Athletic Archive Film-Shrinkage Measurement Workflow for Historic Game Reels
Athletic archive film shrinkage measurement workflow is the set of steps archivists, athletic directors, and facilities staff follow to quantify dimensional change in historic game reels — before those reels are placed on a projector, cleaned, or sent to a digitization vendor. When 16mm or 8mm film manufactured before the 1990s loses moisture and plasticizer over decades of storage, the film base contracts. That contraction reduces the distance between sprocket perforations — a measurement called perforation pitch — by a fraction of a millimeter. At low shrinkage levels the film is still projectable. At moderate levels it requires a flatbed scanner rather than a projector. At high shrinkage levels the film is brittle, and any mechanical handling risks shattering the base or tearing perforations, permanently destroying irreplaceable footage of championship games, senior nights, and athlete recognition ceremonies.
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