What We Do

 

  • Inventory your film and sound elements; 
  • Enter the data in the IndieCollect Index, our sophisticated, searchable database; 
  • Determine which films are at risk; 
  • Decide with you which ones should be digitized or restored; 
  • Restore the films that need to be available in the 4K format, and create a variety of digital deliverables for you and digital preservation masters for the Library of Congress; 
  • Identify a non-profit archive that will agree to safely store your films at no cost to you; 
  • Advise you on digital storage needs and challenges; 
  • Develop a long-term legacy plan, including assignment of rights to your heirs and/or an institution of your choice.

Every Filmmaker’s Nightmare

 

Are you saving your film on a hard drive? Or in an outmoded file format? Are your celluloid and tape elements in your attic, getting the shivers in winter and the sweats in summer?

Is your lab or storage facility going out of business (or did it already)? Are you worried about paying your cloud services subscription or physical storage bill?

Valuable indie films are lost every day due to these and other pitfalls. This is a calamity in the making. But if we organize to meet the challenges together, we can save your films and those of others.

Help Us Help You!

Is inventorying your work and figuring how to protect at the bottom of your TO DO list?

Ask us to help you. This is tough stuff to do alone. We can make it fun and exciting.

INVENTORY

IndieCollect archivists inspect and inventory film & sound elements filmmakers bring to the office. They also make site visits in NY and Los Angeles to your home or film storage facility. All data is entered into the Indiecollect Index. This is a service we’ve provided for close to 100 filmmakers including Bill & Louise Greaves, Warrington Hudlin, Lesli Klainberg, John McConnell, Alexandre Rockwell, and Melvin Van Peebles.

ARCHIVE

IndieCollect works with all the major film archives and dozens of others to find a permanent, safe, non-profit home for your film materials so they can be stored into the future at no cost to you, the filmmaker.

RESTORATION

IndieCollect specializes in creating high-quality 4K digital film restorations. All the scanning is done in-house on our Kinetta Archival Scanner, designed by Jeff Kreines to be gentle on vintage film. Our colorists work closely with the filmmaker and/or the film’s rights holder(s) to achieve a new digital version that is visually exciting.

EXHIBITION

IndieCollect is committed to bringing new restorations to new audiences. We do our best to secure high-profile showcases for each new film at festivals, museums and cinemas. When distributors step forward to express interest in releasing a film, we help the filmmaker and/or the heirs to make those deals. We document and publicize the films’ “rebirth” through our newsletters and our press relations.

LEGACY PLANNING

IndieCollect assists filmmakers and their heirs with development of comprehensive film legacy plans, including assessment of the entire body of work (which can include paper documents and photos), selection of an archive or other institution to serve as the long-term custodian of the physical materials and the rights (if the heirs are not equipped to handle rights), restoration of certain titles (as needed), and retrospectives. The goal is to ensure that a filmmaker’s work will not be lost to future generations of viewers, journalists and scholars.

EDUCATION

IndieCollect educates filmmakers on how to “future-proof” their films. We also provide speakers or organize seminars on the topic for film schools, guilds, and organizations that advocate and support filmmakers such as Film Independent, Gotham Film & Media Institute, Women in Film, etc..

TRAINING

IndieCollect trains and hires archivists who come to us through NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program (MIAP) and from UCLA’s program. We train and hire scanner technicians and colorists, several of whom we’ve recruited from the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College. In 2020, we conducted a 2-day color-grading training session for the media preservation team at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture.

Young people interested in training are encouraged to contact us.