As an AV archivist and preservationist, I believe the following selection of projects worked on during my time as an MLIS student are most representative of the development of my education and training. Most were worked on outside of the traditional classroom setting with all contributing to the professional skill set I aimed to build through this program. Read and see below short descriptions of each project.
NORTE FAMILY HOME MOVIES
BENTON FAMILY HOME MOVIES
BETTY STEFENEL AMATEUR FILMS
RICH (1983) RESTORATION & PRESERVATION
NORTE FAMILY HOME MOVIES
One of the most influential moments for me over the last few years occurred when, during my first quarter in the program, my father gave me a few of the Super 8mm home movies he had found at my grandmother’s house after she passed away. It fueled my interest in working with small-gauge amateur films and home movies, as well as taught me a lot about my family’s history. As an Cahuilla and Cupeño person, it was particularly important for me to see and consider Indigenous home movies as a site of cultural and familial healing and as a record of the vitality of memory and legacy. A compilation reel of selected films can be viewed here. The whole process has inspired my next film project titled THE THINGS WE DIDN’T KNOW WE FORGOT, which will make use of the films and is in pre-production here. The Norte Family Archive now contains twenty-four films scanned as 2K DPX preservation master files with intermediate access copies as 1920 x 1080 FHD ProRes 422 MOVs. Each film contains technical and descriptive metadata and inspection reports.
BENTON FAMILY HOME MOVIES
In December 2023, a friend of mine from my time at Pepperdine contacted me about working on a box of home movies he had acquired from his grandmother. On the films is beautiful footage of the Southern California deserts and coast from the 1960s. Over the course of two months, I worked on fifteen 8mm films that had both a combination of plasticizer exudation and mold, requiring each film to be carefully cleaned by hand before proceeding. I delivered inspection reports, a metadata spreadsheet, photo documentation, and three tiers of digital files (Preservation Master at 2K 16:9 (2048×1152) Quicktime Apple ProRes 422 HQ, Intermediate at 1920×1080 16:9 Quicktime Apple ProRes 422 HQ, and Access Copy at 1920×1080 16:9 MP4 H.264) with accompanying framemd5 files for digital fixity checks of each film. He was able to give the digital files to extended family and his grandmother for her birthday in February.
BETTY STEFENEL AMATEUR FILMS
For the Fall 2023 quarter, I completed an independent study with Jackie Forsyte and D D’Acquisto for Melissa Dollman and Devin Orgeron of Deserted Films, working to digitize and preserve a selection of 8mm amateur films by Bay Area female filmmaker Betty Stefenel. Over the course of ten weeks, we researched Stefenel and the various clubs she was a part of during the 1940s and 1950s. Our group inspected, cleaned, and scanned the films, developed a zine about home movie care, and wrote a report on the process of what we learned. Melissa and Devin wrote a short piece about the work we did, as well as a bit about Betty Stefenel. The films can be viewed here.
RICH (1983) RESTORATION & PRESERVATION
During my Summer 2023 internship with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, I had the honor to restore the 1983 LA Rebellion short film, RICH, directed by S. Torriano Berry. The process involved all steps from beginning to end, from inspection and preparation to scanning to digital restoration work and post-production assembly. I corrected and tinted the film in conversation and collaboration with the filmmaker to introduce a new life into this important film. The film screened on December 1st, 2023 at the Billy Wilder Theater, along with the two other student films restored by my MLIS peers, and I moderated the Q&A with the filmmakers, which can be viewed here. The trailer for the program can be viewed here. The blog post I wrote about the film and the process working on it can be read here. The film is now available on the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s YouTube page here.
Downloadable PDF of supporting documentation can be accessed using the button below.
Gabz Norte 