National Media Museum

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The National Media Museum (formerly the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television) is a museum in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK.

Part of the National Museum of Science and Industry, it is now one of the most popular museums in the UK outside London, with 615,431 visiting in 2005.

The first Head of the museum was Colin Ford CBE who was succeeded by Amanda Nevill. The current head is Colin Philpott, a former BBC journalist.

Contents 1 History 2 Building & Admission 3 Museum Collection 4 The Museum's Future 5 External Links

[edit] History

The museum is located on the site of a former theatre and art gallery in the centre of Bradford and came about as the result of discussions between Dame Margaret Weston and Bradford city. The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, opened its doors to visitors on the 16 June 1983. At the time of opening, the Museum specialised in the art and science of images and image making. The original Head of the Museum, Colin Ford CBE, held the view that by understanding how images are made; you appreciate the ideas being expressed and the intentions and skills of the image makers. Two months after opening, the Museum launched one of its biggest attractions; Britain’s largest cinema screen, IMAX. The IMAX provided a screen measuring five storeys high and boasting six channel sound.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the first public television service, two innovative interactive television galleries were developed in 1986. These exhibits gave visitors a rare opportunity to operate cameras on a studio set with programmed sound and lighting, use vision mixers, experience reading a news item from an autocue and discover how the chromakey technique works. These exhibits survived until the re-naming of the museum in 2006. In 1989, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of photography, the Museum launched the Kodak Gallery, showcasing some of the 10,000 items of equipment illustrating the story of popular photography from its invention to the present day. This was swiftly followed by the installation of a standard television studio, which was first used by TV-am (for outside broadcasts), and later Nickelodeon. These studios were the first live broadcasting studios to be used in a museum. Today, the equipment is used as a teaching resource for students from the School of Informatics at the University of Bradford with whom the museum have a partnership for the delivery of BSc and BA courses in Media and Television. The studio is also used for the hugely acclaimed outreach project, Youth TV. Youth TV is a sponsored programme of workshops designed to introduce young people from inner city Bradford to television programme making. In 1994, TV Heaven was launched making accessible the museum's extensive collection of classic television programmes, most of which are not available to watch anywhere else. This has been one of the Museum's greatest successes.

While continuing to run Pictureville Cinema and a programme of exhibitions in a mill on the other side of the City, the Museum closed its main site on 31 August 1997 to allow for a huge 19-month, £16 million redevelopment programme making the museum 25% bigger. As well as this, the IMAX cinema was developed, to be capable of showing 3D films. The new look Museum was opened on 16 June 1999 by Pierce Brosnan, and was a huge success, making the museum one of the most popular in the UK. On December 1, 2006, the Museum was renamed the National Media Museum.

[edit] Building & Admission

Entrance to the museum is free (with exception to the IMAX screen and some specalist exhibitions which do charge), allowing anyone from the public to examine the numerous historic artifacts of media history on display. The museum is open from 10am in the morning until 6 in the evening (Tuesdays-Sundays). The museum closes for special tours on a Monday. The museum underwent a £16 million refurbishment in 1998, developing a new digital technology gallery and now also hosts the BBC's Bradford offices, and studios for BBC Radio Leeds and the BBC Bradford and West Yorkshire Website. This new development created a new glass-fronted atrium, which houses a new Cafe and Shop.

There are seven permanent exhibitions:

• Kodak Gallery - Covering the rise of Photography from the 1840s until the present day.
• Experience TV - There are over 200 objects from the Museums' collections on display, and plenty of hands-on interactive displays for visitors to have fun with on Television Productions.
• TV Heaven - An opportunity for visitors to select from a catalogue of over 1000 television programmes.
• Magic Factory - The science behind Television.
• Animation - The History of Animation, this area also has a permanent "Animator in Residence" who is involved in the museum's workshops.
• Profiles Gallery & IMAX Projector Box - Showcasing the Museums' film collection.
• Advertising - Opens in early 2007. Traces the history of advertising and its effects upon society.

The museum is also host to many courses taught in collaboration with the University of Bradford's EIMC Department including: BSc Media Technology & Production, BSc Creative Media & Technologies, BSc Computer Animation and Special Effects and BA Media Studies. Subjects taught include Broadcast Television using the fully-functional, non-general access TV Studio on its top floor. The EIMC Degree show is hosted in the Pictureville Cinema.

[edit] Museum Collection

The museum's collection contains over three million items of historical, cultural, and social value, including what are considered three 'key firsts' – the first photographic negative, the earliest television footage, the world's first example of moving pictures (Louis Le Prince's 1888 film of Leeds Bridge). It also contains the original toys from the BBC series Playschool – the first programme to appear on BBC2. The museum's collections are fully accessible to the public through its Insight study centre.

The museum incorporates what was the first permanent UK installation of an IMAX cinema (with a second screen opening in the UK some fifteen years later). Opened in 1983 as part of the Bradford Film Festival [1] with the projector visible from a darkened viewing booth of the 4th floor of the museum, this screen runs IMAX presentations seven days a week, with showings including IMAX-rendered prints of commercial blockbusters, including Apollo 13, The Lion King, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Batman Begins. In 1999, IMAX upgraded the system and began releasing IMAX 3D presentations, including Magnificent Desolation 3D: Walking On The Moon, produced and narrated by Tom Hanks, and Sharks 3D, presented by oceanographer Jean-Michel Cousteau [2]

The museum also incorporates the Pictureville Cinema - opened in 1992 and described by David Puttnam as 'the best cinema in Britain', Pictureville Cinema screens everything from 70mm to video; from Hollywood to Bollywood; from silents to digital sound, with certifications in presentation including THX in sound and picture and the Dolby EX system. This cinema is also one of only three public cinemas in the world permanently equipped to display original 3-strip 35mm Cinerama prints [3]. It is the only permanent, regularly programmed Cinerama installation in the world and a magnet for enthusiasts, worldwide. [4]

The museum hosts three annual film festivals a year: the Bradford Film Festival (held in March), Bite the Mango (in September) and the Bradford Animation Festival (in November). These attract many international speakers and show new and classic works from around the world.

[edit] The Museum's Future

Plans for 2007 include:

• The redevelopment of the animation gallery to include digital animation and gaming.
• A new gallery which will respond to contemporary media issues
• A virtual museum gallery on the website about the history of the internet.
• Staging more events which showcase and examine important trends and developments in the subjects the Museum covers.
• Updating the television gallery to reflect important changes and consumer choices in TV.
• Strengthening the Museum's commitment to photography by inviting experts from around the world to take up the position of a Chair of Photography, supporting up-and-coming contemporary photographers through a series of bursaries, and setting up an acquisitions committee tasked with keeping the collection’s position as one of the best in the world.

In addition to these plans, the Museum hopes to implement a series of ambitious gallery developments over the coming years, including:

• A film heritage gallery to reflect the rich and varied story of the development of film, particularly British film.
• A gallery about radio – a vitally important but often overlooked media genre.
• Galleries about the news gathering process and about advertising – both crucial genres spanning many media forms.
• And plans to remodel the existing photography gallery to reflect the changes in photography in recent years and to enable the Museum to put more of its collection on display.

The museum has recently publicly recommitted to photography by launching a new purpose-built gallery and detailing a future development strategy for the museum. The museum has also taken possession of the Royal Photographic Society archives which it secured through a payment to the RPS of around £4.5 million mostly funded through a lottery grant.

In 2007/2008 the museum plans to open a London venue although this has been a long-stated ambition and the chances of it happening continue to look very slim in the absence of a suitable venue and lack of funding.

[edit] External Links

• National Media Museum
• National Museum of Science and Industry
• The official National Media Museum print website containing many images from the museum's photographic collections
• Courses taught in partnership with the University of Bradford