Out of the Archive - Making Sense of a Spectacle

Becky Vick and Ben Thompson from the BFI National Archive examine the edited original film negative of Mitchell and Kenyon 484: Crewe Hospital Procession and Pageant (1907).

In a time before purpose-built cinemas, this intriguing film was shot by Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon for showman Pat Collins to attract a local audience to a cinematograph show which was part of a travelling fair temporarily stationed in Crewe's Queen's Park. Filmed on Saturday 10th August 1907, this surviving footage is an early example of a constructed narrative showing this astonishing local carnival and pageant parade. It features participants in historical and national costumes as well as cross-dressers, and is dominated by black-faced minstrels that were very popular at the time.

This is one of 826 original negatives held in the Peter Worden Mitchell & Kenyon Collection. They comprise a body of films that date from 1900-1911, and were preserved and made accessible by the BFI National Archive. For some years the National Fairground Archive (NFA), based at the University of Sheffield, has been working in partnership with the BFI to contextualise this set of films. To enable us to see this film, the BFI's Archive Lab had both preservation and research viewing copies made, inscribed by Mitchell & Kenyon at the head with "Crewe Procession 1907", and initially only identified by the Archive as Mitchell & Kenyon 484.

The film was printed on a modified Acme optical printer with a specially engineered liquid gate. This delicate mechanism enables each frame to be temporarily enclosed in a glass aperture containing perchloroethylene solvent. The effect is to temporarily conceal scratches in the film, long enough to capture a cleaner photographic image. The new dupe negative was then telecined to create a speed-corrected video master on the professional format digibeta, from which videocassettes for research access were made. The speed-corrected version lasts for approximately seven minutes and is over 450 feet in length – unusually long compared to the usual two or so minute (or approximately 100 feet) items found in the rest of the collection. This was one of the first signs that this film was not shot in just one take, like many from its period in film history, and may have been constructed or edited together as a story for its intended audience.

Research undertaken by the NFA tells us that this carnival event was originally set up by the workforce of the London North Western Railway Company and other local institutions to benefit those in the local community, and, importantly, to raise funds and awareness of the work of the Crewe Memorial Cottage Hospital used by the local population. This was both a civic event advertising local businesses and public services, and a carnival procession with numerous dance troupes.

Vanessa Toulmin of the NFA found paper records showing that the parade would have taken over an hour to make its way through the town’s streets - a mile and half in distance - to its final destination of Queen’s Park. She argues that Mitchell and Kenyon edited their material down to around seven minutes, in no particularly logical order, to show the best of those who had taken part, focusing on those who won major prizes for their efforts. To verify Dr Toulmin's claim that this film had been edited and therefore was a "constructed synthesis of the main performance components selected by the showman," the BFI National Archive had to re-examine the original negative.

Mitchell & Kenyon were at the peak of their production in 1901 and 1902. In this collection held at the BFI, there are fewer films from the years after 1902. Film edits are results of a conscious decision made to assemble the film in a certain way. Previous examination of other Mitchell & Kenyon original negatives dating from 1901 had shown that these two animated picture pioneers were editing even at this early stage of filmmaking, however nothing of the length of M&K 484. This makes the film very unusual and worthy of further investigation.

The original silent black and white nitrate negative was taken out of storage, cored (a core is a plastic cylinder on which a roll of film is wound) and inspected. As it was the master, the original negative was handled as little as possible in this process and wound back as it had been originally rolled up. As with all the Archive’s master negatives, it was examined on a bench and not projected. Instead, the viewing print of Mitchell & Kenyon 484 was repeatedly watched. When any damage, physical joins/edits or camera edits were identified in the print, it was pinpointed in the original negative and digitally photographed for documentation purposes. This process helped reduce handling of the master.

The Archive Lab's examination of the negative showed that it was in relatively good and chemically stable condition. Film is made up of a base and emulsion, where the base is the transparent support on which the light sensitive emulsion is coated. The emulsion is a colloidal suspension of light sensitive silver halides in a medium such as a gelatine binder that stores the image. Although fragile like all negatives of this age, the emulsion, base and perforations (or sprocket holes) were all in a reasonably good state. Film of this age can shrink, but the level of shrinkage was only moderate. Yellow discoloration could be seen throughout but would not be classed as severe in comparison to other negatives surviving from that period.

There were in fact five separate lengths that had been printed together and make up this one negative. The greatest wear and tear was at the heads and tails of each of the 'lengths' of the negative. Curiously, where the five lengths have been wound in together to make one film, a silver deposit has risen to the surface of the emulsion of the opening first frames of each length. This suggests that the lengths have been wound in together for a long period of time.

The condition in the middle sections of the 'lengths' was of a high standard with little or no scratches on the base or emulsion. There was a precise scratch in the base of the opening twelve frames of each length. This could possibly be the result of the action of a camera mechanism or other device used to make the original print for the travelling fair, but this is yet to be fully determined. There is evidence also of a few flaws or damage in the film stock, and very occasionally the emulsion has come away from the base. These areas had been painted in by hand to prevent them showing in the print. A lot of films from this period only survive in the form of over-used and decomposing prints, meaning that the photographic quality is not as good as prints struck from an original negative. Overall, the good condition of the 800 or so original negatives in the collection has meant it has been possible to strike very high quality prints.

Inscriptions on the heads of each length had been scratched in by Mitchell or Kenyon when the emulsion was dry after processing. The figure '2' was put on the second length when the emulsion was wet during processing. The fact that the heads and tails of the lengths of film evidently fitted together perfectly told us that the films have been shortened for a specific purpose. This was probably as they were dried in five manageable lengths, so that Mitchell & Kenyon could easily piece together the jigsaw after the film had dried out. It certainly provides evidence that the film was edited together or constructed into a shortened narrative.

Splices – physical joins in a sequence of film –are evident throughout Mitchell & Kenyon 484. These cement splices tended to be very strong, precise and neat. Early cement film joins like this are often very thick, as in this case. The non-standard film stock of this time of filmmaking is in itself fairly thick and meant that the joins were very sturdy. Normally the join was made in the space dividing consecutive frames, an area known as the frameline. These generally appear between every fourth perforation on standard 35mm film however on some older film may appear on every fifth perforation. In some cases it may also shift between these two positions. The joins seen in the inspection of the negative were in rack (consciously made on the frameline), hence unlikely to be joins in the raw stock prior to shooting, proving that they were edited at a later date and providing the physical evidence needed for Toulmin's claim.

There is evidence of the use of 'edit' splices as well as 'repair' splices in the film. There is also evidence of edits in the camera. This is where the camera has been stopped and then started, shown by the fogging of one, or at the most, two frames, in order to shorten a particular sequence in the carnival. Fog is any visible deposit or density in the negative or print not forming part of the photographic image. Here it is optical fog, caused by the action of unwanted light, or sunlight leaking into the camera body, through the lens while the camera is not being cranked. Looking closely, there is also evidence that frames shot at the carnival have been physically removed from the original negative at a later stage, presumably before the show print was made for the fairground screening at Queen's Park. Many of the edits are the result of trying to get new participants in the frame. Toulmin suggests that this fits in with Mitchell & Kenyon’s philosophy of trying to get as many of their paying animated picture punters in shot as possible, to 'see yourself as others see you'. On close inspection, a lot of the interventions seem to have occurred at the time of shooting and processing rather than a later date. In total there were some 45 interventions recorded in the negative, in the form of either edits in the camera, physical splices or repairs of some kind.

By looking at the print in some detail and examining the negative more closely, the BFI National Archive was able to provide the technical evidence needed to back the contextual research, suggesting that this was an early example of a condensed version of real events, where the best bits were chosen by the filmmakers themselves to entertain its paying local audience.

Becky Vick
Curator - Non Fiction, BFI National Archive

Ben Thompson
Section Leader - Image Quality Specialists, BFI National Archive

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