Main Archive ENPRO

Archive material is the driving force in the production pro­cess, without it a documentary film looses most of its hi­storic significance. Since its foundation in 2001 Domus Patris has therefore  collected great quantity of archive shootings, images, photographs and historic documents.

Contents of the Archive
The main categories of our original materials are:

•  Historic newsreels
•  Actuality shootings (from early ‘90s up to now)
•  Various location shootings
•  Photos, images, paintings
•  Reproduction of documents
   

Up to now in our archive are inserted about 130,000 video clips and approximately 10,000 photographs, images and paintings. The number is growing daily, since the entire archiving process is not yet concluded and new material is always added to the archive (derived from reportages, de­velopment of new projects, grant of private shootings or photographs, etc.).

The video material treats the most important aspects of the 20th century regarding Russia, from the very first beginning of film recordings until the latest newsreels. It also contains a variety of location shootings which where made as sup­port material during the production of our films. Most of the shootings made by our teams are not yet used in the documentaries produced and can therefore be put at dispo­sal of third parties for new projects.

Formats of the archived materials
For security reasons all video material is stored in High Quality DV-Cam cassettes. A copy of all material is available in digital format on our storage system. In order to simplify the production process the digital material is cut down into cut-to-cut clips with a length between 1 second up to 5 minutes and archived in our database. The archive descriptions contain information about the single clips, locations, personalities, era, quality and technical indications, etc.

We have also images, drawings, paintings and photographs in our archive which cover mostly the pre-film periods or contain copies of valuable documents and photographs in digital format. They are stored together in our central database in order to facilitate the search process, and contain the same kind of information in their descriptions.

Search procedure
The search in the archive can be executed in three ways:

1. Every clip or image is classified in several categories which allow an almost instant access to groups of images and can be cross-referenced in order to narrow down the search.
2. Through text-oriented search it is possible to find each clip whose description contains a certain word or a group of words. This search needs more time, but may sometimes lead to a more accurate result.
3. Through an intelligent subdivision of folders and subjects it is also possible to search “by eye” in the database, which sometimes may be necessary when the first two search methods don’t lead to the expected results.

The video material can be screened in low quality directly on the server. Once the decision of the use of a specific video clip is made, it can be dragged from the storage and directly be used for editing, without any loss of time in capturing video or having to select frames from a larger video file.

Technical framework
The technical framework of our archive consists in a 4 TB main server with high processing power, a network based 8 TB storage array and a high speed network which connects our entire production network. Sophisticated remote access control makes it possible to work on the system also from outside, given the proper access parameters.