Passion meets preservation

Brian Meacham is a film detective. He connects lines of dialogue like puzzle pieces, finds the links between past and present cinematic moments, and makes lists of sequence ideas in his head. These are skills he put to good use when making “That Whole “Yale Thing”,” a 73-minute film meant to celebrate the history of both film and Yale’s presence in film.

Thirty seconds into speaking with him, it becomes obvious he has a deep love of film, rivaled only by his love of history. Given that, one might think his current profession would be a foregone conclusion. In reality, it wasn’t until grad school that Meacham — who had been an English major with a concentration in film studies as an undergraduate — would discover the perfect blend of his passions lay in the rows of an archive.

“I had already known of the work of film archives, having gone to restored film presentations and heard about things like that,” said Meacham. “But it slowly dawned on me that you could combine an interest in history and archives and libraries with an interest in film in a place called a film archive.”

Archival adventures

Meacham has been the film archivist at the Yale Film Archive since 2013. Prior to this role, he’d dabbled in everything from teaching at an elementary school to web design. Since joining the Yale community over a decade ago, he is still in awe of what initially drew him to the university.

“I think Yale’s collections and cultural resources were really the thing that impressed me the most upon first visiting and have remained my favorite things to do here,” said Meacham.

The film preservation room on the seventh floor of Sterling Memorial Library is a love letter to cinema. There are bits of film from movies old and new, reels from all the major studios, and equipment designed specifically to ensure rediscovered films stay as safe as possible.

Meacham spearheaded the project to preserve John Ford’s Upstream — as well as hundreds of other American silent films — and bring it back to the big screen, resulting in him being on stage with Ford’s son at the film’s “re-premiere.”

“I still think that will probably be the high point of my archival career. It’s hard to top that,” said Meacham.

He cites his “eagerness” and “inability to go on vacation and leave it as vacation” as the cause of the project’s success. The key factor, though, was his curiosity. While working as a film preservationist at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles, Meacham visited the New Zealand Film Archive during a vacation. He inquired if they had any American silent films, and was then provided with a list containing films that had previously been thought lost to time. Working together with that institution, the National Film Preservation Foundation, and five American film archives, Meacham was able to bring the films back to the U.S.

Cue the montage

“That Whole “Yale Thing”” was partially inspired by Christian Marclay’s “The Clock,” a film exhibit Meacham has been an admirer of for years. The installation is 24 hours long and includes clips from various films depicting clocks and other references to time, all synchronized with the actual time of day.

The production process for “That Whole “Yale Thing”” wasn’t easy. While Yale’s archive is extremely comprehensive, there were titles it didn’t have. Meacham had to don his metaphorical deerstalker and go on a hunt for films in a way Sherlock Holmes himself would surely be proud of. In addition to the archive, he relied heavily on Best Video, a video store in Hamden (and part of a dying breed). He also utilized a website that housed thousands of subtitle files from countless films, helping him learn of films he otherwise might not have thought of or known about. At the end of it all, he drew footage from about 225 films.

In making the film, it was important to Meacham that it tell a story. He wanted to find links that bound a scene to the next one, and so on and so on. Every clip was chosen with the utmost deliberation and intention.

“Linkages between these sections begin to appear; you can transition from the section about wanting to get into Yale [to] a scene where someone talks about applying to Yale, and they also find out they get into Yale, and then the finding out they get into Yale transitions into the next segment,” said Meacham.

Bringing in his film history expertise, Meacham was also able to find connections within the filmographies of actors from the movies he compiled, like how he was able to link Harrison Ford and Humphrey Bogart due to them playing the same character in different eras.

Passing the torch

Like many in the film industry, Meacham laments the ever-dwindling existence of physical media, but is very proud of the work Yale’s archive does to keep things going in that regard. He also has some solid advice for everyone at all interested in getting into the world of film, regardless of which area of it they choose: watch as many movies as possible.

“There’s just so much out there, and there’s so much that’s accessible and available now. It’s really necessary to open people’s minds to the world of human experience and human expression,” said Meacham.

And if you get stuck, you can always set themes for yourself, as Meacham regularly does. He’s presently set on watching movies from the 1970s that he’s never seen, and is up to around 300 films so far.

Currently, Meacham doesn’t have plans to release “That Whole “Yale Thing”” to the public, but is more than happy to continue screening it for anyone interested. He’s also not opposed to making it an annual event. He encourages the Yale community to attend the public screenings hosted by the film archive, and hopes other aspiring filmmakers will be inspired enough to become film detectives themselves.