One part of the Hugh Morton Collection that we do not seem to utilize as much as we should is Hugh Morton’s film footage. Today marks the annual observance of UNESCO World Day for Audio Visual Heritage, so it’s an apt day to explore the films of Hugh Morton.
The Morton collection finding aid lists holdings by subjects within broad categories. The audiovisual materials, however, are listed in a spreadsheet accessed through a link in the finding aid. From the finding aid, click on the phrase “Information for Users” in the left column and look for “Additional Descriptive Resources.” Clicking on that link opens a PDF of a 107-page spreadsheet that itemizes the component parts of the audiovisual material holdings.
The main reason we cannot do more with video at A View to Hugh is the 25MB upload file size limitation for videos set by the blog software, WordPress. Thus far we have made 16 film-to-digital transfers from footage in the Morton collection, but only a couple do not exceed the upload limit. One file is a 30-second spot for Grandfather Mountain, shared for the first time on this blog. The other can be seen by visiting a previous post titled “Film of John F. Kennedy in the Morton collection.”
Beyond these two titles, you may explore the PDF and let us know if there is footage that looks promising for your research. If it hasn’t already been transferred, we will investigate ways to make it available for use. Approximately 85 of the 107 pages describe 16mm film footage, with the bulk of the remaining pages listing audio on 1/4″ or cassette tapes.
To use more footage at A View to Hugh, it looks like I’ll need to learn the art of extracting excerpts from the large files to use as snippets in topics yet to be explored.
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Processing the Hugh Morton Photographs and Films