‘Please note there is no other copy whatever of what I’m sending, so don’t lose it,’ wrote Brian O’Nolan in 1942 when he sent the producer a draft of a play he had been commissioned to write. Coming across this plaintive statement in The Collected Letters of Flann O’Brien prompted the realisation of just how easily and quickly we have become used to accept that the written word is now virtually indestructible.
A recent discovery in the Fisherscircle archive is a typed script for a film written in 1965. You guessed: the only known copy, long forgotten, as maybe it should have remained. But as it relates to a reel of unedited 8mm film that was digitised a few years ago, it might at least explain some of the otherwise imponderable footage.
Click to enlarge in new window
In its digital form the film can now be copied with ease, far more readily than when it existed only as celluloid. A scanned copy of the script could also be endlessly reproducible, or at least sent safely and indestructibly by email to my friend Pete, who worked on the film with me. I get to keep the original and make back-up copies of the scan.
The film and script had been around for at least 20 years before digital imaging started to become a practical proposition and another decade before the early days of commercial availability. Anyone who was at work more than 30 years ago will recall that making copies involved carbon paper or the Gestetner duplicator. Anyone else will have to Google them but will still not appreciate the operational matters involved.
Copying photographs was even more laborious, involving not just paper but an enlarger, trays of chemicals and a dark room.
We are now moving into another era. Not only can human-made words and images be near-infinitely reproduced, computers can generate them from nothing more than an algorithm and a lot of previous examples. With generative AI existing work can be manipulated and the doctored copy be indistinguishable from the original.
So if I want to claim sole credit for that film, all I have to do is remove Pete from the frame. Sorry, Pete.
L-R: A photo of me and Pete;
Pete disappears and as if by magic I acquire colour;
Photoshop instead inserts an entirely unknown Uncle Albert. (How weird is that?)<
But could you tell which is the original?
Page created 14 January 2024