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
