Preserving the Films of Margaret Tait
Janet McBain, Archive curator, Scottish Screen Archive

Preserving and re-presenting the Margaret Tait collection has been one of the most challenging projects faced by the Scottish Screen Archive.  The particular and unconventional techniques used by the creator of the films required a parallel creative approach to their archival preservation.

The Tait collection, some 34 titles and 150 cans, arrived in Scottish Screen Archive in the year following Margaret Tait ’s death, brought over the water from her Orkney island home by her partner Alex Pirie in the boot of his small car.

It was a significant date in the life of this relatively small archive – this was to become one of the most important collections acquired in the last 25 years. The Archive Curator had over previous years unsuccessfully, and on a number of occasions, approached Margaret with regard to preserving her collection.  When told of this, Alex Pirie said that he was not surprised that she had never replied to the overtures.  Margaret, he said, worked in the present, creating films that she regarded as artefacts belonging to the time in which they were made. She knew the value of her works and wanted them to be shown as widely as possible but, unlike Scottish Screen Archive, ‘posterity’ was something she gave little thought to.

To plan the preservation programme it was necessary to find out exactly what was in each can and what condition the film stock was in.

The first step was a technical investigation of the contents.  Reel by reel the film conservator undertook a manual bench inspection of the material noting its physical characteristics and condition, and the extent of any damage or effects of age and the environment.  The discoveries were much in line with what might have been anticipated:  tears and creases over the frames, visible blemishes on the image, dried out and weak joins, scratches on the emulsion, ripped or split perforations (the sprocket-holes), shrinkage, fading colour and signs of the chemical breakdown of the film base itself. This is the meat and drink of film preservation and considering the number of film cans and the history of the collection, this cocktail of physical defects was not considered unusual.  There were, however, other characteristics that had never been encountered before by the Archive, which were unique to Margaret’s films.  These characteristics were to make preserving the Tait collection a particular and singular challenge.

The material was affected to a high degree by a fungus growing on, and eating into, the emulsion on the celluloid.  The conditions of storage in the Orquil studio on Orkney had not been kind to the films - there was a real problem of dampness.  This was compounded by the fact that Margaret preferred all original material, as well as prints, to be returned to her studio instead of being left for storage in laboratory vaults, as is the convention.  (In the 1960’s a laboratory mislaid the negative of Rose Street (1956).  It has never been found.)

The result of Margaret Tait's understandable desire to look after all her original material was that all elements of the film, projection prints but also camera reversals and negatives, had been stored in damp conditions over decades.  It was precisely this that had brought the attack by fungus. Scratching and emulsion damage also suggested that her original negatives had been reworked and run through her viewing equipment.  One reel had jumped in the gate of the viewer causing the sprockets to punch holes down the side of the film, an effect visible within the frame for over several minutes of film.

The key factor that made this project special, however, was Margaret’s unconventional approach to the physicality of working with celluloid film stock.  She employed an array of experimental and non-conventional film making techniques, such as painting, inking and scratching on the films’ surface, in addition to splicing negative and positive film stocks together and adding hand applied painted motifs to printed projection copies.  Because of what her partner has described as her 'painterly' approach to filmmaking, it has been difficult for a film preservationist approaching this material for the first time to be sure of how much, of what might be perceived as, wear and tear or deterioration, was in fact an intended effect or visual artefact.   It was difficult for the preservation team to be confident of understanding what 'the original' was and subsequently what version it was that should be replicated or restored.   How much of the muted colour, alternating contrast and exposure was due to ageing and fading, and how much an effect that was deliberate?  On viewing Margaret’s films, one can see that an enthusiastic attitude of 'trial and error' combined with her experimental use of effects and technical 'oddities' brought results that other film makers might be inclined to return to the laboratory in complaint of poor developing or printing.  These include variable exposure, flash frames and strips of black spacer between shots. The incorporation of a scratched countdown leader in the middle of On the Mountain was deliberate, but everything in the film preservationist’s psyche cried out to eliminate the scratches and remove the white frames and leader!

The preservation of Margaret Tait's collection brought with it then a challenging set of ethical issues.   The way forward was not clear and neither always were her intentions

There were, however, clues to assist with this and help us articulate our preservation ethic; Margaret had kept copies of some of the correspondence with the technicians in the film laboratories. These shed some light on specific effects and the construction of some of the films.   Then the Preservation Officer made contact with some of the commercial film laboratory staff who had worked on Margaret's films with her.  They remembered her very well.  Martin Sawyer in particular had vivid recollections of a filmmaker who was very particular about how her film looked and had very firm ideas of what she was creating as a visual expression. He can remember how she would become frustrated when told that duplicating processes could not readily deliver the effects that she visualised and that printing equipment could not always cope with the physical methods she used in making her films.  The lab technicians wanted to help with this and would try come-up with ways around the problems. Initially unhappy about the extra cost this incurred, she was usually happy with the results.  Unintentional errors, she began to envisage, could become positive contributions - an out of focus scene that was difficult to print up, when left as it was, was something that she found she quite liked. Martin Sawyer, a sound specialist, was particularly tested by the unintentional sound effects created by Margaret’s occasional forgetfulness in recharging the batteries on her tape recorder. A film would start with the sound track recorded at the standard 24 frames per second but by the end could be out of synch and running at 21 frames per second!

There was also other evidence contained in the surviving projection copies that Margaret loaned or used herself for screenings. Existing projection copies (prints) can be used as a guide to help the conservator achieve a new print from an original negative that replicates, as closely as possible, the look of the original film. Grading information i.e. how light or dark each scene was printed, how the film was edited and lengths of sequences can all be deduced from the existing prints in a collection.

About half of the thirty or so titles in the collection, existed as additional duplicate16mm prints.  This presented a challenge as it was soon discovered that duplicate prints of the same title could look different, even if these differences were sometimes subtle and difficult to spot.  It was as if that, for Margaret, film was a continually evolving process that carried on even after the projection print was made.  Prints returned from the lab could be amended, shortened, inked, scratched, painted or written over. The film was not – maybe ever -  ‘finished’.  For technical and conservation staff this created difficulty in determining which version of the film or print should be used as a guide for preservation.  For example, the black and white sunset at the end of Margaret Tait's film Aerial had in one print been coloured with paints applied direct onto the 16mm stock, while a later third print appeared to be a duplicate cast from this earlier painted version.  In this later printed copy, the colours were subtley different.

Where there were several but different prints of the same title, and if could be determind, it was decided that the last laboratory printed version that was accepted by Margaret would be used as the preservation guide. The subtle visual differences between the various prints have, however, all been recorded in detail by the Scottish Screen Archive to ensure that the alternative versions can be viewed and restored if required.

The hand painted works were in some ways the most ethically challenging.  In these instances, Margaret had painstakingly applied paint by brush directly onto the celluloid of clear 35mm stock, frame by frame.

There are four hand-painted titles in the collection and whilst non of the originals were chemically under threat, it was decided to undergo the preservation duplication of one so as to produce a 35mm print for screening at the Tait retrospective in 2004. Calypso is customarily dated 1955, although evidence would suggest that this, Margaret’s first experiment with painting onto film stock, was first created in Italy three years earlier.   Peter Hollander, a fellow student at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, recalled that Margaret was given a surplus piece of 35mm optical soundtrack with calypso music on it by a technical officer at the office of the British Information Service in Rome.

Calypso is a series of painted motifs and figures on clear 35mm film stock with an optical sound track. Each frame/image was painted onto the film by hand using a brush and colour dyes. Margaret had used aniline dyes that are water-soluble.  This presented a major problem, in that most film preservation and restoration techniques use a wet process such as chemical cleaning, re-washing or wet gate printing. As the dyes on Calypso will dissolve in water these techniques could not be applied.

It is important that the restoration of a film tries to duplicate the original as accurately as possible.  Recreating the colours of the original painted film, today, would be very difficult to achieve. The dyes applied to the original stock of Calypso and the photographic dyes used to create the colour image on colour film stock today, are different.  So how to copy and match the colours accurately?   First, to prevent damage to the original, it was decided that a test roll should be created.  By happy co-incidence the film conservator who was working on the collection at the time was an experienced art restorer. Using her knowledge of paints and dyes, she was able to establish the type of medical aniline dyes that had been used in the original in the 50’s. These are very difficult to obtain today, so it was necessary to source similar dyes which were readily available. Although not an exact match, they would be adequate to enable the creation of a short test roll.  The test roll consisted of 57 frames painted with motifs and colours similar to those that appear on the original. This test roll was then sent to the film laboratory and a new internegative and print was made. The results were promising but not conclusive enough to suggest that this would be the preferred route.

The Scottish Screen Archive then approached the British Film Institute's National Film and Television Archive with a proposal for a collaborative restoration. The NFTVA’s then Conservation Officer, Joao Socrates de Oliveira, had had previous experience of preserving painted celluloid, having restored Len Lye’s Colour Box (1935) and became an enthusiastic partner in the project. It was decided to try three different preservation paths on Calypso.  The three methods selected were:

• Scanning the original images and then using new computer software to digitally restore them, principally by removing scratches and blemishes and the visual intrusion of the fungus growth.  The images were then re-recorded back onto 35mm film.

• Using the original 35mm stock, to make a new duplicate colour internegative and a colour corrected 35mm print.

• Making black and white separation positives from the original film using red, green and blue filters and then using these black and white separations, combined with the RGB filters, to make a new colour print. (This method is the preferred traditional path for colour preservation).

The results obtained were largely as was expected - no one single path can match the vibrancy and saturation of the original colours exactly.  The conventional photochemical colour internegative produced the closest match to the colours in the original but, as a dry process, was unable to eliminate the blemishes and scratches and evidence of the mould growth.  It was, however, sharper and punchier than the copy produced through the digital path which otherwise produced the cleanest image.  The outcome of the black and white separation, although the most sophisticated of the processes, was quite disappointing in relation to the other two.

The renewed interest in Margaret Tait’s films prompted by the enthusiasms of her friend and fellow film poet, Peter Todd, in addition to the retrospective at the 2004 Edinburgh International Film Festival and LUX’s 16mm touring programme, has made all the preservation effort well worthwhile.  Alex Pirie, a witness of the whole process, observed that whilst Margaret may not have really concerned herself with the preservation of her film work, she would have been intrigued and interested in the techniques and experimentation that contributed to reproducing her work for future generations.  That surely is reward in itself.