arts // no. 8 Preserving material for improved quality >» Universal Music's loss shows us physical media is still invaluable Jerrison Oracion Senior Columnist It the digital era, lots of content is purchased or viewed through a computer or mobile device. Just a couple of decades ago you would have to go to a store to get new content, then you'd have to open the physical case of the VHS, DVD, or CD and put it in a player. Two years ago I wrote an opinion piece on why physical media will still exist in the future. The medium can also be used to restore material and preserve it for future generations to see and hear. Many restorations of films are made possible using original film negatives or with missing film prints being found. These materials are preserved in archives so that they can be used again to remaster them in a higher quality when new technology is developed. A recent news story has showed why physical media is important. Remember the fire that happened at Universal Studios in Hollywood in 2008 where parts of the set of the Back to the Future film series were damaged and the King Kong section of Studio Tours was burned down? The section that was burned down was also the location of a vault that had most of Universal Music’s catalogue—including the master tapes of many important moments in music history. Initially it was reported that the vault was not damaged by the fire, but when the New York Times Magazine published a feature called “The Day the Music Burned” on June u of this year, they revealed that the vault also burned down in 2008. Because the original recordings of the music in that vault were destroyed, we will never hear the highest quality version of the music of Nirvana, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Buddy Holly, and even Sheryl Crow. When new technology is available to remaster the music, the material in the vault could have had an improved sound and clarity and might have revealed sounds that we'd never heard before in the original release. Like a film print, the original master tape of an album has all of the details of the recording and more details can be found when the original is remastered. In comparison, the digital file of an album contains all of the data of the recording but it cannot be improved. While the digital masters can be remastered, the New York Times piece explains, there will be no difference between the previous remaster and the new remaster because the audio resolution will remain the same—it will just be louder. In addition, the servers that the digital files are on do not last as long asa Why so many Spider-Men? » Following the rights to Spider-Man among major movie corporations Craig Allan Contributor his month sees the return of the web-slinging wall crawler known as Spider-Man to the big screen in Spider- Man: Far From Home. Spider-Man by far has the biggest presence of any comic book character around today. With his many film appearances dwarfing every other comic book character, we have to ask: Why so many Spider-Men? The question is understandable. Spider-Man's seven live-action solo films (the made-for-TV movies from 1977 to 1981, and the Japanese adaptation, which did receive a sparse theatrical release in various regions, are not included in this total) puts him only behind Batman for the most solo films from a comic book character. However, it took Batman over 40 years to get to seven films, while Spider- Man has done it in 18 years. The reason for this oversaturation of Spider-Man films stems from a rights deal made by the hero's publisher Marvel in a time where they were exiting out of bankruptcy. These rights deals saved the company and helped them build to the movie-making behemoth that they are today—but Spider-Man has been, for better or worse, a lasting side effect of this company-saving move. In 1996, Marvel Comics declared bankruptcy and was bought by a toy company called ToyBiz. To get the company out of bankruptcy and profitable again, head of the company Avi Arad felt the best way to save Marvel was to sell the film rights to some of its most popular characters to various studios. This meant that characters and franchises like Daredevil, Fantastic Four, and Spider- Man, among others, would be leased out to these studios. These deals ushered ina new era for comic book movies but affected the way Marvel would be able to use their characters in films for years, with Spider- Man being one of the biggest lynchpins. Sony was the company that bought the rights to Spider-Man during the selloff of Marvel's character rights. The subsequent three Spider-Man films, directed by Sam Raimi, were not only popular but were one of the biggest film franchises Sony had. However, after the third film the series fell apart, and a fourth film was cancelled due to the departure of franchise director Raimi. Just because Sony was no longer making Spider-Man films, it did not mean that they would get to keep the rights indefinitely. When Marvel sold these rights, many of the contracts had clauses that said if the studios did not make any films with the property over a certain period, the rights would revert back to Marvel. With the character's popularity still strong, and Marvel starting its own film studio to make movies out of the characters they still held the rights to, Sony did not want to let their claim to the fan favourite character go. So in 2012, while Marvel Studios was releasing The Avengers with the characters it had not sold off to other studios, Spider-Man was at it alone in a reboot of the franchise by Sony called The Amazing Spider-Man. Much like the previous movies, The Amazing Spider-Man was a hit. However, Sony began to Image via IGN & theotherpress.ca Photo by pinguino k on Flickr master tape and they cannot be recovered when they malfunction. We would need exact copies of the original master tapes to restore a lost catalogue like Universal Music’s. That is why we should still use physical media because if you preserve everything digitally, there is a very high risk that future generations will not be able to experience a work in highest fidelity—and re-experience it when remastered. If the contents are properly taken care of, the originals can be used again to produce improved recordings. Physical media can sound better than digital and it can also preserve the history of music. see the effects of franchise fatigue hit their venerable superhero franchise: The 2014 sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, finished below film expectations and led Sony to make an unprecedented deal. In 2015 Sony leased out the character, and a selection of preapproved villains, to Marvel Studios and its now-owner, The Walt Disney Company. In this deal, Marvel Studios would make solo Spider-Man films for Sony, which Sony would receive all the profit from, while Disney would get the use of the character for other team-up movies, from which Sony would not receive any profit. With the deal struck, Spider-Man appeared less than a year later in the 2016 film Captain America: Civil War, and then in the 2017 film Spider-Man: Homecoming. While Disney now had control of the web-slinging hero, they did not have the rights to all the associated characters. Sony still retained the rights to many of Spider-Man's villains and any animated versions of the character. With this in mind, Sony made the decision that they were going to create a cinematic universe, the “Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters” (SUMC), consisting entirely of Spider- Man’s villains and minor characters. The first film released in this franchise was Venom, in 2018. Later that year, Sony released a theatrical animated film based on the character called Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. With so many films, and the continued popularity of the character, it does not seem like the arachnid superhero is going to be leaving the big screen any time soon. The room for Spidey to swing through the big-screen film industry seems endless.