Hollywood’s Fort Knox
IronMountain Entertainment Services restores treasured footage from entertainment industry’s past as demand for content soars in pandemic
It’s been several decades since aTVshowwas recorded on a two-inch Quadruplex videotape machine. Kurt Spada, lead encode operator for IronMountain Entertainment Services, remembers working on one early in his career as aTVtechnician.
Fortunately, he still knowshiswayaroundthe piece of equipment, which was first used during the advent of videotape in 1956 and nowlooks like a set piece froma vintage “Star Trek” episode. One afternoon in theMoonachie, NewJersey, facility, he was transferring tapes of programming from the 1960s into a software system that converted them into digital files.
“As long as you’ve got the proper equipment, you could probably play this 100 years fromnow,” Spada said. “But most of that equipment is hard to find, which iswhy people are taking their material and digitizing it forwhoever wants to view it.”
As the pandemic has turned the past into the present for the entertainment industry, expect to see someof that content on a streaming service soon.
The creation ofnew shows andmovies has been slowed by the health crisis while the appetite ofhomebound consumers looking for content is intensifying. The demand is sending media companies into their vaults to supply streaming services and documentary filmmakers, lending sizzle to the unglamorous business of archiving and restoring film, video and music assets.
The steadywork flow has boosted the entertainment services unit of the Boston-based IronMountain, whichwas founded in 1951 with a mandate to protect documents, films and other media from destruction in the event of a nuclear attack. Its main storage facility is an underground limestone mine built inBoyers, Pennsylvania, that goes 22 stories underground.
IronMountain, which had $4.26 billion in revenue last year, does not disclose finances for its entertainment services unit, known asIMES. But the company said it had double-digit revenue growth this year because of increased usage of archivedmaterial.
“Our business has been stronger in this period,” saidLance Podell, senior vice president and general manager for IMES. “If no one’s producing, we still have to find content to entertain you.”
Media companies have mined their storage files for vintage assets to give consumers a robust selection of shows and feature films. IronMountain’s clients include major film andTVstudios, HBO, several sports teams and theGrammyMuseum.
Record labels also have been scouring their files tomake vintage video and audio available for streaming onYouTube, a project IronMountain has underway forUniversalMusic Group.
IronMountain has about 650,000 square feet dedicated toIMES, with locations inBoyers, Hollywood, London, Paris and NewJersey. Each site is equipped with temperature and humidity-controlled storage facilities and studioswhere technicians can remediate, restore and digitize old analog media.
Themove to add those in-house services in recent years has proved invaluable during the pandemicwhen access, travel and production throughout theTVand film industries have been limited.
“Whenno one’s trucks were on the road and no onewas transporting any material, the projectswe had continued— nothing stopped,” Podell said. “The more material they wanted to digitize themore wewere able to deliver because itwas sitting in our warehouses. No one has to travel anywhere and risk their health and safety. We can access it all and upload it to them. It never has to leave the building.”
One of theNewJersey facilities is located in a utilitarian two-story red brick building inMoonachie. Inside are the original tapes frommany of the biggest entities in film, TVand music— most ofwhich cannot be named publicly due to client confidentiality. But the scope and cultural value of the stored holdings are clearwhen scanning the thousands of labeled boxes in the vaults.
Thework ofIMESand other archival serviceswas on full display recently whenHBOandHBOMax premiered WhiteHorse Pictures’ “TheBee Gees: HowDoYouMendA BrokenHeart,” a newdocumentary by director Frank Marshall. It chronicles theAustralian pop group’s enduring career spanning five decades, including its phenomenal reign on the music charts during the disco era thatwas rivaled only by the Beatles’ dominance in the mid-1960s.
Video and audio material fromUniversalMusic Groupwere accessed for the two-hour film. Among the 23 film reels restored for usewere eight-millimeter homemovies of the Brothers Gibb as children growing up inAustralia.
The story is also told through vintage tape of TVinterviews and performances. The group’s longevity means its career was captured on an alphabet soup of obsolete video and audio formats, from two-inch multitrack reels to small cassettes.
“Alot of thestuffhad been sitting in these pallets for decades, and no one had really touched it,” said AlyParker, a producer on the film. “I’veworked with other archive houses, and they’re all great. But Iron Mountain probably has the most capabilities. If you’ve got somethingweird, you take it to them.”
All of the machines need to be operational as an archived original tape might only play in the format itwas recorded on. Keeping the aging equipment running can be a source of anxiety forKelly Pribble, principal studio engineer and preservation specialist forIMES.
Pribble has gone to mechanical engineering school and learned how to build his owndevices and safely clean video and audio tape. He applied his restoration skills to tapes in theBob Dylan archive, which is being prepared for the 2021 opening of the Bob Dylan Center inTulsa, Oklahoma. Thousands of items fromthe singer’s career will be curated and exhibited at the site.
The maintenance of a master tape— the most accurate representation of an original recording— is necessary even after its content has been transferred to a digital source. Archivistswillwant to transfer information from the original tape again whenever newtechnologies with higher resolution come along.
“This is cultural heritage,” said BrianTowle, director and global head of operations for IMES. “There is a point thatwhen you can’t hear it and you can’t play it, it’s gone.”