Filmstrip Preservation: Saving Rare Educational and Industrial Media on 35mm Film - Help and Funding Needed (WIP)

Greetings OT, a few people suggested I post here, though I have hesitated because I imagine people find it tacky when someone just joins a forum and starts asking for help. My name is Mark O’Brien and about six years ago I began trying to save filmstrips. While recovering from thyroid cancer and a concurrent chronic fatigue condition, I started to research filmstrip preservation which was something I’d been interested in in the late 90s but didn’t have the equipment or the expertise to do. I was shocked to discover even then no one was saving these quirky things, especially with all the communities focused on lost, rare, and idiosyncratic media.

Here’s a few of my favorite filmstrips I’ve restored:

A 1970s filmstrip on gonorrhea with some insane, psychedelic illustrations: https://youtu.be/R9NGkqeUvME

An early 80s behind-the-scenes look at the authors of the Berenstain Bears books: https://youtu.be/WI2yGJY9Qwg

An 80s filmstrip on integrating pantomime into church services (???) starting famous mime Randall Bane: https://youtu.be/pLqKzZGDfQA

A 1985 filmstrip in which a founder of the Mormon Church escapes certain death by just telling the truth: https://youtu.be/9nEd6GtIFrs

Filmstrips were short strips of 35mm film with a sequence of still images on them, and were often manually synced with a soundtrack recording on record or cassette. They were used in schools and in business and industry, on topics ranging from sales training, to new car repair tricks for Chrysler mechanics, to sex education, and home economics. While many were strait-laced and matter-of-fact, there are those that would be right at home on Mystery Science Theater 3000, or of interest to fans of mid-century or psychedelic artwork, as many filmstrips featured hand-drawn images unique to them. Regardless, I feel that saving primary sources of modern history is crucial to understanding where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going, and there’s perhaps no more important part of that than documenting how students were educated, as one’s education directly impacts worldviews and values systems, and eventually culture at large.

Filmstrips were a budget alternative to the 16mm films everyone knows about, thanks to hard work from folks like Rick Preliger and due to their exposure on shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000. This means they were more likely used in underfunded schools, and there is a direct correlation between filmstrips and their use in marginalized communities.

A major challenge to the preservation is that the vast majority of filmstrips produced from the 50s to the 80s were printed on Eastmancolor stock. The best-condition Eastmancolor in 2025 simply has no cyan dye visible and very little yellow; in the worst case the binder has broken completely down, leaving the dye layers free to move, completely destroying the film. At this point, the goal isn’t even so much preservation for some of these films, but triage. I am simply trying to save what’s left of them in the hopes someone will find a better copy someday, or because it may be the only copy left.

I am inspired to see that many archival projects posted here have been completed due to community support and funding, and I hope to inspire you to help me save this totally forgotten medium.

What I’ve done so far:

• Scanned almost 1,400 filmstrips from the 1930s through the 1980s using a flatbed scanner and Hamrick Vuescan Professional, all of which have been uploaded to the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/uncommon-ephemera-filmstrips
• Received almost 3,000 filmstrips as donations.
• Fully restored approximately 150 sound filmstrips into 4K60 videos that correctly simulate how they would have been viewed originally, a workflow which includes scanning, proper capture of the soundtrack, manual cropping and straightening, color-correction, humanization of frame advancement, and so on, most of which are available on YouTube in addition to the Internet Archive: https://www.youtube.com/@UncommonEphemera
• Published in the Internet Archive’s Vanishing Culture Report, covering filmstrips as a forgotten medium and the challenges I’ve faced in preserving them: https://blog.archive.org/2024/10/30/vanishing-culture-a-report-on-our-fragile-cultural-record/
• In May of this year, hosted the first-ever “Filmstrip Festival,” an online all-weekend event where my wife and I showcased restored filmstrips, discussed the challenges we face in working with the medium, and attempted to raise funds for the continued preservation of the format.
• Since May of this year, I’ve set up a 24/7 live stream on both YouTube and Twitch similar to the Internet Archive’s microfiche scanning livestream, where I show Vuescan slowly scanning filmstrips, in an attempt to demonstrate how challenging the process is. During times when I am not scanning, the live stream shows previously-scanned films that have been uploaded to the Internet Archive (this live stream is temporarily on hiatus at the moment due to funding constraints).

Challenges:

• Not eligible for grants: Among other restrictions, I don’t qualify because every available grant requires you to be an established library or archive, and be in a public building where people can come and “examine” the original film. This isn’t even in my list of dream goals, as I can barely afford to do this alone in a home office; nor does it address the physical decomposition of some of the film I’m working with, which won’t be usable in its current form shortly anyway.
• On the autism spectrum: I have the smarts and the stubbornness to get this done no matter what I have to do, but I am not neurotypical or type-A personality enough to be a traditionally-charasmatic spokesperson. I think people just need to show tolerance to those of us with communication challenges, but I also know I need to wait until other people think that too.
• Completely self-taught and independent: While I see this as a positive, credentialism is still alive and well in archivist communities, and I’ve been refused help, dressed down, and even harassed by archivists with extra letters at the end of their names.
• Limited by my scanner: each frame takes 2 1/2 minutes to scan, frames need to be manually straightened if a restore is to take place. Because the scanner is only able to scan 22 frames in a single go, I need to be available every hour or so to place new film in the scanner, ensure it’s in the proper place, and hit “Scan.” This single thing alone makes this a full-time job, as it can take up to a full work day to scan a single long filmstrip. Archival-quality 35mm scanners are prohibitively expensive and little, if any, testing has been done with filmstrips on motion picture scanners to see if they’d even work with pieces of film this short.
• Motion-picture restoration tools and homebrew scanners aren’t appropriate: Scratch and blemish removal tools for motion pictures work by identifying and removing artifacts that appear in single frames, leading to an automation-centric cleaning process. On a filmstrip, the image in every frame is completely different, rendering these tools unusable, before even considering the hefty software licensing costs geared toward Hollywood studios. Homebuilt and “hacker”/“maker” film scanners, while usable for motion picture archival, are not sufficient for filmstrips. “Digital ICE” and similar technologies with an infrared scan pass are crucial for scanning filmstrips. I have absolutely zero mechanical engineering aptitude as well, meaning I couldn’t build one even if it was useful.
• Digital copies require protection: The data I am creating, including filmstrip scans, audio ingest, video projects, video renders, and other things, need to be backed up in multiple places, which means either remote NAS units or tens of terabytes of cloud storage. The Internet Archive, while an incredible resource in general and a great partner in this project, is not a backup, and as we saw during a cyberattack last year, can become unavailable at any time for any length of time. While I already have this structure in place, hardware and especially hard disks can fail at any time for any reason. DMCA takedowns, while rare in media from defunct companies and abandoned intellectual property, can still happen, leading even the Internet Archive to remove items.
• Ignorant third-party sellers: Many filmstrips listed on eBay are priced as “antiques” or “collectibles” as the seller has no experience with this particular market and has no idea they need to get to a preservationist before it’s too late - again, many are on Eastmancolor stock which is actively disintegrating.
• Unable to find volunteers for scan processing: Filmstrips were presented in a shutterless projector, so when they’re advanced you can often see the uneven edges of each frame that were often photographed through hand-cut mattes. Preparing the images in a way that keeps the matte edges is something no “crop and straighten” software function does, and I’ve been through at least two dozen volunteers who wander off, wondering if there’s a way they can make Photoshop or an AI chatbot do it for them, and I never hear back when they can’t.
• Algorithm-driven society: We live in a world that is driven by algorithms which only show us what we’ve already shown interest in. For the average person - even the average person interested in lost or rare media - filmstrips aren’t a thing they actively remember. Therefore filmstrips are not a thing they’ve ever searched for, and therefore my project is never algorithmically recommended to them.

Short-Term Goals:

• Be able to pay my bills while I continue to do this work full-time: My wife and I live in an economically-depressed rural area in upstate New York and have learned how to be quite frugal. We don’t even have Spotify or Netflix subscriptions. When setting up fundraising goals for 2025 I realized I could do this comfortably with my current workflow for the less than equivalent of minimum wage in many U.S. cities; unfortunately, I’ve not been able to raise awareness enough to meet even that meager goal.
• Digitize more than 3,000 remaining filmstrips in the current collection.
• Be able to continue taking filmstrip donations as people become aware of the urgency of rescuing this media.
• Restore every filmstrip that still has its soundtrack into a video simulating how it would have been seen when shown at the time.
• Continue uploading everything I preserve to the Internet Archive.
• Find someone who can help me construct (or find the time to build it myself) a site similar to IMDB or Discogs, but for filmstrips. Several years ago I built an internal-use-only project management database to store metadata about all the filmstrips I’ve got and status information (for instance, “is this one scanned?” or “has this one been restored?”), which theoretically would be easy for PHP code to pull from and make the data publicly accessible and easy to access. Having a large web presence with lots of pages for search engines to index would raise awareness. It would also end up training ChatGPT and similar AI bots on what I do, so that it might come up in conversations people are increasingly having with them.
• Develop machine-learning tools to properly crop and straighten the hundred thousand or so frame scans I’ve already done, and the several hundred thousand I have left to do, as this is the most time-consuming and mind-numbing part of the process besides the speed of the flatbed scanner.

Long-Term Goals:

• Acquire better scanning hardware: The sweet spot seems to be a BlackMagic Cintel at approximately $35,000, simply because every other machine in the market starts at almost a million dollars. However I have not specifically set this as a current goal because I still need to cover operating and household expenses, even if a Cintel were just to magically show up on my doorstep this afternoon. From the samples I’ve seen of Cintel transfers, it is able to register each film frame in exactly the same place, which would eliminate the crop-and-straighten pass for restores.
• Be financially able to continue even with better scanning hardware: Scanning is an important part of the process, but restored filmstrips are the easiest way to engage viewers.
• Become a 501c3 nonprofit: I have no experience with this nor do I have the funds to hire competent people to do it for me, but I’ve been told my donations would increase substantially if I did, though that’s not necessarily possible to prove.
• Get some volunteers who stick around: To help process scans, help me build websites, help me build machine-learning tools, and help me get the word out on social media.
• Acquire sponsorships and endorsements: From companies who provide data archival products and services, such as BlackMagic, Lasergraphics, Synology, Seagate, and so on.
• Forge relationships with film satirists: There would be much less interest in industrial films if not for Mystery Science Theater 3000, Rifftrax, and Red Letter Media. I imagine there is value to finding and acquiring more strange media for them to slaughter.
• To advocate for the update of restrictions around philanthropic giving: Including independent archivists who work with at-risk media and/or archivists who can’t afford the financial, managerial, or mental costs associated with running a public archive or museum. As someone on the Autism spectrum, navigating the traditional waters of academia has been a roadblock for me, and I imagine I’m not the only one who would have value to the archival community who lacks academic, institutional, or neurological privilege.

What I Need Right Now:

• Funding to keep the project going: My own seed capital to get to this point has been invested. This is a time- and labor-intensive workflow which, in conjunction with where we live, prevents me from supplanting this with a full-time job elsewhere. We only seek to be able to offset household expenses such as groceries, utility bills, home repairs, vehicle maintenance, and so on, in addition to light-to-moderate expenses relating to maintaining the work environment, such as internet access, replacement hard drives for NAS units, replacement of failing computer and scanning hardware, and a conservative tech refresh cycle, so I can continue to work. Based on our calculations, I can do this for approximately $30,000 a year, which is dramatically less than institutional archivists or independent archivists trying to live in bigger cities.
• Volunteers: To help determine if filmstrip-length 35mm film can even be scanned on higher-end scanners; to discover and address any challenges in doing so; to develop machine-learning tools that can help properly process frame scans for restoration; to help me do it by hand in the meantime; to share what I’m doing with other interested communities; to scale up internet presence by building out a site similar to IMDB; to advocate for preservation of filmstrips on and offline; and to find more filmstrips in need of saving.
• Media hits: Many information outlets, even things like Wikipedia and AI chatbots, require information to come from trusted media outlets before they will disseminate it. Articles, interviews, and podcast appearances which tell others about this neglected media could help me reach more people who could help.

What I Will Need in the Future:

• Archival-Quality film scanning hardware: This bears repeating: even if a Lasergraphics Director showed up at my house today, I’d still need the financial support to run more than 3,000 filmstrips through it, make sure metadata is properly recorded, upload these films to the Internet Archive, and restore ones that still have their soundtracks. That’s why, despite the challenges of scanning on a flatbed scanner, I can’t even afford to make this a goal right now.
• More space to work and safely store filmstrips: Should my short-term goals be achieved, I will eventually need to move into a larger space, even if it wasn’t open to the public. I can’t even imagine these costs right now, but doing it where I live would certainly mean lower rent than in a major city.

How You Can Help:

• GoFundMe: For one-time support and significant amounts, my GoFundMe for 2025 operating expenses is the best option. Donating to the GoFundMe also shows others that I am not insane for asking for help and encourages others to donate as well. Donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/uncommon-ephemera-2025
• Patreon: For recurring support and if you would like extra benefits including early access to restored filmstrips, credit in restored filmstrip videos, and exclusive content, it’s better to join my Patreon here: https://patreon.com/uncommonephemera
• Amazon Wishlist: If you’d like to help me with specific gear such as replacement hard drives, I have a few things in an Amazon Wishlist, though it is not a comprehensive list of things I need as some items are not available through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/PBD8L3DYNU2Q/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_1
• Join my Discord: Even though we’re on hiatus right now due to funding constraints, please join my Discord if you are interested in helping me find ways to continue doing this: https://discord.uncommonephemera.org.

Thank you for allowing me to tell you about this project and I hope I can inspire some of you to help me save this vanishing medium!

You can scan still photography on a motion-picture scanner, but in order to do that you need to splice all your strips together into large reels, for example 1,000ft.

That was my concern. What would be super helpful is if someone here knew exactly how short a reel could be before motion picture scanners would not scan it. Filmstrips are typically 80 motion picture frames and longer, with some topping out at 250 if you count the leader they give you and start/end frames. Is there something about their design that uses the tension of the reels to move the film, or are they more like a cassette deck with pinch rollers?

The other machines do not cost $1,000,000+!

It’s hard to know for sure. You would know better than me. For instance, LaserGraphics doesn’t list prices on their website, but at some point in my research I found someone selling the ScanStation for $700,000. Since the ScanStation only does 5K and I’m scanning at 8K now, my assumption is that the next one up, the Director, which scans at 13.5K, would be more than $300,000 more.

Not finding any usable search results, I asked Grok - I know, it’s probably just making stuff up - and it says the ScanStation “likely” costs between $80,000 and $100,000, and the “budget friendly” Lasergraphics Archivist is about half the price, but it doesn’t scan 35.

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you want a still photography scanner not a motion picture scanner.

Why would I take it the wrong way? What you are replying to is my best effort to find information in an environment that doesn’t know I exist, and in which equipment for what I do either doesn’t exist or is so obscure I need help finding it. Without any other knowledgeable people approaching me to help, the best I could do is determine “the Cintel seems to scan this type of film at a fraction of the cost of the only other manufacturer I could find,” and motion picture scans I could find on YouTube of the Cintel showed perfect frame registration - something I desperately need.

A BMD Cintel is not suited to you needs at all, and it would not be cost effective. Professional scanning on better machines than it generally starts at .20/ft, I presume your filmstrips are around 2-5ft in length

Some are that short but many are 10-15ft or longer.

you can’t expect 60 different “clips” spliced together to be individually checked - you’d need to do that yourself).

And I don’t expect that. But not being able to confirm until right now that motion picture scanners can’t handle film reels under 300ft, I wasn’t 100% sure I’d have to splice anything.

If I were you I’d look into the Filmomat 135 Autocarrier. Setting that up perfectly to get the film as “square” as possible would require you purchase some SMPTE resolution film. You can DIY everything yourself if you prefer. There are significantly less challenges with still photography scanning compared with the motion-picture scanners. You can buy functionally the same camera that the Cintel uses for about $600 used, or you can buy something much better for not that much more and you’re not limited to global-shutter cameras which saves you $$.

Forgive my ignorance on details like this, but is “135” a model number or another name for 35mm film?

I took a quick look at this website. I have concerns about how difficult it would be to properly align the camera, or if it would rock back and forth on that mount if I get up from my desk. But the primary concern seems to be that it’s set up to scan 8-perf 90-degree-rotated photography. It seems to need its own software to do an IR scan, and this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve encountered niche software that doesn’t recognize 4-perf motion picture format.

Like I said in my original post, this project is currently on hold due to not garnering financial support interest in the way that, say, a YouTube channel about the Nintendo Entertainment System or, perhaps, a celebrity on OnlyFans, so while I sincerely appreciate the news that I don’t need a Cintel or a ScanStation, I’m still not able to try out the Filmomat Autocarrier - especially since it looks like the camera stand is an extra thousand bucks, and I need to buy a special camera that can see IR. At those prices I’m wondering if a 25-year-old used Nikon Coolscan 5000 with the film roll adapter, which is available for $5,000 on eBay from price gougers, and I’ve had confirmed for me can be set up to do 4-perf with Vuescan, isn’t a better option.

The optical perf stabilisation you mention (that Blackmagic does in the Cintel’s hardware) can be done in Fusion.

What’s Fusion? Keep in mind in my current situation I don’t get a good scan of the perfs, so no software would have a good frame of reference for where they are. That’s another reason the Cintel looked so promising, it appears to scan all the way out to the edges of the film.

I can’t speak to how perfectly flat a table-top system like the 135 Autocarrier can get the film. The motion-picture scanners have sophisticated film transport modules that provide constant even tension for the film, whereas still photography scanners load the film in as a strip with no lateral tension. Your best bet would be to get someone that already has one to do some sample scans for you.

That’s one of the reasons I’m here. Unfortunately, you are the only person in five days to respond to my post, so I am hesitant to bug people further. If someone finds what I’m doing interesting and/or wants to volunteer for that, that would be great, but so far it looks like my project doesn’t belong here.

Again, that’s what I was hoping with the motion picture scanners, that the “sophisticated film transport modules” might work without needing hundreds of feet of film on the reels.

The geometric imperfections would be less important for you anyway, as mentioned it would be more about getting the frame as “square” as possible so that you don’t have to rotate the film digitally at all.

Filmstrips were never shown in anything that had a motion-picture-like transport system. A lot of times it was literally a single roller with sprockets on either side. While I’d rather not have any geometric distortion, I’ve been able to live with the amount I’m getting on the flatbed. Some filmstrips that are on Eastmancolor and actively breaking down will twist or wrinkle; not having any other options I just try to get a scan of each frame no matter how it looks. Perfect is the enemy of good, especially when they’re this bad.

I hope that helps!

It certainly does. For one, you replied. I sincerely appreciate that. Second, it’s a load off my mind I don’t need to spend $35K on a Cintel or whatever Lasergraphics hardware costs. However, without hearing from someone with experience with the Filmomat unit, it’s just another unknown I can’t currently afford. And, despite the resolution being half of what I’m scanning now, I know the Coolscan works for (offensively) the same price.

Regardless I guess I’m going to have to wait until more people are interested in what I do, if that happens. I was very naive when I started this project, I had a bit of survivorship bias, as I saw people just posting cool projects on the internet and thousands of people showing up to help them. I forgot about the ones for whom that doesn’t happen. Thanks very much for the good information on the motion picture scanners and the Filmomat unit.