Friday 19 October 2012

BUFVC - News on Screen Archive




The British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC) is a representative body, which promotes the production, study and use of moving image, sound and related media in higher education and research.  Their ‘News on Screen’ archive contains some 80,000 newsreel production documents from the likes of Gaumont, Pathe and British Paramount News, which formed the basis of twice-weekly news bulletins shown in cinemas up and down the land and were the primary news source for millions.  Max was asked to convert the archive into a searchable resource. 

The archive presented a particular challenge as it contained many duplicate images as a by-product of its creation over the years. We were able to identify these duplicates, not only "true" duplicates in computing terms, but also "lookalikes" such as photocopies which were almost indistinguishable to the human eye.


Image above by kind permission of British Universities Film and Video Council