Film Internship Week 4

On Thursday, I worked on two films at the Heinz History Center. The first film was pretty uneventful, but the second one I inspected was a mess. It was actually pretty exciting to see a film with the different problems that we read about up close. The film was incredibly dirty. I needed to get a new set of gloves after I was finished. The film had emulsion scratches, rips, tears, sprocket damage, color fading, large repeating black spots and the beginnings of vinegar syndrome. Needless to say, it was a chore to go through the reel, but very interesting as well. One of the things that caught my attention, was that the reel indicated that it was a silent film. When I was doing the inspection, it looked like it did have sort of soundtrack on the film. I consulted the Film Preservation Guide for what sound is supposed to look like. In comparing them, they looked to be magnetic sound, but what I was looking at and what was shown in the example pictures did not quite match up. Later on on the reel the part that looks like sound just disappeared and that side of the reel was black. I found this to be rather odd. I finished the inspection, and mentioned what I encountered to David. He found this to be odd as well, and had a few suggestions, but as I continued to explain the other things I ran into with the film, it just became more complex. So what could have possibly been going on with this film?