Melissa Totten
April 25, 2001

Responsibilities of the Director of the
Twentieth Century Fox Photo Archive

DEPARTMENT/ COMPANY EXECUTIVE

Departmental Mission and Leadership.
Establish the goals and mission of the Twentieth Century Fox Photo Archive on behalf of the Company. Communicate these not only to the staff of my own department, but also promote them to the company community at large. Design a strategic and reasonable 1-year and 5-year plan, and represent the plan, ideals and passion for the mission clearly and with enthusiasm.
CHALLENGE: Discern and effectively keep pace with changing company missions and policies.

Financial Plan for Operating Department.
Create annual and project budgets and financial plans, based on work design and forecasting departmental responsibility. Communicate with end users to try to understand the production goals of client departments and divisions. Champion goal of incorporating Photo Archive into production schedule of large company projects. Operate within extremely restrictive budget parameters, without explicit corporate endorsement of either preservation or development of photographic assets. Maintain accountability over weekly, monthly, and quarterly budget. Oversee and approve delegated financial accounting assignments.
CHALLENGE: Increase work output yearly with little control over flow of project requests or input into large-budget project scheduling decisions.

Hire, Manage and Develop Personnel.
Locate, interview, and hire job candidates who are suited to demanding work environment, and who are equally talented creatively and scientifically. Manage a small staff with a view toward individual development and team productivity. Follow each person's work behavior and try to target effective motivational methods for each staff member. Provide encouragement or instill sense of pride, build team and reward with individual letters and notes of recognition and with special occasion luncheons and group breaks. Conduct annual performance reviews and periodic individual assessment meetings throughout year. Develop ability to delegate responsibilities and help manage -- when needed -- new challenges faced by employees.
CHALLENGE: Offer meaningful development and advancement to staff in a highly stressful departmental environment where capacity for job satisfaction is shrinking.

Protect Intellectual Property.
Communicate value and meaning of photographic assets to licensing attorneys, copyright infringement attorneys, and intellectual property watchdogs and litigators. Identify instances of property infringement, as well as business trends which are liable to encourage infringement. Serve as company advisor in assessing photographic property theft or damage. Identify and pull over 3000 Fox images held in the Everett Collection (NYC) for re-acquisition by company, and manage the transit of this property, as well as the record-keeping of the transaction. Lobby for share of licensing revenue from historical photography maintained, protected or provided by the Photo Archive.
CHALLENGE: Communicate core idea that the more an image is given away (without tracking use or collecting standard fees), the less valuable it becomes. Because photography is easily and cheaply duplicatable, unmanaged duplication -- in any format -- is tantamount to giving away company money.

Plan for Materials Preservation.
Create and launch department whose initial mission was to advise on status of company photographic materials, their use, and their stability as part of a usable collection. Create outline plan for Feature Production Executives, Chief Financial Operator, and President of FFE announcing the practical preservation demands of the collection. Completed in April of 1997. Establish sampling strategies to assess damage to collection, evaluate success of first plan, and write second extensive collection report, September 2000. Establish plan with all theatrical publicity stills departments to institute requirement for uniform use of preservation sleeves for storage of all new photo materials (primarily 35mm transparencies).
CHALLENGE: Communicate core principle that material cannot be accessed until and unless it is preserved. Preservation is first and foremost organization of material, with stability as the secondary goal, and use or access as the end game.

Storage and Traffic of Materials.
Create plan for on-lot storage of photographic materials, including prints, negatives, transparencies, publicity flip books, paper and plastic captions, bound and unbound set still books and "keysets" from movies produced between 1920-1995. Evaluate range of formats within pockets of known subcollections of photography. Locate all then-current storage environments, evaluate for preservation viability and for asset protection. (Publicity storage room, Archives closet, Stages 3 and 4 closets, UCLA Library, production vendors, labs, and homes of certain employees). Launch campaign to return all original materials to the Photo Archive. Combine materials into one archivally sound storage space, and provide technical specifications for such a space. Form relationship with Arts Librarian at UCLA where some of the collection has been housed since 1979, and establish protocol for checking out original material.
CHALLENGE: Communicate core legal and ethical principle that the photographic materials of Twentieth Century Fox belong to the company, and that the company has chosen to manage the assets by establishing a Photo Archive.

Design Image Access Tools.
Create finding aids to the photographic image for users and archivists where none had existed. Organize image access projects and try to find time to move forward on very long-term plans: Small "keysets" of sample publicity images on-lot for emergency reference or duplication. Reference binders of photocopied images as well as photo-duplicated images for the most often requested titles and unusual subject matters. (Requires understanding of company film catalog and overview of photograph collection). Collect lot history photography into a sub-collection with cross-reference to main collection. Consider long-range goal of capturing images in digital format, for access not for preservation, and outline simplest standards for format, size, and distribution. Regularize current digital practices.
CHALLENGE: Manage the ongoing conflict between traditional image access and preservation. Prepare for similar issues regarding digitization projects.

Accountable to Senior Staff.
Present issues to supervisor and other senior staff for consideration and recommendation by them. Ask for high-level decisions on matters of significance to department and to company. Provide reports on personnel matters, on project matters, and on time management issues. In budget and plan meetings, as well as in regular staff meetings, account for executive decisions and projections. Advise on company strategy for managing unique photographic assets. Present goals and significant needs and present thorough back up to aid in decision making. Educate senior staff as needed about archival and departmental issues during periods of change.
CHALLENGE: Senior executive difficulty in charting direction or mapping concern for asset management.

ARCHIVE PROFESSIONAL

Define Archival Practice and Standards.
Employ training and education to evaluate the collection needs of the company's photo assets. Adapt methods to the unique environment of movie still photography within a studio enterprise. Educate myself and my staff in the overall requirements of solid contemporary archival method in the context of vintage photography. Research archival materials and determine contracts with specific vendors. Establish specific models and materials for use in housing, sleeving, organizing, labeling, researching, and creating records during the organization and restoration of a sub-group of photo materials. Make certain that all staff and all users maintain professional practice and specific handling standards. Research and change standards as needed. Outreach to publicity departments and originators of photo material to encourage basic archival forethought.
CHALLENGE: Insufficient time or occasion to complete written handbook of practice, and insufficient time to oversee individual staff practice.

Collection Management and Protection.
Establish model of highest ethical responsibility. Make decisions based on standards of care, caution, and understanding the curves of the natural decaying process of the material. Maintain guidelines that forbid the unethical pursuit of hobby collecting while working as a professional collection manager. Move collection into Crafts building and combine on-lot materials into new vault. Require card-key access to vault, and staff-only access to collection materials. Initiate more restrictive access at UCLA with library managers there to reduce risk to material through frequent handling and mishandling, transit in and out of a controlled environment, and incidents of theft. Establish regular work hours, policies, and appointment procedures that prevent non permanent staff of the Photo Archive from accessing original materials except under direct supervision. Try to encourage company-wide policy decision to centralize archival housing of all original feature photography stills materials which are solely owned or in majority owned by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. (Encourage inclusion of Fox Searchlight and Fox 2000 materials in company collection).
CHALLENGE: Remember that other people do not necessarily share professional understanding of archival practice or ethics.

Collection Assessment and Description.
Research and write periodic collection reports and evaluations of organization and condition of materials. (1997, 2000). Work directly with the materials of the collection to establish familiarity and connoiseurship where possible. Develop ability to describe contents of a one-million item collection which is to date not inventoried at the item level, not inventoried at the box level, and only partially inventoried at the title level. Move beyond general description into creating a usable description aid to the collection in order to allow easier access. Define a subset of target movie titles for which photograph organization and description is prioritized in order to assign estimated financial value and to assign commensurate insurance policy.
CHALLENGE: Conflicting demands of the job of Director prevent spending appropriate time or sufficient dedication to collection management and description.

Processing.
Perform basic organization and conservation of thousands of unstable and mixed format photo materials per single film title. Research and assess individual materials in order to organize by title, by format, by numbered sequence, by type of photography, by original intended publicity use. Match all prints and negatives where available. Re-house and sleeve fragile material as necessary. Label new housings. Record all findings and descriptions (with maximum specificity) into the Photo Archive informational database. Edit or select choice images for clients, or for ongoing Archive projects.
CHALLENGE: To process the photography for one single film requires an estimated 4-6 hours per box to perform a rudimentary job. Each film has an average of 8-10 boxes of material. An average film may have 10-20,000 individual shots. Frequent breaks are required due to the many repetitive and sometimes health-hazardous working conditions. Basic record-keeping and research is part of any processing task, so that the job grows no matter how disciplined you are. You cannot process without an understanding of the content of the images, you cannot process without reference to the film and to its publicity schedule of numbered edited selects, released press kits, and a myriad of other stories that are contained in a single box. To do a good job, you must take time and think with both parts of your brain.

Preservation.
Within a context of clearly defined company preservation targets and an understanding of the physical location of most urgent material degradation, identify stable and unstable materials. Where there is no defined company preservation plan, act on behalf of company to establish one. Segregate materials showing initial signs of organic decay. Perform triage on diacetate and triacetate negatives breaking down, rapidly deteriorating, actively off-gassing or totally destroyed. Use archival duplication to create new "originals" where possible and where warranted. (See Collection Report 2000 for detailed description of preservation responsibilities.)
CHALLENGE: Active and urgent preservation decisions are constantly deferred or postponed so that access needs can be addressed. Without a defined preservation schedule based on "most important to save" list, the lack of attention to preservation work which is doable erodes the viable collection and destroys the future usability of unique materials.

Information Management.
Create initial database to manage UCLA box-content and folder content description, and to record and manage updates regarding preservation work and materials status (1997). Create finding aids with simple database software to manage on-lot box content descriptions. Locate and combine any usable software descriptions of collections materials. Research company’s long-term goals of storage and access, and base information management plan on those decisions. Once preservation plan and archive practice is established, research department need to have and maintain a more complex and thorough interrelational database for inventory purposes. Determine whether off-the-shelf software is suitable for department needs, or whether design of unique system is a requirement given the mixed situation of storing some of the company materials within a pre-existing card-catalogued and computerized University Library system. Determine whether company IT support will be sufficiently available at any stage. Decide, with department’s senior executive and with his supervisor’s approval, to search for outside database designer. Based on demonstrations, bids, experience, and meetings vendor is selected. (Curatorial Assistance.) Draw up contract for work with Fox Legal, set up payment schedule based on deliverables, appoint Archive Manager as lead for project. Oversee all stages of design and change. Manage launch of database onto server with Archive Manager and IT support (2001). Test database in daily operation, and initiate plan for contract for ongoing service and design changes.
CHALLENGE: System is complicated; department’s needs are in flux.

Disaster Plan.
Must develop one. Not to is irresponsible.
CHALLENGE: When?

CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL

Creative Executive Decisions.
Provide creative direction for all Photo Archive department projects. Drawing on 15 years of experience as arts and entertainment creative executive, and 20 years as a historian of American culture, serve as content provider, lead content consultant, and production manager for all collaborative projects between Photo Archive and company or external users. Where possible, be available to define historical direction and definitive, accurate support for company projects. When asked, work with creative team managers to uplift the aesthetic and cultural significance of projects based on re-purposing valuable company historical assets. Advise where possible on unique significance of photo materials to projects by Themed Entertainment; Consumer Products; Web designers; Fox Movie Channel, Film Preservation; documentary programs in production under banner of 20th Television; DVD developers of "added value" ; exhibit designers; company office suite and public space designers; CD packagers and producers of classic musical score restorations; Museums; Historical Societies; Publishers; Scholars; Editors; Awards shows; charity benefit booklets and catalogs; occasional calendar or periodical features; professional entertainment community or guild requests; Twentieth Century Fox "VIPs". Determine response to competing creative projects based on value to the company and to the ongoing organization projects of the Photo Archive. Manage time as best as possible for the department in the absence of corporate definition of Archive role and priorities. Problem solve. Intervene if creative process goes off track to reclarify content goals and restore sense of team as well as project productivity.
CHALLENGE: Watching a project fall short of representing the company and its unique products in a way that should bring pride, "noise," or increased value to those materials. Taking a hands-off relationship to a project because I don’t have the time to devote to gently guiding it, despite having the experience and knowledge.

Curatorial and Research Expertise.
As the only trained cultural historian, teacher, and writer in the department, and as the only person who has studied, directed, and produced film and television, my expertise is unique. My early career as a photo archivist, photo editor and photo researcher for the LBJ Library & Museum, for Time-Life, for PBS, for the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, and for the California State Parks Publishing Division has given me a very strong editorial eye, a technical understanding of photographic processes, and an understanding of how to work within different corporate and non-profit environments. I have set up Research Departments for multiple entertainment companies, run my own business providing feature production research, and have studied the early history of the motion picture industry for many projects over 20 years. I pursued professional archive training after being put into the position time and again of having to manage photograph, film, and video collections in all of the above work. I am a historian and curator by training, and an archivist by necessity.

Chief responsibility as curator is to further the public profile of the unique photographic assets of the company through quality publication, writing, and exhibition. Ultimately, the goal is to create saleable product with high-end market cache. Books may not make lots of money, but they will lead to other revenue-generating projects, and dovetail with company projects requiring photography. This function of my job is my passion as well as my responsibility. My subject matter expertise, the research needs of the company, as well as my position as the head of the Photograph collection of Twentieth Century Fox requires that I maintain my research interest in the collection, and be available to a multiplicity of in-company and outside professionals who turn to me for formal and informal consultation and advice. Only when such advice extends the reputation of the company, do I try to make myself available to outside research/professional requests. (i.e., to the Academy curatorial staff; to colleagues at other studios who have not yet figured out how to set up a working department; to area Museums and Photo Galleries; or to scholars working on distinguished publications using Twentieth Century Fox materials.)
CHALLENGE: Director’s professional development stalled by conflicting company priorities.

Studio - Ongoing and Special Projects.
Negotiate with client/user production executives for project schedules that could announce research needs in advance, and streamline Photo Archive work. Maintain a reasonable flow of work responding to requests from departments or divisions cited above, without foreknowledge of client production schedules, or any warning before a request hits the in-box. (Surprise hits which come without warning and are either deadline-locked, or decreed by executive fiat have potential to overrun the Photo Archive’s careful working balance and prevent efficient, high-quality selection of rare and exciting images). Determine internal Archive schedule and assess potential wide benefit for studio-based departmental requests, then assign projects to staff. Included here are a conflagration of hits for the months of March and April for which Director bears 80% or overall sole creative responsibility:

o+o Fox Studios Baja : sudden emergency request from project coordinator (after Photo Archive had completed all project work) required substantial negotiation and relationship management as well as tracking images hastily pulled by Rob;
o+o Building 88 Hallway, a project for which I had recently been named creative lead, was suddenly assigned to Planning and Design, without explanation for the decision and without advanced planning or understanding of the necessary work process involved for the Photo Archive;
o+o UCLA attorney’s request for a work flow schedule of preservation activity on the portion of the collection housed at SRLF requires rethinking of a hit list of target films, based on studio film catalog and on personal knowledge of what the most valuable properties are likely to be historically, culturally, and technically;
o+o intellectual property lawsuit resolution requires director’s full time attention during 5-part final phase of creating archive copies of vintage photography taken from the Everett Collection in New York. The project is highly time-sensitive, and requires precision document tracking, communication with Everett Collection director/owner, Fox attorneys involved in lawsuit and settlement, and most importantly, demands a myriad of technical photographic and creative decisions made in conjunction with custom photo laboratory doing the printing and copy negative work;
o+o "Fox in Black&White and Color", (aka EXPOSURES), a photography book I am authoring and editing for the company with Harry Abrams Books is approaching a crucial deadline. Due June 1st to L&M Publishing and to editor at Abrams are 200 select images and a written text by me.
CHALLENGE: Time, personal and staff resources. Corporate support of Photo Archive project decisions. Corporate synergy in the use of historical and material assets.

Community - Special Projects.
Field and respond to requests which are not part of the company’s ordinary business, but which would reflect negatively on the company if left undone. Current examples which benefit the company and the Photo Archive are: (1) John Ford retrospective at DGA, with emphasis on restored Fox silent film (Four Sons), and a collateral Fox photo exhibition (and LA Times review). (2) Pending request for loan of Marilyn Monroe photography for exhibition at Hollywood History Museum in conjunction with Fox DVD’s celebration release for Marilyn Monroe birthday. Both projects represent opportunities to collaborate with film community institutions, create "noise" for company projects, as well as open doors to possible reacquisition of lost or stolen photographic property. These kinds of projects are considered community outreach, and are generally facilitated with less than total effort for sufficient quality work, but without remuneration of any kind.
CHALLENGE: Weigh benefit (or damage) to company against time spent to conduct outside working relationship and fulfill requests.

CLIENT SERVICE

Evaluate and Assign Client Requests.
Evaluate and normally deny office décor and single party requests for photography. Assign to staff only if the photography is at hand, or is being processed for other client or other project. Enforce rules concerning number of titles requested per appointment. Make certain that staff do not overprepare materials for regular clients, but do spend some time on processing and preservation of boxes of photography for each request. Encourage extra effort from staff where photography may be a key element in the production of client’s project. Keep an eye out for titles or photographs which should not be accessed due to legal restrictions, or due to selection for exclusive projects underway elsewhere in Archive.
CHALLENGE: All too often rules must bend.

Manage Staff Workflow.
Director’s active management has become less and less necessary due to staff understanding of department mission and practice, and their own sense of mastery over and responsibility for their jobs. Encourage breaking up work day with non-processing tasks, when too many hours in a row have exacted a toll. Encourage increased staff awareness of client’s production process and end-use, to either streamline archivist work process, or to increase benefit to client of archive time spent on client’s request.
CHALLENGE: How make room for archivists’ other work responsibilities when processing for clients is the constant order of business.

Fulfill requests.
During work crunches, when staff are unavailable, or when politics or knowledge dictate my involvement, I fulfill client requests. This is a responsibility that comes out of necessity or expertise. It usually results in a massive slow-down of other responsibilities, since the act of preparing for a client, wrapping up the project, and refiling all materials is so consuming. Nonetheless, this is also a function of my responsibility to work with and develop research awareness of the collection.
CHALLENGE: Time.

Client Tracking.
Set up inter-relational data system for tracking client requests, recording Archive P.O.s, Lab invoice and billing information, TCF department or division or project charge codes, each film title accessed, brief project description. On ongoing basis, review all client work logged into client tracker database. Review most-often requested titles, discover clients who have repeatedly asked to see the same material. Make determinations about the collection based on this information.

Lab Relations.
Establish handling protocol and standard styles of printing at labs who process our photography and deal with unique, original materials belonging to Twentieth Century Fox. Build trust with vendors who are transporting unique material, and who have access to reproduce from best originals without our knowledge. Give explicit instruction to labs for every client order, most of which require individual, custom handling. Oversee results, and ask for remakes when warranted. Act as intermediary between our client and the lab.
CHALLENGE: Hollywood labs servicing large studio accounts are not accustomed to so much unique custom work, and must be chosen carefully for their ability to understand Photo Archive clients’ special needs.

ADMINISTRATIVE

Manage and Maintain Office.
Serve as office manager, check on supplies from archival and preservation products to coffee filters and paper towels. Change paper and toner in printers, xerox machines, fax. Manage service upkeep. Manage orientation of new hires, temps, or interns: teach them phone system, payroll or temp staffing practices, all other office or company systems, get them ID badges, parking decals, vault access cards, etc. Monitor janitorial service of suite, request hazmat disposal when necessary. Show staff how to fill out company forms. Ask staff for periodic reports on computer hardware and software needs, interface with IT as needed. Create and maintain supply of Archive labels, printed P.O.s, and other unique products designed for our work. Plan and implement office re-design from getting new shelving built, to replacing lights or adding electric outlets and dropping wire and cable as needed. Handle furniture requests.
CHALLENGE: Need secretary/assistant.

Implement and Manage Internal Billing Practices.
Oversee or delegate financial accounting for department: purchasing card, corporate preferred vendors accounts (photo labs Staples, Dr. Soda, client intercompany billing, journal entry process, and reallocation of charges which hit wrong accounts.
CHALLENGE: Need secretary/assistant.

Administrative tasks.
Handle phones for active office and Director. Type reports and correspondence, format large project flow charts. Set up files and file systems. Maintain order and create space for current and back billing files and research files. Establish rolodex, mailing list and phone records for Director and Archive contacts. Photocopy as needed for large projects. Research as needed. Create P-touch labels for expanding files to organize existing vault files alphabetically. Plan for vault re-organization. Manage information flow for Director.
CHALLENGE: Same as above.

Intern Program.
Set up ongoing program for school year and for summer. Draw from Information Studies/Library Science programs (currently being implemented), and from film studies and art historical/photography departments (not yet implemented). Create institutional relationships (done) and then put together appropriate requested paperwork, forms, and facilitate administrative issues between company and educational institutions. Create discrete project descriptions for interns so that management by senior archive staff or Director is clearly understood. Preservation work in its purest sense cannot be handled by interns. Many archival decisions cannot be made by interns, so that monitoring tasks becomes very important. Balance time spent on orientation and supervision with staff responsibilities.
CHALLENGE: Just getting the time cleared to set up program.

o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+o+

Founding member of Studio Historical Assets Group.
Founder of the Vinegar Society.
Member of American Moving Image Archivists.
Member of Society of American Archivists.
George Eastman House Seminar Graduate: Preserving Photographs in a Digital World.