The Kaunas operator lifts people’s most important memories for a second life

A creative person is able to adapt to the changing environment, the challenges of the time. After many years of filming family events and celebrations, A. Narbutas from Kaunas took a fresh look at the meaning of the cameraman’s job, discovered his mission and vocation. Seeks to preserve people’s memories.

Less value conscious

A. Narbutas, who has worked as a cameraman for many years, noted that technologies are changing, younger and faster competitors are entering the film market. They provide services at much lower prices than professional operators.

Staying in a competitive, thankless, and quarantined environment is quite difficult. Restricted meetings, banquets, travel, pause and operator activities. More and more people record family vacations and trips with their mobile phones. They need less and less professional services.

Not all customers understand the true value of filming: the depreciation costs of quality equipment, labor, professional installation, operator time, and expertise. Despite the fact that you have spent your whole life filming various events, the city, its people, the athletes, you have to change the forms of activity, look for new opportunities to fulfill yourself by adapting to the rapidly changing environment.

Dust in the attic corners of houses

There are still people who store the recordings of their weddings and children’s baptisms on videotapes. They dust somewhere in boxes, in the attic corners of houses. However, few know that they too can be resurrected to a second life.

Many years of activity have helped A. Narbutas to accumulate a considerable amount of the necessary equipment, which allows him to digitize everything: old video tapes, film tapes, voice recordings from tape recorders, old movie films. It is important to do this because they contain family stories, memories, the first words spoken by adult children, recorded attempts to take the first steps or recite the first poem.

The wedding, the christening, the travel photos testify to the passage of time, they remember the fashion of that time, the style of clothing, the hairstyles of the people. They revive the changed panorama of the city, the old buildings, the streets of oblivion.

The operator has to work mainly with private family archives, but companies, sports clubs, museums and cultural centers also apply.

Descartes home archives

The interlocutor regretted that, due to ignorance, people throw away an extremely valuable home file, losing history. They do not believe that impressions captured on video many years ago can relive familiar moments.

“Older people are also rewriting old records, but we, in our studio, have accumulated the full range of necessary equipment. We have been shipping transcription equipment from all over the world for many years, buying it from online auctions. Even though nobody makes Similar equipment, sometimes we buy the necessary equipment from individuals or company warehouses. The technology accumulated in the studio allows the digitization of recordings from both American and European video systems. And it all started with the updating of some publications for friends. Little by We have little noticed that this need is emerging in the market and, in our studio, we have been doing it since 2005. We replaced active filming with digitization of old files, transferring images from analog signal to digital format, rewriting the original recording. Subsequently, the client reviews, notes what he wants to cut out and what to emphasize. At the customer’s request, we can help create a script in which we do the assembly. The relationship between client and client is very important. For the client, we cannot decide which images have the greatest lasting value for the family, which shots evoke the most precious memories ”, revealed the professional custodian of the family archives the details of his work.

Wrinkled, rubbed at intervals

According to the operator, people also bring wrinkled strips, rubbed at intervals. There are also broken audio cassettes. Then you have to disassemble them manually, stick them to the tape.

“We clean mold, we repair partially damaged records, we provide a comprehensive service so that people’s files are not lost. If necessary, we can upload music to silent tracks. And here is a colleague I work with at the Perrasymas.lt studio , specialized in digitizing old films. This is an activity that requires infinite care, these tapes are already cracking and are extremely fragile, some need to be restored before rewriting, “said the interlocutor.

It is important to protect personal information

A. Narbutas opened that the protection of personal data is very important in this area. Complete records are sent through post offices.

“It is important to guarantee the protection and confidentiality of the data, because we work with personal information, which records people’s private lives. The client gives his medium and all the information is uploaded to him, it is not stored on the hard drives of the study, “said the specialist.

A. Narbutas has the greatest fun to contribute to the preservation of history, the resurgence of old memories. In his opinion, the family archive cannot be thrown into the back of the closet. After all, 50, 70 years will pass; It will be very interesting for future generations to see how our grandparents, great-grandparents and parents lived.

“Life is changing rapidly, new technologies are invading, old videotapes are warranted for 15 years, and now the environment is exposed to strong magnetic signals, which are said to affect older audio or video files. Therefore, if we want to keep them, it is necessary to transfer them to another format, digitize them and as soon as possible. Some people write the story and we write it in digital format, “said S. Narbutas, studio director and operator of Perrašymas.Lt, and now also a chronicler of family stories.