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This is tangential to the article but when ever I read about a lost film being found there’s always mention of how it was found in a vault. I can’t help but alw

This is tangential to the article but when ever I read about a lost film being found there’s always mention of how it was found in a vault. I can’t help but always try to imagine what that is. Can anyone describe what these vaults are like? People can reference a data center but most probably have never been in one. However I’m very familiar with the slightly dusty smell, the whine of fans and HVAC, the odd people that work there, server cages, card and retina scanners, some have metal detectors. From the outside they’re huge nondescript brick buildings with massive gensets surrounded by a not f’ing around security fence. So I’d be very curious to know what a film vault in Hollywood is like.

wincy 3y ago
Well the one I know of near me in Kansas has an article about it.[0] This one is in a salt mine as the salt helps keep the moisture out of the air. I could definitely imagine a recurring multi year lease expense like this being a blip on the radar for movie studios, so these things are mostly forgotten. If a movie studio goes out of business though, who know what happens to these films? I’d imagine that’s how movies get “lost”. [0]https://www.agweb.com/news/business/technology/hidden-underground-how-one-kansas-town-key-preserving-movie-industrys https://www.agweb.com/news/business/technology/hidden-underg...
- oasisbob 3y ago
  > This one is in a salt mine as the salt helps keep the moisture out of the air As an aside, various salts are useful as humidity regulating agents due to their deliquescence characteristics. Different salts and brine solutions can be used to either pull moisture from the air, or to maintain a higher humidity. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/salt-humidity-d_1887.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/salt-humidity-d_1887.html
  - lemonberry 3y ago
    This is what I love about HN. A post on silent films leads to a really interesting comment like this. I really appreciate how generous everyone here is with their knowledge and that HN exists at all. Many thanks to everyone that keeps the conversation going.
monocasa 3y ago
Really similar to Iron mountain, with more fire suppression. Arguably to protect other buildings from their contents as much as protecting their contents from time. Nitrate film is extremely flammable. A vault fire from 1978 is covered in some detail here: https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2018/12/04/disaster-strikes-the-national-archives-the-1978-nitrate-vault-fire/ https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2018/12/04/disas...
eesmith 3y ago
The article said it was in the George Eastman Museum. The site has a virtual tour at https://www.eastman.org/virtual-tours https://www.eastman.org/virtual-tours which includes a link to the "Technology Vault", at https://goo.gl/maps/CXX9qDt7JemuASss5 https://goo.gl/maps/CXX9qDt7JemuASss5 . It uses Google Maps Street View to move around inside the vault. EDIT: having gone through it, that vault appears to contain machines - "technology". I didn't see anything which looked like a large film storage area, much less one for nitrate films. Ah-ha! The 2020 report at https://www.eastman.org/sites/default/files/GEM_AnnualReport_2020_v2.pdf https://www.eastman.org/sites/default/files/GEM_AnnualReport... mentions they had a "A Tour of the Nitrate Vault". Using '"Rochester film museum" Nitrate Vault' as my search terms I found the article "Rochester's best kept secret: A nitrate film collection" at https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/lifestyle/2016/04/25/rare-nitrate-film-housed-rochester/83149750/ https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/lifestyle/2016/04... with several images in the interesting story, with details like "Only three other facilities in the U.S. can legally store this volatile film stock" and "Every five years staff goes through 20,000 reels to make sure they are not decomposing", and the quote “Because of the great amount of silver content in the emulsion, nitrate films have dark, rich blacks, and more detailed gradation. The sharpness of the edges are so crisp and there’s so much depth, it’s almost like 3-D.” More images via DDG image search: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=%22Rochester+film+museum%22+Nitrate+Vault&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=%22Rochester+film+museum%22...
- nukeman 3y ago
  I wonder what the other three places are that store nitrate film? I would guess the National Archives and some facility in Southern California. Where else though?
  - eesmith 3y ago
    I found five others in the US: UCLA Film and Television Archive in Santa Clarita, with 120 vaults - https://www.dailynews.com/2019/08/12/uclas-film-television-archive-has-a-classical-yet-state-of-the-art-home-at-the-stoa-in-santa-clarita/ https://www.dailynews.com/2019/08/12/uclas-film-television-a... PRO-TEK’s nitrate film services, "PRO-TEK is one of the few places left in the world that manages nitrate film vaults for clients. The nitrate vaults are located several miles away from our Burbank campus." - https://protekvaults.com/blog/nitrate-film-preservation/ https://protekvaults.com/blog/nitrate-film-preservation/ The notes about one of the nitrate shows at https://www.cinematary.com/writing/2019/5/9/2019-nitrate-picture-show https://www.cinematary.com/writing/2019/5/9/2019-nitrate-pic... says: > Putting this festival on requires a great deal of inter-archival cooperation--prints were sourced from across the United States (the Big Five archives for nitrate are the Academy, UCLA, MoMa, the Library of Congress, and the Eastman itself) and from international archives, notably the Swedish Film Institute (supplied Strandhugg), KAVI in Helsinki (supplied Ihmiset suviyössä), and the Austrian Film Museum (supplied The Nevadan) Using those as search terms: The Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center at Wright-Patterson AFB. "Today, under the stewardship of M/B/RS, the nitrate film holdings, dating from the 1890's through 1950, exceed 100 million feet." - https://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/mpcc.html https://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/mpcc.html I verified that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nitrate film, because https://www.oscars.org/film-archive/collections/iron-mountain-collection https://www.oscars.org/film-archive/collections/iron-mountai... lists some of them, but I wasn't able to figure out where they are stored. MoMA has nitrate prints. From https://clui.org/ludb/site/museum-modern-art-film-archive https://clui.org/ludb/site/museum-modern-art-film-archive : > There are only a few film archives in the country that store nitrate film, and they include the major film archives in the nation: the two Packard archives (Culpeper, Virginia, and Santa Clarita, California); the George Eastman House’s Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center in Chili, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art Film Archive, in Hamlin, Pennsylvania. MoMA’s collection is the largest private film collection in the world. Most of it is located in this purpose built 33,000 square foot, two-building, partially underground compound on 37 acres of woodland and meadows in the Pocono Mountains. Also known as the Cesleste Bartos Film Preservation Center.
bombcar 3y ago
Some are preservation vaults but the originals were fire containment boxes (basically) because that film burns insanely well.
- lstodd 3y ago
  Original film was basically nitrocellulose - also known as smokeless powder, guncotton, etc. So a typical reel was actually a bomb without a detonator.
- retrac 3y ago
  In the mid-20th century film switched to modern plastics like cellulose acetate, and later PET (which are still quite flammable). But before that, it was the first kind of plastic invented -- nitrocellulose plasticized with camphor. Nitrocellulose is also known as gun cotton; it's literally explosive. It degrades over time, with the plasticizer separating and the film becoming brittle, eventually turning into a powder that can ignite from friction or even auto-ignite. More than anything else, that's why so many early major films are lost. They turned to dust. And then exploded. > The use of volatile nitrocellulose film for motion pictures led many cinemas to fireproof their projection rooms with wall coverings made of asbestos. Those additions intended to prevent or at least delay the migration of flames beyond the projection areas. A training film for projectionists included footage of a controlled ignition of a reel of nitrate film, which continued to burn even when fully submerged in water. [...] Owing to public safety precautions, London Underground forbade transport of movies on its system until well past the introduction of safety film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose#Nitrate_film_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose#Nitrate_film_fi...
  - naikrovek 3y ago
    gun cotton and nitrocellulose are not "explosive." they both burn very easily and quickly, but they do not explode. explosions are another class of reaction.
    - retrac 3y ago
      You might mean that it does not detonate -- it does not. It is not a high explosive. But gunpowder (of both smoking and non-smoking varieties) is still generally considered an explosive. An explosive is something that can produce an explosion - a blast. And they can certainly do that.

wincy 3y ago

Well the one I know of near me in Kansas has an article about it.[0] This one is in a salt mine as the salt helps keep the moisture out of the air. I could definitely imagine a recurring multi year lease expense like this being a blip on the radar for movie studios, so these things are mostly forgotten. If a movie studio goes out of business though, who know what happens to these films? I’d imagine that’s how movies get “lost”. [0]https://www.agweb.com/news/business/technology/hidden-underground-how-one-kansas-town-key-preserving-movie-industrys https://www.agweb.com/news/business/technology/hidden-underg...

oasisbob 3y ago
> This one is in a salt mine as the salt helps keep the moisture out of the air As an aside, various salts are useful as humidity regulating agents due to their deliquescence characteristics. Different salts and brine solutions can be used to either pull moisture from the air, or to maintain a higher humidity. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/salt-humidity-d_1887.html https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/salt-humidity-d_1887.html
- lemonberry 3y ago
  This is what I love about HN. A post on silent films leads to a really interesting comment like this. I really appreciate how generous everyone here is with their knowledge and that HN exists at all. Many thanks to everyone that keeps the conversation going.

monocasa 3y ago

Really similar to Iron mountain, with more fire suppression. Arguably to protect other buildings from their contents as much as protecting their contents from time. Nitrate film is extremely flammable. A vault fire from 1978 is covered in some detail here: https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2018/12/04/disaster-strikes-the-national-archives-the-1978-nitrate-vault-fire/ https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/2018/12/04/disas...

eesmith 3y ago

The article said it was in the George Eastman Museum. The site has a virtual tour at https://www.eastman.org/virtual-tours https://www.eastman.org/virtual-tours which includes a link to the "Technology Vault", at https://goo.gl/maps/CXX9qDt7JemuASss5 https://goo.gl/maps/CXX9qDt7JemuASss5 . It uses Google Maps Street View to move around inside the vault. EDIT: having gone through it, that vault appears to contain machines - "technology". I didn't see anything which looked like a large film storage area, much less one for nitrate films. Ah-ha! The 2020 report at https://www.eastman.org/sites/default/files/GEM_AnnualReport_2020_v2.pdf https://www.eastman.org/sites/default/files/GEM_AnnualReport... mentions they had a "A Tour of the Nitrate Vault". Using '"Rochester film museum" Nitrate Vault' as my search terms I found the article "Rochester's best kept secret: A nitrate film collection" at https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/lifestyle/2016/04/25/rare-nitrate-film-housed-rochester/83149750/ https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/lifestyle/2016/04... with several images in the interesting story, with details like "Only three other facilities in the U.S. can legally store this volatile film stock" and "Every five years staff goes through 20,000 reels to make sure they are not decomposing", and the quote “Because of the great amount of silver content in the emulsion, nitrate films have dark, rich blacks, and more detailed gradation. The sharpness of the edges are so crisp and there’s so much depth, it’s almost like 3-D.” More images via DDG image search: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=%22Rochester+film+museum%22+Nitrate+Vault&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=%22Rochester+film+museum%22...

nukeman 3y ago
I wonder what the other three places are that store nitrate film? I would guess the National Archives and some facility in Southern California. Where else though?
- eesmith 3y ago
  I found five others in the US: UCLA Film and Television Archive in Santa Clarita, with 120 vaults - https://www.dailynews.com/2019/08/12/uclas-film-television-archive-has-a-classical-yet-state-of-the-art-home-at-the-stoa-in-santa-clarita/ https://www.dailynews.com/2019/08/12/uclas-film-television-a... PRO-TEK’s nitrate film services, "PRO-TEK is one of the few places left in the world that manages nitrate film vaults for clients. The nitrate vaults are located several miles away from our Burbank campus." - https://protekvaults.com/blog/nitrate-film-preservation/ https://protekvaults.com/blog/nitrate-film-preservation/ The notes about one of the nitrate shows at https://www.cinematary.com/writing/2019/5/9/2019-nitrate-picture-show https://www.cinematary.com/writing/2019/5/9/2019-nitrate-pic... says: > Putting this festival on requires a great deal of inter-archival cooperation--prints were sourced from across the United States (the Big Five archives for nitrate are the Academy, UCLA, MoMa, the Library of Congress, and the Eastman itself) and from international archives, notably the Swedish Film Institute (supplied Strandhugg), KAVI in Helsinki (supplied Ihmiset suviyössä), and the Austrian Film Museum (supplied The Nevadan) Using those as search terms: The Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center at Wright-Patterson AFB. "Today, under the stewardship of M/B/RS, the nitrate film holdings, dating from the 1890's through 1950, exceed 100 million feet." - https://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/mpcc.html https://www.loc.gov/rr/mopic/mpcc.html I verified that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nitrate film, because https://www.oscars.org/film-archive/collections/iron-mountain-collection https://www.oscars.org/film-archive/collections/iron-mountai... lists some of them, but I wasn't able to figure out where they are stored. MoMA has nitrate prints. From https://clui.org/ludb/site/museum-modern-art-film-archive https://clui.org/ludb/site/museum-modern-art-film-archive : > There are only a few film archives in the country that store nitrate film, and they include the major film archives in the nation: the two Packard archives (Culpeper, Virginia, and Santa Clarita, California); the George Eastman House’s Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center in Chili, New York; and the Museum of Modern Art Film Archive, in Hamlin, Pennsylvania. MoMA’s collection is the largest private film collection in the world. Most of it is located in this purpose built 33,000 square foot, two-building, partially underground compound on 37 acres of woodland and meadows in the Pocono Mountains. Also known as the Cesleste Bartos Film Preservation Center.

bombcar 3y ago

Some are preservation vaults but the originals were fire containment boxes (basically) because that film burns insanely well.

lstodd 3y ago
Original film was basically nitrocellulose - also known as smokeless powder, guncotton, etc. So a typical reel was actually a bomb without a detonator.
retrac 3y ago
In the mid-20th century film switched to modern plastics like cellulose acetate, and later PET (which are still quite flammable). But before that, it was the first kind of plastic invented -- nitrocellulose plasticized with camphor. Nitrocellulose is also known as gun cotton; it's literally explosive. It degrades over time, with the plasticizer separating and the film becoming brittle, eventually turning into a powder that can ignite from friction or even auto-ignite. More than anything else, that's why so many early major films are lost. They turned to dust. And then exploded. > The use of volatile nitrocellulose film for motion pictures led many cinemas to fireproof their projection rooms with wall coverings made of asbestos. Those additions intended to prevent or at least delay the migration of flames beyond the projection areas. A training film for projectionists included footage of a controlled ignition of a reel of nitrate film, which continued to burn even when fully submerged in water. [...] Owing to public safety precautions, London Underground forbade transport of movies on its system until well past the introduction of safety film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose#Nitrate_film_fires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose#Nitrate_film_fi...
- naikrovek 3y ago
  gun cotton and nitrocellulose are not "explosive." they both burn very easily and quickly, but they do not explode. explosions are another class of reaction.
  - retrac 3y ago
    You might mean that it does not detonate -- it does not. It is not a high explosive. But gunpowder (of both smoking and non-smoking varieties) is still generally considered an explosive. An explosive is something that can produce an explosion - a blast. And they can certainly do that.