Fish and chips have been a popular staple in the British diet since the mid-19th century. My mouth is watering just thinking about the flaky cod covered in a crispy batter, accompanied by deep-fried, slab-cut potato ‘chips’, made even yummier with a generous splash of malt vinegar sprinkled over the top. While vinegar certainly enhances the overall flavor of a fish and chips dinner, it’s a recipe for disaster for the motion picture industry.
Beware of Vinegar Syndrome
A few years after the Second World War ended, the motion picture industry began filming with cellulose triacetate. This new material met the rigorous safety and performance standards, but its chemical instability created a ticking time bomb, just waiting to wreak havoc on the entertainment industry. You see, as cellulose triacetate degrades it releases acetic acid, the key ingredient in vinegar and emits a vinegar smell, hence the aptly chosen term, “vinegar syndrome.”
This unlikely villain has become a major threat to film collections.To put things in perspective — a typical 1,000-ft. can of 35mm film can generate enough acetic acid to be the equivalent of 250 teaspoons of household vinegar. That’s a lot of flavor for your fish and chips!
Proper Film Preservation and Storage
Proper preservation and storage conditions are essential to ensure that your precious assets are safeguarded against temperature, light, humidity, dust and other contaminants. While there is no permanent way to stop or reverse film decomposition, the rate of deterioration may be slowed by controlling two key factors:temperature and moisture. A combination of low temperature and low relative humidity creates the optimal storage condition for acetate films. According to the Image Permanence Institute, fresh acetate film stored at a temperature of 60°F (16°C) and 40% relative humidity will last approximately 100 years before the onset of vinegar syndrome. Reducing the temperature 5°, while maintaining the same level of humidity, delays the process by 150 years.
Additionally, storage containers should be chemically stable and tightly surround the film for physical support. Boxes or cans are suitable for film storage as long as they’re made from:
- Acceptable plastics (polypropylene or polyethylene),
- Preservation-quality cardboard, or
- Non-corrosive metal.
Vented storage containers allow acetic acid vapors to disperse, thus averting damage. Since the environment inside containers also has an impact on the condition of cellulose acetate film, you should use containers that are breathable or that include an acid absorbent to effectively reduce the rate of decay due to vinegar syndrome. Your best bet is to avoid sealed metal containers that can trap contaminants released by the film and which promote the spread of vinegar syndrome. For optimal preservation, film containers should be stacked horizontally, with the film lying flat.
What’s next on the path to preservation? Well, clearly digitization would be an ideal approach to preserve acetate film; however, current scanning standards do not produce a duplicate copy with the same picture and sound quality as the original. So, until such time that the quality metrics can be achieved, film preservationists prefer that film images be transferred to other film stock since a well-developed and stored modern film print can last upwards of 100 years.
Now go out and enjoy a movie and a nice hot plate of fish and chips!
Related Links:
