[14175] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: Focus -- Inst.Nat.de l'Audiovisuel
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Fri Nov 16 08:52:41 2001
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 09:20:51 -0800
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
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FYI France: Focus -- INA / Institut National de l'Audiovisuel
"Focus" is what all of us need, now, after 2 months of 2 much
news -- so nothing appears, in what follows, about bombs or
terror or anthrax or geopolitics or geopoliticians or things
"changed utterly" or things "utterly unchanged" -- only the
French, and some fascinating projects which they are undertaking
in multimedia and the preservation of same, proving that there
_is_ still a world out there... virtually, at least...
The INA / Institut National de l'Audiovisuel -- "50 years of
television, 60 years of radio: an audiovisual patrimony..."
http://www.ina.fr
Now that "content is king", does Walt Disney Inc. own the
_entire_ Internet, yet (perhaps shared, but only partially, with
"AOLTimeWarner")?... It might be both interesting and useful to
look at some alternative ways to approach TV, and radio, and
various other forms of the "multimedia" content which the giant
global Matrix is being designed to purvey...
And the French approach to this is different, as is their
approach to most things: not so different as to be irrelevant to
the US and general Anglophone world experience, but different
enough to be very interesting --
At the INA, one finds:
"* 50 Years of Television, 60 Years of Radio : an Audiovisual
Patrimony
"More than 1.5 million hours of radio and television, 2.5 million
documents stored in over 80 kilometers of shelving... the
archival collection of the INA constitutes an inexhaustible
source of images and sound for audiovisual and multimedia
professionals, as well as for researchers, teachers and students.
All genres of television and radio are represented, and over one
million photographic documents.
"The collections are growing constantly, and are maintained
primarily as:
** professional archives, for public radio and television
networks,
** copyright deposit, for all television broadcasters in
the country and the five national networks of Radio France.
"* The Preservation, Digitization and Restoration of this
Patrimony
"To ensure the physical conservation of this patrimony, the INA
has launched a vast plan of preservation and digitization, which
involves 200,000 hours of television and 300,000 hours of radio.
In the collections 60% of the archival media for television and
90% of that for radio are unique and are deteriorating inexorably
with the passage of time.
"The increasing demand for good - quality images makes
restoration activity increasingly dependent upon the
commercialization of documents. In film and video as in sound, in
mechanical restoration as in digital, the INA has proven
abilities reinforced by its recent associated research, notably
that of the Aurora System for real time restoration.
"* Research -- a Laboratory of Audiovisual Digitization
"With applications such as Aurora (automatic video restoration)
or Diceman (a contribution to the MPEG-7 standard for the
description of audiovisual content), the research direction is
oriented resolutely toward work on the impact of digitization on
the treatment of audiovisual content (restoration, cryptography)
and its description (indexing, metadata management). Research
projects currently in progress, developed with national or
European partners, concern automatic text extraction, document
production, and the online presentation of audiovisual content.
This work is complemented by technical and socioeconomic studies
of the audiovisual world in its digital context.
"* Programs -- Experimentation with New Media
"The Direction des Programmes always is in search of new talent.
It encourages the production of programs for French television,
cable and satellite networks, in a constant effort to renew the
forms, texts, and techniques used. Through its Studio
Hyperme'dia, it focuses on experimentation with convergence tools
and it explores new approaches for the interactive building and
broadcasting of television programs and audiovisual archives.
"* Education -- Demystifying the Professions of the Future
"As the leading center of professional education for the
audiovisual and multimedia professions, INA Education is an
essential actor in the digital revolution, producing nearly
40,000 teaching days per year. From journalism to audiovisual
documentation, from multimedia to synthetic imaging, the ten
areas of concentration include over 150 cataloged programs. INA
Formation also provides 200 continuing education programs, for
professionals actively engaged in audiovisual and multimedia
work, in France and abroad."
The INA / Institut National de l'Audiovisuel, founded in 1974, is
located just east of Paris:
4 avenue de l'Europe
94366 Bry - sur - Marne Cedex
telephone: 01 49 83 20 00
A little history: "10 major dates for INA" --
* 1974 : Audiovisual reform law - INA founded.
* 1981 : First Imagina event.
* 1985 : Setting-up of commercial TV channels.
* 1986 : A new law defines INA missions. The immediate result was
that INA found itself in a competitive world with the necessity
of asserting commercial stakes. INA, still part of Public Service
television, had to adapt itself to the opening up of this
audiovisual market. INA - Entreprise was founded, the INA
commercial subsidiary.
* 1987: TF1 privatized. There followed the founding of Channel 5
(La 5) and the French - German 7/Arte channel with no legal
obligations towards INA.
* 1989 : Inauguration of the Bry - sur - Marne Centre
* 1992 : The law on legal deposit (de'po^t le'gal) of broadcast
programmes
* 1994 : Foundation of the French Inathe`que. Just as the
Bibliothe`que Nationale is for written works, INA is responsable
for the preservation of all the french audiovisual productions,
both private and public, broadcast on the channels, with an
obligation for broadcasters to deposit copies of broadcast
programmes and documents at INA.
* 1995 : Launching of INA 2000 Project
* 1997 : Implementation of INA 2000
And people here might be particularly interested in looking
through the following among the offerings at the INA:
L'Inathe`que de France
http://www.ina.fr/Inatheque/index.fr.html
http://www.ina.fr/Inatheque/index.en.html
"The French Inatheque, opened on January 1st 1995, is one of
INA's three departments. This section is responsable for the
running of legal deposit of radio and television, defined by law
on June 20 1992, it regroups all broadcasts of french radio and
television programmes"
The INA collections are available for consultation at the
Bibliothe`que Franc,ois Mitterrand, at Tolbiac in central Paris:
Inathe`que de France
service de la consultation
Quai Franc,ois-Mauriac
75 706 Paris Cedex 13
phone: 53 79 48 30
fax: 53 79 48 40
email: consultation-inatheque@ina.fr
A Note: a little politics, perhaps, but nothing "geo" --
I wonder what difference "government / public" participation
might make, in the study and preservation of multimedia...
In Britain, and in France, and in Canada and in so many other
countries besides the US, "government / public" has played such a
significantly - different role in developing / promoting /
dictating / censoring / archiving / preserving the various
"formats" in which our media have presented information to us.
Only last weekend, Jack Valenti and various Hollywood studio
luminaries were seen consorting with White House Chief of Staff /
major domo Andrew Card, discussing "how Hollywood can help the
War on Terrorism" -- nightmarish shades of the 1950s, when
Hollywood was torn apart by government pressures in the Red
Scares -- although last weekend "content was not on the table",
Valenti was assuring everybody...
So, they do these things differently in France. What exactly that
difference might be, in the precise areas of multimedia
development and promotion etc. -- and particularly in
preservation -- might be very interesting to study comparatively,
now, in our current age which is so much more dominated by media
than the 1950s ever were. The INA might be very interesting, to
folks outside France, purely from this point of view. I wonder
what is being saved, and why, and for what purposes going
forward, in different cases on both sides of the Atlantic -- and
in Asia and elsewhere, for that matter?
A few days ago, my wife and I viewed a copy of the original 1967
movie MASH, rented from our local video shop -- to find that its
humor and anti - war scatology / escatalogy seemed to have been a
little censored, we thought, and diluted by a fade - in at the
end to clips of the insipid TV series of the same name...
The commercial folks definitely did a censorship number, on home
distribution and airline tapes, of the politically incorrect but
effective and very funny Nicholson / Hunt movie, "As Good As It
Gets" -- certain offending lines simply erased out...
The agility of the newest digital techniques are a mixed
blessing, clearly.
So, who is preserving and making available "the originals" for
us? Would "government" do a better job of this -- in the US? in
France?
--oOo--
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