's using potentially different ways of storing your assets. So some people will put two in the cloud and one in on-prem, you know, or they might write them off to an offline LTO that they know that they'll need to migrate, LTO tape, data tape. Or there might be other ways of doing that. And the other really big factor is actually checking those assets, right? And we do that with what's called health checks. So You have a, you know, a checksum, you know, unique ID that shows, you know, that the contents of that file, it's a string and you go and see in every, you know, at some interval, you can check to see that and run that again. And if it's changed, you know, there's something wrong with your file. If you have replicates, no problem. You can flip it out. Right. So that's the basic idea of preservation, digital preservation. again, there's lots of different ways to apply it and implement it. but it's absolutely essential. And it's not just essential for making sure that your data doesn't change. It's also a way to make sure your data is protected against cyber attacks, against other things that might come along that are really, really major. So it's incredibly important and I think more people are getting around to it, but. And we're trying to, and I'm trying to very hard internally at Iron Mountain incorporate a real path to digital preservation. We have some of the steps there, but I'm cracking the whip on my internal colleagues to get them to have that full thing. Cause I really obviously feel very, very strongly about it. You know, I've been involved with the Academy. There's an Academy digital preservation forum that we put up. That's really just an information website for anybody that's interested in these issues. Of course, it's around movies because it's the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but they could apply to other types of materials too. Sandra Coelho (14:17) If somebody comes to you, which is obviously not experienced, and they have... they want you guys to digitise and preserve their content, can they then throw away their 8mm film, 35mm film, or their tape once you've digitised it onto LTO? Andrea Kalas (14:35) I think it's a good idea to hold on to things, but I understand too that a lot of times, sometimes there are people, especially with videotape and audio tape, that that's the only way they can get the money to justify their digitization is by saying, we won't store this stuff anymore, but we'll store it in a digital environment. So I'm sympathetic to that because I think everybody has to make those decisions among difficult, you know, constrained resources. I don't see a lot of people throwing out film. I think film is something that people really want to hold on to for the long term, whether it's eight millimeters, 16, 35, whatever. They are really, people see that as maybe it's more of an object, know, maybe it's, you know, the edge codes and there's information on that. Certainly, you know, certainly I felt that way. I would never throw away an original negative. at when I was at Paramount of a major feature film, just couldn't, no way, know, no couldn't do. And plus I do think that there's the potential, you know, we've seen technology improve all the time, especially when it comes to film restoration, you know, there's many of the biggest titles you've ever heard of have been restored two, three, four times. And that's because the technology continues to advance to make that, which is basically on video. Dominic Dare (15:30) Yes. Andrea Kalas (15:52) closer to that original theatrical experience. So, you know, there's reasons when it comes to feature film to keep that film for continued going back to make sure it's in the latest and greatest. But I think that, you know, it is a choice. It's sometimes a difficult one when it comes to other kinds of elements. Once you're digitized, do you hold on to them? I would love the world to hold on to everything. You know, I think having a... And, you know, and I'm somebody that also... helps people decide what to keep and not to keep at all, right? Because that's the other part of archiving is curatorship and deciding, okay, we have, you know, there are 45 copies of exactly the same thing on videotapes. We don't need to keep 45 copies of the exactly the same thing. We can actually remove that and save some of our storage and not throw away something we want to. So that's the other thing I try to do is like, have you really thought about how you're curating your physical objects, because there is more there to do too. So that's what I talk about to people is like, try to find a way not to do it if you can, but understand that sometimes those hard choices have to be made. Sandra Coelho (17:02) And how often, you say you do a check on the LTOs, how often do you check those? Is it once a year or is it every six months you keep a check on it to make sure that they're not getting faulty or... Andrea Kalas (17:15) mean, in my own experience at Paramount Pictures, yeah, it was an annual check. People do different, you know, cadences depending on, there's no hard and fast rule for that. I think it's, you know, and there is also, we were also put into our policy that we would try it for a few years and see if annual was enough and then change our mind. If it was, if we weren't seeing that many issues, maybe it doesn't, maybe it could be more like two or three years. If we were seeing a lot of issues, maybe we should do it more often. So I think that's, you know, is, is that health check process is not only a check of your data, it's a check of the infrastructure you use to make your digital preservation work, right? So it can be a very informative piece of data as you start to understand how your digital preservation works. Sometimes we would see a bunch of checksums go haywire. We go like, wow, we're seeing a lot of problems here. And then dig into it and find out, there's actually a hardware issue. And then we would fix that hardware issue. and that would be useful, right? So I think there's not, again, not a hard and fast rule on it, but it has a lot of benefits. Dominic Dare (18:22) people that are listening into this podcast, libraries, commercial libraries, producers, and so on and so forth. what do people do if they are aware of collections that are at risk, what's pragmatic things can people do to help save archives Andrea Kalas (18:36) I mean, I think if you are getting involved with an archive, it's not necessarily you're working there, but maybe you're an archive producer and you realize that this is an incredible collection that could use a little more love. would say talk to the archivist there. Talk to them about how can they use your help in sort of advocating for it. Podcasts like this could be great is to say, it's So that archivist can point to say there's a lot of interest. It's not just me saying this stuff is great. There's other people in the world. Advocacy is so much the key when it comes to archiving and just getting the word out. I do think that's happening more and more. I'm seeing amazing things happening with archives. There's incredible archive producers out there. There's incredible filmmakers using archive films in a way I've never seen before. think it's, so I'm. optimistic really that there's more archives getting more attention and films using archives in different ways that are extraordinary. And that helps, right? When people see incredible archival footage or they see a film that uses it so well. So keep going, you great documentary filmmakers, I love you. But you know, I think that yes, how can you help help them advocate, see what they need if they're struggling to make that case to their the people that will help them preserve and keep things better. See if you can help out. Yeah, and get the word out about all these great collections. Dominic Dare (19:59) on the flip side, know, the positivity is great. You know, what do you see as most fragile at the moment in terms of the archiving world? What are we risk of losing? Andrea Kalas (20:08) I think that to me the thing that sort of keeps me up a lot at night is because I deal with a lot of magnetic media, video and audio tape. And there's not only, know, there's multiple, multiple, multiple formats in both video and audio that were made over the years. And you need those machines in order to play back audio and video and those machines, they're not making new ones. And so there's people... like Iron Mountain has, there's everybody that does any kind of digitization has that room, that room of old decks that they use for pieces of parts that they constantly are looking on eBay to see if they can get more of. And there's more, and we all work together on this too, to try to find out who has what. So it's a very collaborative process. But the other thing too is even if you have the machine, the heads to play back those tapes. which the components that actually within the machine are making sure you can read that data and play that tape, they wear out. So you can't, and so you need to have them remanufactured. And that's, there's not that many people in the world that do that either, right? So, and there's engineers that need to put the heads back in and make sure they're working well and tweak them. So that's, think, some of the biggest risk is Iran. And I read somewhere that we're still at something like 80 % of the world's video is not yet digitized. So there's a lot more to do. And so how can we help that process of making sure we have the means to do it? Dominic Dare (21:42) Just in terms of your jump-circling back to your early journey, is there a title or a project that you worked on that really set you on this path? Is there one preservation that stands out to you or felt the value of? Andrea Kalas (21:56) Which of my children do I love the most? Yeah, I mean, it really is. mean, when you work on actually restoring or preserving a film, you really do almost get to know it like a person, right? You get to, you spend so much time with it, you know? And I think, you know, there's, the one that I talk about that I really, that was just so incredibly satisfying was when I worked at Paramount in the early days and we were working on Dominic Dare (21:59) Yeah, all of them. Andrea Kalas (22:21) restoration of a silent film called Wings, 1927, winner of the first Best Picture Oscar. And it really was a transformative restoration. In other words, we didn't have much image material left, right? The original negative had not been preserved. What we had was it had nitrate decomp on it. You know, and so it had to go from that. we had, we knew, you it was a silent film, but we knew it had been released with both music and sound effects originally, because it was a big, big, big motion picture. was about World War I. There were lots of airplanes. were lots of fighting in the air. Very exciting movie. And so we worked with Ben Burt, who is Academy Award winning sound designer. who worked on, I don't know, Star Wars. And he had original, he had authentic sound effects from the kinds of planes that were used to make wings. So he put together, he recorded, and we actually had the original score as well. So we recorded the score with musicians and we gave that over to Ben. He added on these amazing, Dominic Dare (23:13) Hahaha. Andrea Kalas (23:34) you know, sound effects. And when we played it back for the first time, he said, you know, it's not a silent movie anymore. It's a warm movie. You know, it's like, yes, it brought it to life. And, you know, so that's, that's, you know, when you go from very compromised materials, nobody could see the actual how great this movie was anymore, because it was just too damaged to even be able to perceive that to this incredible. presentation of really an amazing film, a film in which actors actually flew planes and ran the cameras themselves. I don't think that's ever happened since. You know, that incredible epic kind of film that deserved that epic treatment, that was really satisfying. Dominic Dare (24:19) That's amazing. That's amazing. thinking about Iron Mountain, Sandra and I obviously are on a commercial side and our, our role within this industry is sort of promotion, but obviously to kind of try and make money from stuff. How does that work at Iron Mountain? Because presumably you're seeing huge collections come in that commercially people just aren't necessarily aware of. Do you have a team within Iron Mountain that looks to kind of help commercialize these properties when they come in? How does that work for you guys? Andrea Kalas (24:44) That's a really good question. And we are trying and, you know, I think we should always try a little bit better because that helps archives everywhere if they're monetizable, right? That's always going to be a good thing for archives. We do have, you know, the ability within Iron Mountain to help people if they use our platform actually find easy ways for other people to purchase that material, right? So we're doing that to a certain extent. but I think we could probably do more, how, how people can, cause people use it for a variety of different ways. Some people will actually find their way through social media, right? Or YouTube. Some people obviously work with archive producers. but you know, the, you know, I'm absolutely always looking for more creative ways that we can help our clients. find that path between the vault to actually getting it out there and having somebody actually pay for the privilege. Dominic Dare (25:41) It's 100 % and it's really interesting because I was chatting with an archive producer the other day and they were working with a corporate archive in Indiana, interestingly enough, and they were saying, this is amazing material, right? Because it's corporate videos from the 50s and the 60s and the 70s. And it's just another way of telling a story of a period in time. And he was waxing lyrical about this archive and I was like, well... I never heard of it. you you find this as an archive producer, but then you just move on or you keep it as your secret. So I think that I agree with you. think there's a lot of bridging to be done between the people that are finding these collections and companies like Iron Mountain, which are helping to kind of keep them alive and also the ability to commercialize. And I think that's probably to do with advocacy as well, which is people understanding the value of it. I'm just interested in terms of, it's slightly political, but you know, in terms of the... defunding that's potentially been going on in America. European kind of sensibility tends to be there's state money and funding. I don't know if that's true. That may be a misconception. But in America, it's a lot of private money, a lot of private kind of philanthropy. Is there a real hit at the moment with lack of funding from the federal government towards archives? Andrea Kalas (26:47) Yeah, it's definitely we've seen organizations struggle even more. You know, the the National Endowment for the Humanities, which was a source, is really pretty much, you know, not around that much for people. So, yeah, that kind of federal funding has definitely taken a hit. And it's absolutely, you know, it's the job of other people to step up and try to help. And we've seen that, too. We've seen other people step up and try to do more funding on that. So, yeah, it's. It hasn't, hasn't helped having that kind of thing. And I think, you know, the tragedy with that, sort of misunderstanding of, know, why cultural funding is so important is it, it really, you know, it, it devalues that material too, right. And, you know, I think, you know, and it's a shame because right now we're about to celebrate our 250th anniversary here in the United States, right. And you know, a good part of that was the 20th century and the 20th century had a lot of great archival material, right? It would be wonderful to sort of really dig into that and explore and show how that really represents our country and what we do, you know? So I think that's the other tragedy of not having that kind of funding for archives is that we don't value it as much. So I hope it comes back and I hope, but I'm also, I'm always an optimist too. And I know there's a lot of people that really do. care about this stuff more and more. I'm also interested in, you know, I'm always listening to what people younger than me are saying about old stuff, right? I'm always fascinated with that. you know, and I always, I tell this story about how my niece, when she was about 12, ran in the room and said, Andrea, have you heard this guy called Stevie Wonder? You know. Dominic Dare (28:15) Yeah. Andrea Kalas (28:33) And I just love that story, right? Because it's, you and I think that that, and you know, I've heard people also the first time they see a particular film where they recognize that there's something that is really iconic from our culture and our history, you know, then I get optimistic again. I'm happy that people are recognizing these things and celebrating them more and more. So I haven't lost hope. Dominic Dare (28:56) No, absolutely. And it's funny, you know, friend with a teenage son, he's really, really into analog. And he was explaining to me he's 14. He's saying, look, I have no money. I'm a teenager. So I go to a charity store and what's in there? V8, old VHS players, old cameras, physical formats. And so and that was like, light bulb went off. It's like, that's exciting. It's new, you know. And so I think I'm hoping that that kind of that there will be a shift towards that kind of physical media. in terms of the future, You know, we haven't mentioned the dreaded AI, which affects everything and everyone, as we all know. Those two little words that, and, you know, it really is, you know, I mean, we've had some guests on the show with very strong opinions about it. You know, in terms of the positive, you know, my understanding is from a layman's point of view that AI has a great ability to enhance, once you've done a film scan, you can look at pixels, you can do stuff. Andrea Kalas (29:29) can't have a conversation without those two little words. Those two little words, right? It's just impossible. Sandra Coelho (29:32) Yeah. Dominic Dare (29:49) You know, what are you guys implementing in terms of that technology? And, you know, is it going to be advantageous? And then on the flip side, what are the concerns Andrea Kalas (29:58) I think, for me, AI can be, and it can completely open up archives to new audiences in ways that hasn't happened before. And I've always been interested in that, right? What is the point of preserving things if you then just put them on the shelf and nobody can use them, right? So the ability for, whether it's natural language serve or vector embeddings or other technologies that actually make it easy for people to go to a screen and just type in I'm looking for this kind of thing or show me this kind of thing and get back results that they never got back before. I'm super excited about that. I understand that people are concerned about how people will use other intellectual property to train the models to make this happen. I get that. I think that, and I'm behind them. think if your stuff has been used to train models, you should get paid. I agree with that, right? That would be nice to see. And we're seeing some companies start to get to that model. Because I think that's what really annoyed people, rightly so in the beginning. But I think the other really interesting thing is archivists and librarians, if, know, hello, archivists and librarians out there. I think there is a certain amount, and they would probably disagree with me here. But I think we have a kind of responsibility to make these models better. Dominic Dare (31:00) Yeah. Andrea Kalas (31:15) over time, you know, what will make those models better? Data, where is that data? Archives and libraries, right? So if we're going to live with AI, which it looks like we're going to do for a long time to come, and we wanted to help people find stuff, then we're going to have to eventually get those models better. And I really applaud the efforts of people within organizations like SAA or ALA or other. Dominic Dare (31:22) Thank Yeah. Andrea Kalas (31:41) organizations with their really serious professional librarians, because I am a big, huge fan of library science. It is underrepresented in terms of its impact on culture generally, and it should be more, you know, understood. You know, I think some of the things that library science could bring to this whole AI discussion would help benefit everybody. So I applaud those efforts, but I think it's also should be I would like to see more people actually taking those and engaging and making AI better for everyone. And by better, I mean the search is better, it's more accurate, it's more ethically responsible, all those things that librarians have been doing for decades, centuries. So I would love to see more of that. Dominic Dare (32:21) Yeah. I love that. I mean, think that's a fundamental thing that within archives that we all know, which is you want the brain trust of the person who's actually physically sat there in the library or the archive. Those are the people that have just always overlooked or that you can't find. know, that and if you can bottle that, then there's something that's that's a very interesting take. I think that's kind of heartening. So anyway, listen, we do a quick fire round, which puts you on the spot, not too badly. So I'll let Sandra take it away. Andrea Kalas (32:53) Okay. Sandra Coelho (32:59) Yeah, so Andrew, these are quick questions, fast answers. You just come, you say whatever comes into your head. Yeah, you ready? Okay, film or digital, what keeps you up at night? Andrea Kalas (33:06) Okay, I'm a little nervous, but let's do it. In terms of preservation, digital, absolutely. Sandra Coelho (33:14) Most misunderstood word in archiving. Andrea Kalas (33:18) I think people don't understand, people talk about preservation, restoration, digitization, and it's sort of a blur, and they don't know quite how to deal with it. I think it makes sense, right? Because it just means it's complicated, right? And there's different pads for different types of materials. But I think that's the idea is that Sandra Coelho (33:25) Yeah. Andrea Kalas (33:39) If you work with a professional, you can make the choice that's best for your material and you don't have to worry about those words so Sandra Coelho (33:46) Exactly. AI in archives. tool or distraction. Tall. Okay, one preservation myth you'd like to retire. Andrea Kalas (33:49) What you Tool, absolute tool. that below zero storage will hurt the film. There was a myth going on that, I don't know, what if it, if there's, if you take the film out and water condenses, it's gonna be a problem. And when I was at the BFI, I actually got to test that myth out of extinction, right? We actually did a bunch of real world tests where we took all sorts of films that were not needed anymore, copies of copies of copies. put them in the worst environment and took them out really quickly. And we never saw anything except for a little water on the top of the can. I'm a big advocate, because I saw it for real, of below zero storage for film. think it's, you know, tons of scientific work have been done that's all led to this. So if there's a myth out there that it's bad, we should get rid of it because the benefits just are so huge. Sandra Coelho (34:45) advocacy or technology which matters more right now. Dominic Dare (34:45) for them. Andrea Kalas (34:50) there is plenty of technology. We need advocacy more and more. And we need advocacy for technology and an understanding of technology too, right? And technology in archives, it's not just like the latest AI tool. It's like technology is like the history of moving image technology, the history of audio technology, the history of all sorts of different technologies, right? And that's what archivists really have to know. And they do. And so they can bring that to their advocacy. So, you know, it's one thing I tell people when I go and teach at, you know, university classes. I'm like, if you're not comfortable speaking in public, if you're not comfortable getting out there and pounding the pavement for your archive and making sure you're making the best case, go find another career. Because you have to advocate for your archive to be effective, you know? And that's one of the things I try to help. my clients with at Iron Mountain is like, look, I'll help you. I can put together a deck for you and talk to you about these issues. We'll help you advocate because we know it's hard, right? It is hard to get that message across about how important your materials are and why it's sometimes expensive to take care of them, right? Those are the two things that you really have to come up with some really helpful. So yes, advocacy, advocacy, advocacy. Need more of that. Sandra Coelho (36:09) brilliant. One word the next generation of archivists should embrace. Andrea Kalas (36:15) I mean, I do think learning how AI can help you will be a huge benefit. I think there are, my joke when I worked at Paramount and somebody said, do I work in an archive at Paramount? I used to say, watch Sunset Boulevard and learn Unix. That was my old thing. So yeah, I think there is a cultural and a next-gen technology combo. Dominic Dare (36:36) you Andrea Kalas (36:41) for future archivists. You've got to know your collection. You've got to know your history. You've got to be able to be interested in that. But you've also got to be unafraid of the tools that will help you get your archive preserved and out there in front of people. Sandra Coelho (36:54) And finally preservation or access. Andrea Kalas (36:59) Well, to me, there are two sides of the same coin. You know, they really are, you know, there's no access without preservation. There's no preservation without access, right? You have to think of them at the same time. And there might be a tension between them. And that is a positive thing. The tension between preservation and access is positive. It means that, you know, Hey, I want to access this thing. And there may be somebody that said, you can't do that until I make sure it's okay. And that's a good thing. Cause you're, you're protecting that thing. On the other hand. Fred, you can't keep your arms around it too much. You've got to let it out. You've got to let that. And dealing with the issues about how to get people to access your things accurately and best is absolutely as much part of your job as preservation. I think it's make sure you understand both and embrace the tension is healthy. Sandra Coelho (37:46) That was fabulous. Dominic Dare (37:47) Amazing, amazing. You know, so we've got I think we're coming towards the end of our time. We kind of like to just sort of pick your brains for the future. if we have this conversation in 10 years time? What what what what's going to change by then? Andrea Kalas (38:00) I mean, I would love to imagine in the future that just like people are going to see 35 millimeter prints in theaters right now, that people get more and more interested in the kinds of things that archives, especially I come from moving image archives, obviously that's where I'm gonna focus on what other kinds of things that archivists actually have in their archives and get interested in them. And so more and more people know what's there. There's sort of the people that you mentioned like interested in vinyl and 35. I would like to see that interest translate into more interest in archives generally, right? And how important they are. think, so I like that trend. I think that's something to pay attention to and see how that pans out. I think the other thing obviously is, you know, is AI and technology and how that can actually, what will, how that will explode things across. you know, archive access. And it's also interesting that, you know, how people are finding archive materials through like YouTube, for example, right? And how those sort of online platforms and that kind of ease of access is going to impact things and train filmmakers and help archivists prioritize and things like that. So that explosion of access. Maybe all our archives will have to be vertical video. don't know. you know that, but that might, I know But hey, if it means somebody ends up loving, you know, a movie they've never heard of before, I'm kind of okay with it. You know, so, so yeah, I think that, you know, the wonder of archives, archivists get to know. Right? I would love to have more people understand how really amazing archives are and how many collections there are in the world and how there's people really working hard to get them out there. And there's treasure there that will be there around to not only make sure we remember our history, but we continue to build incredible films and other forms of entertainment. And we help people who are doing research around the world who have evidence through one thing, you know, that I hope that we really understand. And especially when it comes to moving images, which, you know, really took a while to even be taken seriously in a way, you know, even in academia or other places, it was sort of frivolous for so long, right? And I do think people take it seriously, really seriously now. And that's a good thing for the future of moving image archives and audio archives. Dominic Dare (40:33) It's wonderful way to kind of sort to wrap things up. think, you know, one of my notes when I was hooked, I used to work at ITN when I first started and you'd get taken to the vault. And the first time you go in a vault, you smell a vault and you see lines of film cans up and then you're hooked. I feel very blessed that I've been able to end up in this industry. I, know, one of the one of the facets of this podcast is to try and open up a world just a little bit if we can do to a wider audience. So we are hugely grateful. for your expertise, your time in giving us on this. So Andrea, thank you so much for joining us in the Archive Room. We really appreciate it. Andrea Kalas (41:06) Thank you. Thank you for doing this and all the great work that you do. I really appreciate the opportunity.