LOS ANGELES, CA – Iron Mountain Incorporated® Entertainment Services has played a key role in the restoration of materials surrounding the classic mid-60s surf movie The Endless Summer, which is being released in a deluxe 50th-anniversary edition box set and coffee table book in Q1 2017. Directed by Bruce Brown, the movie took viewers along for the ride as two surfers trekked the globe in search of the perfect wave, stopping in California, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii. In 2002, The Endless Summer was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” A box-office hit upon release with a considerable fanbase today, the film is now presented in a lavish collector’s set for fans both old and new.
The limited-edition deluxe edition features a fully restored film, unique hand-cut film strips, a replica of Bruce Brown’s original map used during production, and other one-of-a-kind artifacts. Iron Mountain personnel, including restoration expert Howard Sisko, digitized the film from its original reels, identified and hand-cut 3000 key six-frame strips for book inclusion, scanned Brown’s map and much more. Iron Mountain was entrusted with proper handling of these historic materials, and they succeeded on all counts, preserving this bit of film history for the ages.
The book/package’s publisher and executive producer Jay Fox, who initially sought the consultation of Iron Mountain on the project, has a rich background in consumer product development for top-level media clients. Before he helped bring the project to fruition, a partially-finished work sat in development limbo for over a year. “There was a printer-manufacturer involved, and there was the licensing of Bruce Brown Films, but there was nobody ready to take it to market. This opportunity came to me, and once I heard it was The Endless Summer 50th Anniversary edition, I was on board. I grew up in the environment of southern California, and I’m old enough to remember the 1960s, so this was really a natural project for me; it felt like a perfect match.”
Iron Mountain’s involvement in the project grew organically: “Greg Parkin [Iron Mountain Director, Digital Studios] is a personal friend of mine, and I’ve been fascinated over the years to find out more and more about what Iron Mountain does, beyond document storage,” notes Fox. “It’s obviously much bigger than that. So I had this really interesting archival project – specifically, a classic film that had been stored away and never digitized; it needed to be handled with kid gloves. I wanted Greg’s opinion on the project, so we set up a meeting to review the film and assess its condition. He brought his ‘A team’ – guys that understood film and archival projects, and how to edit and ship these things. Everyone got really fired up when I was able to show them the book in progress and what we had already. We then got together with Howard [Sisko] and went through the film frame by frame. He deemed it all usable, even though the reels had a vinegary scent. Then they were able to digitize it and help create hundreds of unique film strips to include in the boxes, as one-of-a-kind collectors items. It was a pleasant, efficient, professional process. I would definitely work with this team again, and I would recommend them to anyone with archival material that needs to be handled in the proper way.”
For more information, please visit www.endlesssummerbooks.com/.
