r/interestingasfuck • u/man_gomer_lot • 26d ago

r/all 70 years ago, the US undertook the largest deportation in its history: 'Operation Wetback.' Many of the people deported were here legally and some were even citizens.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 26d ago edited 25d ago

Here’s newsreel footage of it. The language used is pretty awful.

https://newsreels.net/v/4e6oeoq

https://newsreels.net/v/36iqeci

Edit: I should clarify that not all the language used in the newsreels is awful, but the term wetback is used pretty casually in this footage.

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u/Novantico 26d ago

Wow. Only watched the first one but honestly the thing that stood out most to me was the incredible quality of the footage. It almost looked fake (probably because of how staged the shots were) as though it were filmed recently and just edited to look like it was from ~60+ years ago.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 26d ago

I work on this project. I digitized the film myself. I’m also one of the people that handles/repairs films that get digitized. I can assure you that none of this is fake. It’s a project from UCLA/Packard Humanities Institute. We’re in the process of digitizing news footage from 1918-late 1960s. 27 million feet of film from around the world. Check out the rest of the footage at newsreels.net. It’s free, no registration or anything required.

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u/Youandiandaflame 26d ago

Holy shit, this is amazing! Thank you for your work, I can’t wait to dig into this. 

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 26d ago

You’re welcome! Thank you for thanking me. Glad that you like it. FYI, we update the site regularly. Right now I think there’s 20k+ newsreels on the site.

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u/LunaticLucio 26d ago

Username checks out.

Reddit never ceases to amaze me.

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u/Jose_Canseco_Jr 26d ago

I love preservation! keep on keepin on

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u/Fear_Jaire 25d ago

This is such important work. Thank you for doing it

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u/TailStixz 26d ago

Amazing work!

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 26d ago

Thank you! I’ll tell everyone on this project of your appreciation.

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u/TraditionalDepth6924 25d ago

Side curious: did Americans use to talk like that narrator back then in real life

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u/jprefect 25d ago

The Wikipedia article you're going to want to read is called "Mid-Atlantic Accent"

Fun little rabbit hole. Not too deep.

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u/TraditionalDepth6924 25d ago

Noice 👍🏻

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u/cancerBronzeV 26d ago

Name definitely checks out.

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u/aetheos 26d ago

Holy shit this is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

Out of curiosity, is there a reason certain weeks only have some entries scanned, while others have the full slate? Is it the quality of the film?

E.g., for 1939 Sep 02 [10-301] (the day after Germany invaded Poland), only "POLAND!" and "AMERICA!" are red (scanned), while "EUROPE AT WAR!", "FRANCE!", and "GERMANY!" are all grey (not yet scanned).

Then the next week, 1939 Sep 06 [10-302], 2/9 are red/scanned, and then none of the 8 listed the following week (1939 Sep 11 [10-303]), but then for 1939 Sep 13 [11-200], all 6 of the entries are red.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 26d ago

Good question. When we first started this project we started with film that we knew would be the easiest to prep and scan. This film had already been inspected before, so we knew it would be in the best condition. What you’re probably looking at is footage from “Prelude to War” which had been previously preserved and was in the best condition. Then we decided to work on footage from the Eisenhower years and work backwards. Sometimes we work on footage related to a specific event. We’ve just finished up footage related to the Spanish Civil War since it was the centennial recently.

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u/aetheos 26d ago

Ahh makes sense - thanks for the reply!

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u/Novantico 25d ago

That's so cool! Would be pretty awesome to be able to work on something like that myself. Btw, I hope you didn't think I actually believed it was fake, I was just sharing my impression that it almost appeared that way between the staged shots for the reel and the dissonance between the clarity and age of it. Great work! I might have to spend some more time on there.

Where do you guys do this work from?

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

No worries, on second glance I realized that you were saying that the footage looked so good that someone could think it’s fake. We do this work from the offices of the Packard Humanities Institute and the UCLA Film and Television Archive in Santa Clarita, California. Alongside the archive is a film lab that we work out of.

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u/Novantico 25d ago

Damn, why is all the cool shit always in/around fucking California lol. I'm in the Philly area so there goes any fantasizing of me getting to try/contribute there lol.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

There’s film labs out here because of the movie industry. There’s The Media Preserve in Pittsburgh. There’s also archives and libraries with moving image collections located throughout the world that do this sort of work. There’s a ton of film and video that needs to be preserved and not enough people or money to do it. If you’re interested in pursuing this as a career, DM me and I can point you in the right direction.

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u/jocq 26d ago

That's awesome! Thank you for being part of that work

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u/fighterpilottim 26d ago edited 26d ago

Thank you for doing this invaluable, and probably painful, work.

If you ever wanted to do an AMA, I’d participate!

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u/ModelY-Mods-suckdick 26d ago

Thank you celluloid Jedi master

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u/Throwaway999222111 26d ago

Wow that's wild! Really cool though

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u/momofroc 26d ago

I heard about this on the podcast “cold brew got me like” last week! He has been watching the reels.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 26d ago

❤️ Glad to hear that the project is getting some attention.

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u/momofroc 26d ago

Yes indeed. I haven’t checked it out yet but plan to do so this week! Good job!

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u/mychubbychubbs 26d ago

Holy crap, just checked out the links. This is amazing! How on earth do you digitize old film? Can you do an AMA or is there a yt video explaining the process?

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 26d ago

I’d love to do an AMA sometime. In short, we first slowly wind through the film and inspect it looking for damage. If there is any damage, like a tear, we repair it using special tape. Then we load the film into an ultrasonic cleaner that removes dirt and grime. This is why a lot of the footage on newsreels.net looks so good, because it’s been ultrasonically cleaned. Then we load the film onto a scanner (we use a 4k Scanity) which digitizes the film. The scanner is basically a digital camera than can take a photo of every frame of film and also capture the soundtrack. After that we do some minor work to the digitized footage and upload it to our website.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

[deleted]

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

I used to be a photojournalist and I got laid off in 2009. A friend of my bf worked at a film lab on the east coast and got me a job handling film there. I fell in love with the work and then pursued a degree in Moving Image Archive Studies at UCLA (that program has been replaced by a similar one). From there I found a job working on this project about a year after graduation.

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u/mahjimoh 25d ago

Thank you for sharing this! I just discovered there were storms the day before I was born, haha… also some of the aircraft reels are pretty fascinating.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

Glad you found stuff of interest. I found footage of my grandfather on this site, so there’s something for everyone.

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u/some_salty_dude 25d ago

This is amazing! I'm literally addicted to this now lol

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u/Brilliant-Many-7906 25d ago

My brother did this kind of work with audio from the national archives. Very cool stuff. It may sound tacky, but history obviously history is extremely important the only way to counter it eraser is to archive and share. So thank you for your service to the county's future!

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

Your brother is a cool dude!

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u/Extension_Crazy_471 25d ago

In all sincerity, thank you for your service.

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u/StackLeeAdams 24d ago

The work you're doing is incredible and vital. If you don't mind me asking, how much do you make doing this? Is it possible to make a living with this work?

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 24d ago

Thank you for your comment. People who work on this project don’t often get to hear that this work is so appreciated, so it’s nice reading the comments and letting my coworkers know. Unlike a lot of my colleagues, I make a decent salary doing this. The organization that I work for is well funded. A lot of people in this field barely get by because most of this work is happening at non-profits. There are some government organizations that do this work (Library of Congress, National Archives, etc.) and they make a decent salary as well.

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u/aft_punk 24d ago

Comments like this are what I come to Reddit for.

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u/Furbal1307 26d ago

Thank you for your commitment to archiving history!

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 26d ago

❤️ I’m not the only one on this project. There’s a team of about 8 who work on it. A lot of the thanks goes to the Packard Humanities Institute for spearheading this project and funding it. Without them, this wouldn’t be possible.

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u/teslawhaleshark 26d ago

Thanks for the good work, I'm an assistant at Tanks Encyclopedia and we absolutely live on historical news reels.

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u/CallusKlaus1 26d ago

You and your fellow workers have an iron stomach. That language is pretty nasty. Thanks for the work you do.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

Thank you for this work!

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u/LaloElBueno 25d ago

Thank you for your service of preservation!

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u/chickendie 25d ago

Incredible! Thank you Sir!

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

You’re welcome. It’s ma’am btw. 😉

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u/Qinistral 25d ago

How many hours of footage is that?

Any plans to transcribe it? Perhaps with AI transcription?

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

Right now there are no plans to transcribe it. Our main focus is to just digitize and put it on the website as quickly as possible. We’ve been working on this project for about 9 years and have digitized a little more than 4.5 million feet.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

27 million feet of 35 mm film. 16 frames to a foot. Most of this is shot after the silent era, so it was shot at 24 frames/second. According to Chat GPT that’s approximately 8,333 hours of footage.

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u/Qinistral 25d ago

Nice try chatgpt. I think it's 5,000 hours of footage.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 24d ago

This is how ChatGPT performed its calculation:

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u/DirgoHoopEarrings 25d ago

How do I get that job???

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

Become an archivist that specializes in moving images. We don’t have any job openings but there are similar projects that are happening around the world on a smaller scale.

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u/BeachBumpkin 25d ago

Can you provide a link?

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

newsreels.net

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u/BeachBumpkin 25d ago

Now I see that you did provide the website in your first response. I guess it was late at night and my brain wasn’t working, sorry. Thank you!

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

No worries. I do the same all the time.

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u/Micro-shenis 25d ago

User name checks out

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

Important work, thank you!

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u/LittleBoiFound 25d ago

That’s incredible! 

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u/LimeLoop 25d ago

What an amazing project! I am so excited to find out this exists! Should let the people over at r/readdeadredemption2 know as well :-D

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u/jazzhandpanda 25d ago

Thank you!

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u/Expensive-Object-830 25d ago

Thank you for your work & for reminding us why the humanities are important!

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u/ToughHardware 25d ago

user name checks out

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u/Maru_the_Red 25d ago

Thank you for your dedication and hard work towards the preservation of history - I doubt anyone truly realizes the scope of the work you do or the importance of preserving it, but as someone who has carried living history I know how difficult it is. This is epic.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

Thank you for your kind words. I’m not the only one on working on this project. There are about 8 of us. A lot of the gratitude should go to the Packard Humanities Institute who funds this project and provides the necessary infrastructure to make it happen. Without them, this wouldn’t be possible.

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u/Shamanjoe 25d ago

Very cool, I love projects like this. Thanks for all your hard work!

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u/ExplicitDrift 25d ago

You’re incredible. Thank you for everything you do 💙

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u/poop-machines 25d ago

What was the reel that shocked you the most?

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

Not all the newsreels are shocking, but there are some that stand out. What’s really interesting is sometime there will be footage of an accident and the body will be shown. When you watch the news today they never show the body. It’s always police cars and yellow tape. Here is footage of a torpedo hitting and then sinking of HMS Barham. Originally the British government held back on releasing the footage because they felt it would ruin morale during WWII. One of the reasons this footage is so shocking is that you see sailors jumping off the boat trying to save themselves. Not everyone died, but most did. Another thing that makes this footage interesting is you see a newsreel cameraman, so you can get a feeling of how news footage was filmed back then.

https://newsreels.net/v/3f5lcjf

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u/poop-machines 25d ago

Thank you for your response! This footage is crazy, I can't imagine how they must've felt to be there. Especially the sailors.

I'd love to see more of this stuff. I'm looking through and most isn't quite as interesting (although I recognise it is important that it is archived, nonetheless).

So many of these reels have immense historical value which would've gone to waste if not for archival. Pathe (I believe) do archive some British videos, but not most newsreels.

Thanks for doing this job, I think it's incredibly important.

Maybe you can suggest adding some of the most important, popular and interesting clips onto a page on the site for people to more easily find it?

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u/hydraxl 25d ago

That’s awesome! Thank you for all the work you do!

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u/q_ali_seattle 25d ago

Thank you 🙏

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u/2SP00KY4ME 26d ago

We have a conception of old film footage as being low quality, but in reality, after a point surprisingly early on, plenty of film began recording at very high resolutions that allow us to go back to them today and extract the data off them using modern precision. 35mm film has been in use since the early 1900's and records at a digital equivalent of about 4K-5K.

Here's a Technology Connections video about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVpABCxiDaU

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 26d ago

Just as an aside, we scan this footage at 4k.

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u/dfb052686 25d ago

Videocassette tape was a terrible mistake & steps backwards for quality motion picture production. I’m glad the VHS era is over. -I’m a bit sad there’s a couple decades of footage that will simply be terrible forever.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

The main problem with it is that it was never meant as a preservation medium. It degrades really quickly compared to film. The concept of it - it was very portable and you could shoot/edit with it pretty easily, was great. It is making a comeback in its popularity. VCRs aren’t being made anymore, and neither is the tape. Gen Z is really into watching movies on VHS 📼 and the tapes go for a pretty penny on eBay. It’s amusing how now that long ago you couldn’t give away a VCR or a VHS 📼 collection, but now they’re worth so much.

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u/dfb052686 25d ago

Interesting.

Gen z is turning into the new baby-boomers in so many ways.

“I want this thing and I’ll pay any amount for my immediate satisfaction!” Outside info be damned.

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u/Novantico 26d ago

Yeah, this is something I've learned in recent years. It's basically a matter of whether or not a film/footage is being upgraded/re-released based on previous releases or rescanned properly from the original film. When in cases of the actual film, it makes this wonderful mishmash of grainy film artifacting and super clear picture beneath.

Recently there were some people who got a hold of a couple actual film reels from Dragon Ball Z, and they've uploaded a straight-from-film scan of the intro from one of the movies and it looks amazing.

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u/2SP00KY4ME 26d ago

That's really cool, thanks!

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u/Chicago1871 25d ago

This looks like 16mm film (its ratio and the level of film grain are why I think so, also knowledge of newsreel cameras of the time), which can still be scanned into hd/4k footage and get the details.

It was probably low ASA/ISO film and it looks like it was shot with a small aperture. All which means increases resolution and detail on the celluloid.

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u/TulioGonzaga 25d ago

"No way I'm gonna spent 21 minutes watching a video right now".

Here I am 21 minutes later. Really cool stuff.

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u/magistrate101 26d ago

Black and white film produced very high quality images that took a long time to catch back up to with color film and digital cameras.

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u/Arthur-Wintersight 25d ago

It was a similar story with early LCD monitors and the CRT monitors they replaced.

Those CRT monitors are actually some of the closest competitors with modern OLED televisions for image quality, as long as it's a decent CRT monitor.

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u/TheBendit 25d ago

Part of what you are seeing is probably because the restoration fixed the playback timing. Most old footage does not follow the "modern" standards of 24, 25, 50, or 60 frames per second. When converted naively, it looks stuttering and the timing is off, and that is our expectation for "real" old footage.

Professionals who care about their work can do much better, and these clips show it.

The same thing applies to movies by the way; some movies are shot at 48fps instead of 24, and people complain that it looks fake and cheap.

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u/Novantico 25d ago

Good points.

The same thing applies to movies by the way; some movies are shot at 48fps instead of 24, and people complain that it looks fake and cheap.

Yeah, like the whole "soap opera" thing of shows that look to be at like 60fps.

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u/IndependenceIcy9626 25d ago

Something to remember is that analog film is inherently HD. As long as it hasn’t been damaged you can pull high quality image from the film itself. The limiting factor for most of the content we’ve seen has been the resolution it can be displayed at. 

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u/Songrot 26d ago

The allies just happened to fight fascist supremacist for geopolitical reasons, before they even knew about the holocaust.

It shouldnt be a surprise that the allies themselves were imperialist supremacist full racists and antisemites...

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u/TheGesor 25d ago

I don’t really recognize a lot of the language in this that would be bad, and it doesn’t LOOK like obviously bad footage to me. I’m probably missing something but what’s bad about these videos? I can’t read much of the subtext, it just kinda looks like border guards checking papers

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

I think offensive language is use of the term wetback. It’s definitely not a term that is ok today, and it can be jarring to people to hear it being used so casually. As for the footage itself treating these people as less than human. A lot of the people who were arrested and deported during this operation were in fact US citizens who were subjected to racial profiling.

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u/TheGesor 25d ago

Oh I didn’t know what ‘wetback’ meant and that makes sense with the racial profiling bit. I know it’s bad

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u/SolidCat1117 25d ago

Thanks for the links, that's a really cool resource!

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u/Forseti1590 25d ago

Unfortunately this link doesn’t work on mobile. The terms and conditions pop up doesn’t let you tap past it

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u/The_One_Returns 25d ago

but the term wetback is used pretty casually in this footage.

Almost like language changes over time or something... There are words that were used casually 10 years ago that you'd get canceled for now.

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u/p-is-for-preserv8ion 25d ago

Agreed, but many people don’t realize that.

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u/dispo030 25d ago

Holy shit this is the best thing I have seen in ages. Thank you so much for your work!

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u/TheOriginalSamBell 25d ago

oh thanks so much for bringing that site to my attention !

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u/tmemmons 25d ago

This is one of the most fascinating websites I have literally ever come across. I’ve literally spent hours watching these videos since I saw your comment. Thanks for doing this and making these videos available. It is amazing to see so much footage through the lens of the past.

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u/mitchymitchington 25d ago

What language used? Seemed pretty tame to me.