Establishing a Shared Understanding of Recording Quality

The purpose of this event is to consider what value recordings of performance might have for researchers, teachers, students and artists and to help archivists and collections managers of performing arts collections to come to a shared understanding of audience and artist expectations and reservations about the quality of recordings. We would like the outcome to be a resource for APAC members useful for describing different levels of recording quality

In this event we’re primarily thinking about recordings created for ‘archival purposes’ rather than high quality ones made for broadcast or with a public audience in mind. The types of recordings we want to focus on include fixed single camera recordings, multi-camera edits, recordings migrated from VHS or other obsolete formats, and those where picture or audio quality is a barrier to artists being comfortable with the recordings being viewed or users being disappointed by what is and isn’t visible and audible.

The speakers will be collections managers/information professionals (Erin Lee of the National Theatre and Jim Ranahan of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust), users (Dr Peter Kirwan of the University of Nottingham and Nadine Deller of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) and artists (Dickie Beau and Fisayo Akinade) sharing their experiences of working with recordings or being recorded. There will be break out sessions for groups to work on a ‘wish-list’ for a guide to recording quality and a set of minimum standards.