Day 52: Microfilm

We are truly blessed to have the internet nowadays. For an assignment I have for my History of Silent Film class, we have to find a primary source for our research topic. This means we have to go through hours and hours of microfilm until we stumble upon something that is mildly relevant to our paper. The first step is going through drawers and drawers of 35mm microfilm. There are some documents here that are as old as the 1700's but I was looking for material between 1887 and 1927. Here is just "The Moving Picture World" drawer from 1902-1935.

Then you have to go to this old school machine that I've only seen once before in Silence of the Lambs and flip through literally days of newspaper articles, magazines, and everything else that was in print in 1902. It was fun seeing historical stuff like how Roosevelt became president after McKinley got assassinated but the whole time I kept thinking about using "ctrl F".

I have a new found respect for our parents who had to do this shit all motha fuckin day. At least I'll have a legit paper by the end of the quarter: The Creation and Evolution of Special Effects in the Early Cinema.