Deserted Films

Publications & Resources

What’s an Archive?

Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)

Audiovisual Philosophies and Principles (Ray Edmondson)

International Federation of Film Archives

Society of American Archivists

Best Practices for Identifying and Preserving Your Films/Videos

“How to Preserve Your Films” (Downloadable) (UCLA Film & Television Archive/Sundance/Outfest Legacy Project)

The Film Preservation Guide (Downloadable) (National Film Preservation Foundation)

“Audiovisual Formats: Audiovisual Formats: A guide to identification” (Downloadable) (California Revealed)

“Preserving Your Digital Memories” (Downloadable) (Library of Congress)

Community Archiving Workshop | Resources and La Lotería Audiovisual (Community Archiving Workshop)

Caring for Private and Family Collections (Northeast Document Conservation Center)

Videotape — A Basic Guide (Advanced — Association of Moving Image Archivists)

Little Film (Bob Brodsky and Toni Treadway)

Folkstreams | Video Aids to Film Preservation (Folkstreams)

Filmcare.org (Image Permanence Institute)

Kodak Edge Codes (Robin Williams of the East Anglian Film Archive) For dating your Kodak home movies — you’ll need a lightbox/light source and a loupe or other kind of magnifying glass!

National Film and Sound Archive of Australia | Technical Preservation Handbook

Kodak Movie News, Vol. 3, No. 1, January-February 1955, 4-5.

Film Atlas An interactive guide to every motion picture film format, soundtrack, 3-D and color process ever invented. (International Federation of Film Archives/George Eastman Museum)

Museum of Obsolete Media

Melissa’s “Personal Archiving Best Practices Workshop.” The Learning Center, Palm Springs Public Library, March 9, 2022. (Downloadable.)

Resources on Home Movies and Amateur Filmmaking

The Center for Home Movies (See also Home Movie Day.)

Story-telling Home Movies (Leo Salkin, 1958.)

Background Music And Sound Effects For Your Home Movies (Thomas J. Valentino, Inc., 1960s.)

Background Music For Home Movies Vol. 1 (Folkways Records, 1964)

On the Amateur Cinema League

Preservation Grants

Al Larvick Conservation Fund Preservation Grants

National Film Preservation Foundation Preservation Grants

California Revealed

Digitization Services (A short list)

Pro8mm – Burbank (We know others who have used their services and trust them.)

AV Geeks – Raleigh (We have used their services and can recommend.)

Ping Pong Media – Tucson (We have used their services and can recommend.)

Cruz Moore (Was local, now Kansas City, KS, we’ve used his VHS digitization services. He also does VHS, VHS-C, HI8 & Digital 8 Tapes, Mini DV Tapes, DVCam, BetaCam, DVDs, and MC-60 Audio Tapes.)

BAVC Media – Oakland (We know them, have used them, and trust them.)

Media Burn Archive – Chicago (We know and trust them. Video-centric.)

The MediaPreserve – Pennsylvania (Their work is amazing.)

George Blood – Pennsylvania (We know them and trust them.)

Screen Savers – Kentucky (We know them and trust them.)

EverPresent – Several East Coast locations (We don’t know them, but they’ve been around for decades. Video-centric.)

Digmypics – Gilbert, AZ (We don’t know them, but may be worth a try. They scan home movies at a decent quality.)

Legacy Box – Chattanooga, TN (We’ve not used them. We have seen decent scans of VHS tapes, but they scan small-gauge film at only 640×480 resolution – standard definition, not HD — which is really only good for sharing with family.)

Educational Films/Videos on Home Movies

For best viewing experience, choose the 720p or higher setting on the player. For films in our collection captions in [brackets], whenever possible, include labels from the original item in “quotation marks.”
“Traveling Through Time with Obsolete Media,” for Modernism Week 2021. By Melissa Dollman and Devin Orgeron.
No More Road Trips? (Rick Prelinger, 2013)
#160. [“Brownie Movie Demonstration Reel”, ca. 1955.] 8mm. Color. Silent. Little film promoting the Brownie 8mm home movie camera, how easy it is to use, etc.
“The Craft of Robbins Barstow,” by David Barstow and Kimberly Tarr. Courtesy of The Center for Home Movies and Northeast Historic Film.
DR#2 [Root Family Watches Their 1940s-1960s 8mm Home Movies and Narrates, ca.1980-1981.] 8mm transferred to VHS. Color. Sound. This video (and others) came from an estate sale after our neighbor David Root (1940-2022) died here in Palm Springs in early 2022. Mr. Root during the 1980s-1990s seems to have been a prolific videographer and before that small-gauge home movie maker (and A/V Geek!) When we purchased these tapes for about $20), we had the great privilege to watch all of Root’s home movies (in one weekend!), and gave this stranger a little spiritual send-off of sorts since we could not find notices of either a funeral or even an obituary. We have discovered some biographical information about Root. He was raised in Lawrence, Kansas, with his parents siblings, and earned his BA in Art Education at Wichita State and his MA in Art from Kansas State.

We include this video in the “Publications and Resources” section because it serves as such a great example of how to capture memories and shared stories from family members (and/or friends) while watching home movies together. Here David Root projects the family’s 1950s 8mm films onto the wall and uses his portable Quasar VH5200RQ video cassette recorder (see DR#3 on our “A Longer Drive” page for how we know that) to record his mother and grandmother narrating and reacting. Footage includes tornado devastation of Higgins and Glazier, Texas, in 1947; a backyard puppet show called “Nip and Tuck” (David Root’s parents, Noah and Elizabeth, were professional, traveling puppeteers under the name “The Steffenettes” in the 1950s — see flyer below), home movies with handmade titles, more puppets, travel, etc. Search for more of his videos by name throughout the website. [Note: We know the approximate year this was recorded because in DR#3 under “A Longer Drive,” Root recorded a video a letter to his parents in which he addresses their letter about they might view their old 8mm home movies. He suggests that next time he comes back to see them they project the films onto the wall and he’ll video record them talking about them. And they did it!]

UPDATE March 2023: Deserted Films donated the David Root videotape collection to the GBLT Historical Society in San Francisco. Here is a link to the finding aid.
Courtesy of eBay.
DR#5. [Root Narrates Over “Misc. Home Movies”, 1966 through the ’70s.] 8mm transferred to VHS. Color. Sound. Like DR#2, in this video David Root projects his own 8mm and or Super 8mm onto the wall as he videorecords both the films and his narration as he watches. Footage includes his cats and friends; swimming; a Hare Krishna parade as it enters Golden Gate Park; Sausalito; a Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Novato, CA; skiing in 1971 or ’72 at the Boy Scouts Camp Bray on Mount Diablo near Strawberry Canyon, with a group of students; his old apartment and car; friends on Castro Street and near the Ferry Building (when the freeway still went past it), and the fountain by the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco; the Buchanan Field Airport in Concord when his friend Paul pilots his first flight; a 1966 road trip with friend Gary to the Gulf of Mexico; friends dressing up for the Renaissance Faire in his backyard; from inside a small plane as his friend flies it and they land in Mexico at Aeropuerto Internacional General Jose María Yañez in Sonora where they go on some adventures and fly home looks like the same day or the next; and back at his home in Concord. Search for more of his videos by name throughout the website.

UPDATE March 2023: Deserted Films donated the David Root videotape collection to the GBLT Historical Society in San Francisco. Here is a link to the finding aid.

FB#36. [Technicolor : Instant Movies, 1960s.] 8mm. Color. Silent. Enjoy! Part of the Frank Parkhurst Brackett, Jr., family film collection. Search for more Frank Parkhurst Brackett, Jr. Family films throughout the website (FB#4 incl. a family bio). Parkhurst worked for Technicolor.
FB#37. [Magi-Cartridge promo film, 1960s.] 8mm. Beauutiful color. Silent. Awesome animation. Part of the Frank Parkhurst Brackett, Jr., family film collection.
#927. [Filmmaking Techniques – Overview Of Eight Millimeter Production (Aims Media, Inc., 1973).] 16mm. Color. Optical sound. A bit about its production.
#805. [Camera Magic, (Castle Films), 1946.] 8mm. B/W. Silent.
Object#12. [Kodak Movie News, Vol. 3, No. 1, January-February 1955.] Note the “How Long Will My Movie Film Last?” article on page 5. There are many more to read on the Internet Archive.
Object#15. [Home Movies Can Be Fun for Everyone Booklet for Quik Splice Direct-Vue 8mm Movie Editor, 1960.]

Publications on Home Movies and Nontheatrical Films by Melissa Dollman and Devin Orgeron

Melissa Dollman – Publications

  • “’Carol Lane and the Cinematic Life of Shell Oil’s First Living Trademark.” Energy Imaginaries, eds. Marina L. Dahlquist and Patrick Vondereau (University of California Press, forthcoming.)
  • “Mobilizing Women In a Few Easy Steps! (A Feminist Triptych).” Video essay, Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies. [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 10.3, 2023. This special issue was also discussed on The Video Essay Podcast, Episode 41 (November 23, 2023).
  • “Tribesourcing Southwest Films: Counter-Narrations and Reclamation,” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies on Indigenous Knowledges, co-authored with Dr. Jennifer Jenkins and Rhiannon Sorrell (June 2021).
  • “Gone Estray.” Video essay about home movies, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies, 5.4, 2019.
  • “Opening The Can: Home Movies In The Public Sphere.” Eds. Martha McNamara and Karan Sheldon. Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England, 1915-1960 (Indiana University Press, 2017). Winner of Society For Cinema and Media Studies’ 2018 book award for best edited collection.

Devin Orgeron – Publications

  • “Learning to Drive: Midcentury Guidance Films and The Middle of the Road Politics of the American Road Movie.” The Global Road Movie. Jose Duarte and Timothy Corrigan, eds. Intellect, 2017: 1-18. (page proofs).
  • “Edgar Ulmer, The NTA, and the Power of Sermonic Medicine.” Medical Movies on the Web (sponsored and hosted by The National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health). 2017. (equivalent to 25 pages and peer-reviewed).
  • “The Bear Facts: Commercial Archeology and the Sugar Bear Campaign.” With Skip Elsheimer. Films that Sell: Moving Pictures and Advertising. Nico De Klerk and Patrick Vondreau, eds., BFI Cultural Histories of Cinema Series (eds. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson), 2016: 194-208. (50%)
  • “Spreading the Word: Race, Religion, and the Rhetoric of Contagion in Edgar G. Ulmer’s T.B. Films.” Learning with the Lights Off: An Educational Film Reader. Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron and Dan Streible, eds. Oxford University Press, 2012: 295-315.
  • “A History of Learning with the Lights Off.” With Dan Streible and Marsha Orgeron. Learning With the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States. Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron and Dan Streible, eds. Oxford University Press, 2012: 15-66. (Work divided in thirds). Winner of Society For Cinema and Media Studies’s 2013 book award for best edited collection.
  • “Nothing Could be Finer…?: George Stoney’s Tar Heel Family and the Tar Heel State on film. For a special “Orphan Film Symposium” issue of The Moving Image 9.1 (2009): 161-182.
  • “Visual Media and the Tyranny of the Real.” Ed. Robert Kolker. The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies. Oxford University Press, 2008: 83-113.
  • “Familial Pursuits, Editorial Acts: Documentaries after the Age of Home Video.” With Marsha Orgeron for special documentary issue of The Velvet Light Trap. Issue 60 (Fall 2007): 47-62. (50%)
  • “Mobile Home Movies: Travel and la Politque des Amateurs.” The Moving Image. Vol. 6, No. 2 (Fall 2006): 74-100.

Courses and Workshops

  • “Personal Archiving Best Practices Workshop.” Presented by Melissa Dollman. The Learning Center, Palm Springs Public Library, March 9, 2022.
  • “Home Movies and American History.” Co-taught by Melissa Dollman and Devin Orgeron. University of California – Riverside/Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (remote). Winter 2022.
  • “Protocols Webinar Series (3): Providing Context through Centering Indigenous Voices.” Webinar produced in collaboration with the Society of American Archivists Native American Archives Section and The Association of Moving Image Archivists and hosted by Jennifer O’Neal, with Melissa Dollman, Jennifer Jenkins, Rhiannon Sorrell, and Crystal Littleben, June 2020.
  • “The Status of Nonfiction: Documentary (Studies) and Nonfiction Non-Theatrical (Studies).” Workshop. With Joshua Malitsky, Jenny Horne, Melissa Dollman, Devin Orgeron and Alice Lovejoy. Visible Evidence XX, Stockholm, Sweden, August 15-18, 2013.
  • “Working with Nontheatrical Archives (workshop).” With Devin Orgeron. Society of Cinema and Media Studies annual conference, March 17-21, 2010, Los Angeles, CA.