What Filmmakers Should Know About Privacy and Copyright From BAVC Media’s Upcoming Landmark Study on Magnetic Media

At the 40th IDA Documentary Awards, as he accepted the ABC News VideoSource Award for best use of news footage for Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, Johan Grimonprez admitted, “We bought 30 minutes of footage [for a 150-minute film], but it was half of the budget.” Grimonprez went on to say that the discrepancy between the politics of film financing and access to collective memory was significant. Grimonprez referred to a few different types of archives used in his Oscar-nominated film, from news sources to official state archives, but there are many others that hold archival media essential for nonfiction media making. While these audiovisual archives and their stewards can vary significantly, they all share the challenge of preserving historical analog media formats before they’re completely lost. They also face unique circumstances based on their organizational structure, staff size, resources, access to digitization vendors, and geographic location. 

Access to archival media is often the result of the invisible work of teams of archivists and technicians who preserve content on fragile media and provide it to the public. Accessing archival media can be a financial challenge for documentary filmmakers because preservation of media is as time consuming and expensive (sometimes more) as shooting new footage. 

The Society of American Archivists defines magnetic media as materials in various formats that use a magnetic signal to store information, most commonly including VHS, audiocassette, and U-matic tapes. Magnetic media are some of the least stable AV material found in archival settings; they decay physically over time, and the machines required to play them back and preserve them are mostly no longer manufactured, leaving archivists to scour the internet for used equipment and rely heavily on the few remaining technicians who can perform major repairs. In addition, copyright laws for noncommercial materials are complex to navigate for most archives, which do not have dedicated licensing and copyright specialists on staff. Many collections have additional ethical concerns for the privacy of individuals who appear in home movies and vernacular films. Logistically, making this material available is time consuming, expensive, and requires skilled team members to coordinate.

Our upcoming research study, Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape, a project of BAVC Media, examines U.S. collection holders’ needs and how we might support them. At BAVC Media, we have firsthand experience with these archival challenges, and we know that other collection holders face the same issues. Because of our decades of work with and for filmmakers, we can put it bluntly: All of these costs are ultimately passed on to the filmmaker.

Background Details: Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape

BAVC Media (Bay Area Video Coalition) is trusted as an educator, collaborator, incubator, community builder, and resource for the media arts world in the making of documentary films. Since 1994, when our media preservation department was founded, we’ve also worked on the question of archiving films and other audiovisual media after they’re made. Tim Lake, the director of preservation at BAVC Media, reflects on our record of serving filmmakers across past and present media formats: 

The near 20-year gap between BAVC Media’s founding and the establishment of the preservation department is telling, as it mirrors the lifecycle of popular filmmaking mediums. The documentarians and filmmakers whose collective efforts created BAVC Media in 1976 had an opportunity to address the growing concern of audiovisual permanence and accessibility, as it was happening in real time, with obsolete magnetic formats like ½” open reel. Acknowledging both creation and preservation, along with a knack for technical maintenance, BAVC Media positioned itself as a trailblazer in the documentary world during the earliest days of video. As storage formats appear and obsolesce (U-matic, Betacam, DV, etc.), BAVC Media has continued to adapt its preservation services.

Today we work to preserve and digitize cultural artifacts and other precious works of media art on analog formats. That intersection has motivated us to seek a newfound understanding of the current state of magnetic media preservation. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, in November 2023 we set to work on studying the greatest challenges and changes in magnetic media preservation by engaging our peers and partners in this field. We surveyed 130 organizations, interviewed staff at 23, and visited three archives. By engaging directly with organizations of varying sizes working on magnetic media preservation in diverse geographic locations across the U.S., the project seeks to identify challenges, share creative solutions, and foster collaboration within the field. Our study includes representatives from 42 U.S. states and territories whose archives hold a median number of 3,500 magnetic media collection items,  almost all (89%) of which contain material by or about historically marginalized communities.

We see this study as a resource for documentary filmmakers to consider the challenge of accessing archival media. This initiative will result in a forthcoming report that will provide a comprehensive, data-driven understanding of archival media digitization and conservation efforts nationwide. It is set to be published in the summer of 2025.

Some of the most notable barriers that archives are creatively mitigating include copyright and privacy concerns, data storage, and funding. They are also tasked with dedicating time to advocating for their work—whether that be internally or externally at a policy level. Below, you will find details from our upcoming study’s preliminary findings on copyright and privacy. We’ll conclude with some closing thoughts about how the documentary community can get involved and join these advocacy efforts for our mutual benefit. 

Copyright and Privacy 

Survey results demonstrate that issues of copyright and privacy are pervasive, with 77% of respondents stating that their magnetic media collections contained recordings with questionable copyright or intellectual property, which produces a challenge not only for archivists but also for filmmakers wishing to use these archival media. We learned that these organizations have a varied understanding of copyright and fair-use policies, and varied requirements for approving filmmaker access to their collections. 

These different policies impact researchers, filmmakers, and representatives from institutions requesting archival media. Respondents we spoke with served as the primary contacts for any requests for archival media content and subsequent copyright guidance. A respondent from the Idaho State Archive interview explained, “I always start out with an obligatory note about copyright.” If not directly communicated, many organizations list rights statements and disclaimers on their websites. For example, the Chicago-based nonprofit Media Burn is “on the side of just digitizing things—but with a notice on our website that people can ask to take things down.” 

Other ways that copyright impacts the operations of archives include limiting access to on-site viewing or only approving content for republication under fair use claims. These concerns have serious implications for those working in archival settings. Among our respondents, one mentioned being previously subpoenaed for information during a copyright dispute. Threats like this likely influence decisions at institutions like the Massachusetts-based dance center Jacob’s Pillow, which told us how they’re getting creative: “Most of our access is in person because of rights restrictions on pretty much all of the material that can only be accessed if you are there in person.” They went on to explain, “We do try and find ways to repackage material and, under fair use, release it publicly, but it’s often sort of small snippets or just selections of content rather than being able to release the full thing.” 

Restricted access also sometimes stems from privacy concerns. The Hula Preservation Society in Hawai’i reported, “We’re dealing with people’s personal lives a lot of the time. And so there are a lot of privacy, confidential[ity] concerns. Everything is vetted before it goes online, especially when it comes to video. We don’t put any kind of raw video up. Everything’s always edited.” Another organization recounted concerns over finding private health information in their collection, as their institution was connected to a medical facility serving children. 

Mitigating this issue is where archives’ community relationships with their contributors shine through. For example, Texas-based video center ENTRE told us, “We want to train people in our community to steward the archive with us…we also engage with our donors in ways that make them a part of the work that we do.” This sentiment is reinforced by ‘Ulu‘ulu, which serves as the state of Hawai’i’s official moving image archive and operates within the state’s university system. Its archivist recounted some of the founding principles they established with their community members: “One thing that’s unique about Hawai’i and about ‘Ulu‘ulu’s collection is that it—definitely in the very beginning, and even now—was all built on trust.” They went on to say, “in addressing all of [their community’s] concerns, that’s how we built all of these procedures that we practice now.” 

Documentary filmmakers are all too familiar with this precarious balance of privacy and care with their film participants. The nuances were recently highlighted by an ITVS study, The Filmmaker-Participant Relationship Unpacked: Ethical Responsibility and Impact in Documentary Filmmaking. That study reports that while 89% of film participants said they would participate in their documentary again if given the opportunity, they also advocated for increased communication and ongoing support. There are direct parallels between these documentary filmmaking ethics and the principles that guide the stewards of archival audiovisual material when they interact directly with their communities and donors. 

Despite the uncertainty around rights, privacy, donor agreements, and fair use, no one seems deterred from their overall digitization goals. Our study indicates that digitization of magnetic media is bustling across the country—63% of the organizations we surveyed utilize in-house setups for AV digitization on demand and 83% of organizations are still actively collecting analog AV materials. The Minnesota Historical Society noted “that [copyright] won’t stop us from digitizing things—if we pick a collection to digitize, we digitize everything. And we’ll at least have it mentioned in the finding aid. We’ll just have the information, but not a link to watch it.” This quote is indicative of the challenge—even when material has been saved from the threats of time, degradation, and obsolescence through digitization, it may still be lost in the obscurity of inaccessibility. 

The teams we spoke to need more support and resources to combat this access issue. Most people we interviewed as part of the survey didn’t have the time or funding to complete their desired digitization projects, let alone embark on copyright research for vast amounts of material. The archivist at the New York African Film Festival told us that copyright research is “a bigger project down the line to actually seek out…,” while a University of California-Santa Cruz archivist said, “I do think the workload for assessing copyright status and getting clearances is one thing that is preventing us from being able to get stuff online.” It appears that copyright policy is not black and white for the practitioners we spoke with. Surely we could all benefit from more readily available educational resources to help us understand what is permissible and how we can increase the visibility of this important media.

We Can Work Together

A central theme throughout Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape is the need for advocacy. Archivists already advocate for their collections within larger institutional structures like libraries, universities, or government agencies, but they emphasize the need for increased involvement from funding institutions, members of the public, and policymakers. 

Emphasizing the lack of time archivists have to complete this work, a respondent from the California State Archives urged the general public to be involved: “Getting these things digitized sooner rather than later also serves the public, even though it may not seem as immediate as a reference request right in front of you. Someday that person might request it and it may not be available anymore.” Other organizations highlighted the needs of under-resourced communities. Referencing Indigenous communities, the Hula Preservation Society said, “There are other, communities…unrecognized communities that have big audiovisual collections, and they are in situations that are not necessarily an archive or library.” That reminder urges us to look for and support the work of communities outside of the typical structures we think of holding archival media.

Regarding legislative advocacy, government institutions and organizations within university systems had the most to say. The team at the Smithsonian Institution’s Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative explained the importance of advocacy: “It’s 75%+ of the time explaining, educating, lobbying for resources and support for this kind of work.” The California State Archives mentioned similar time investments when they described how “law doesn’t come out of nowhere—that comes out of staff and archives advocating to a legislator.” ʻUluʻulu’s archivist similarly told us, “Part of our activities is having to continually educate and demonstrate to the university administration as well as the Hawai’i State Legislature, because they’re the ones who provide the state funding.”

As members of the documentary filmmaking community, we can step up to the plate and join these advocacy efforts. If we continue to democratize community memory, it will allow more people to embark on this work, opening more doors to our shared cultural history stored in audiovisual formats of the past. Survey respondents at the Mark Morris Dance Group Digital Archive explained, “Dancers make the best dance archivists because they have that embodied knowledge.” Archivists and filmmakers can be more effective partners at sharing advocacy efforts toward our mutual goal of bringing history into the present and repurposing it for future generations—by first supporting the preservation of archival media collections and making them more accessible. 

Looking Ahead

As we continue gathering insights for the Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape report, we are more convinced than ever that preserving our audiovisual heritage demands a collaborative, community-driven approach. We’re all too familiar with the challenges that documentary filmmakers are struggling with, such as the cost and legal hurdles of licensing archival media. This report is part of an effort to make the machinations of archives visible so we can work together to advocate for preservation and access for the benefit of our field.

We envision our summer 2025 report as a catalyst for building a more resilient preservation network, one that unites documentary filmmakers with archivists and other stakeholders in our shared mission to protect our audiovisual heritage.

This piece was first published in the Spring 2025 print issue of Documentary, with the following subheading: Why does archival footage cost so much? Previewing BAVC Media’s upcoming study of magnetic media preservation efforts across 130 U.S. audiovisual archives.

The authors also wish to acknowledge the essential contributions of Moriah Ulinskas, Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape project advisor; Tim Lake, BAVC Media director of preservation; Daniel Díaz, BAVC Media director of marketing & audience strategy; our esteemed advisory committee; and all of the study participants. Thank you!

Kailen Sallander is the coauthor of Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape and research and development manager at BAVC Media. In this role, she leads program evaluation, data collection, and field-wide studies at BAVC Media.

Kelli Hix is the project director for Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape. She serves as principal researcher, working closely with the BAVC Media team, participants, and advisors.