For archives and institutions
A written assessment first. A number you can take to a budget approval.
Institutional work is different from a shoebox of home movies, and pretending otherwise wastes everyone’s time. Collections come with catalogues, accession numbers, condition reports and approval cycles, so we assess first and quote second.
How an institutional job runs
1 · Tell us what you hold
A rough count, photos, and whatever your catalogue already records. Unknowns are fine, because establishing what the elements actually are is the point of the next step.
2 · Written assessment
Camera original, print or reversal; optical or magnetic sound; cores or reels; shrinkage present. Those answers change both the method and the price, in writing, before anything is scanned.
3 · Scan to your spec
File format, resolution and naming follow a specification you supply. Tell us what your catalogue expects and we match it, rather than handing back something you have to rename.
The assessment is the deliverable your committee needs.
A grant application or budget approval needs a defensible number, not a phone estimate. The written assessment documents what the material is and what the work involves, element by element.
Alongside family collections, our transfers have been used by CBS, ABC, Disney Animation, Paramount and Sony. The same equipment and the same hands do both.
Every item is logged at intake and tracked under chain of custody. More than 125,000 reels have been through this lab without losing one.
Working with a collection?
Tell us roughly what you hold and we will tell you what it involves. Churches, schools, universities, historical societies and estates all start the same way.