After exploring the Digital Humanities projects and their online databases, the Early African American Film option caught my attention the most. It is a collective database created by students at UCLA about African-American silent race films. They narrowed their search to those created before the 1930’s specifically for African American audiences. They gathered their information from a vast array of primary and secondary sources, ranging from archives, collections, written media, and record of actors/actresses themselves. When creating this online archive, their intention was to inform people about a time period in the film industry not many knew about, as well as highlighting special films, actors/actresses and production companies from the business. To do this, they created data visualizations, ranging from excel sheets to diagrams, and even included step-by-steps instructions in case people wanted to replicate their findings.
The database includes both primary sources, such as George P. Johnson’s Negro Film Collection which had production documents from his company, documents related to his brother, who was a black silent film actor at the time, along with magazine and newspaper clippings from the times’ films. They visited museums holding hundreds of films, spoke to scholars knowledgeable about the subject, read books dedicated to films, and looked at other online archives. Their secondary sources included essays about the time, studies on film and race, actor/actress/director profiles, and educational books that studied the history of black people in America, which therefore included their role in silent films.
By taking pictures, scanning items, and taking electronic notes of the data they found helpful to their project, the students were able to place the information onto their online database and into a solely digital environment. From the findings, they created spreadsheets, interactive graphs, and diagrams. They use Airtable to create the database and store a copy onto Zenodo, where scholars can store digital work Thus, this is linked to Github, which allows other people to edit and add onto their information, therefore creating a completely collaborative database. Their data also includes a “digital object identifier”, which makes it possible for people to cite their online archive when using its information.
To present their data, they chose a simple interface, where the headings and drop down tables are well organized and incorporate the main ideas and main subheadings. The photographs used add to the black and white feel of the website, hence black and white films of the time. The graphs, visuals, and screenshots allow you to zoom in, move the cursor for information, view in a larger screen for comfort, or take you to a different page where the diagrams move and become interactive. Overall, this Digital Humanities project is easy to maneuver, enjoyable, and educational!
I liked your personal analysis on their project! I did my blog post on the same topic, but you provided me with greater understanding on some of the more detailed decisions made by the students. For example, you mention the photographs were likely black and white to reflect the black and white African-American films. Additionally, I liked how you emphasized the elements of the database and process that made it reader-friendly and truly geared towards the general public.
I wrote my post on the same topic and I wanted to be sure to comment on the post of someone who did the same. Your approach and analysis focus a great deal on how the students/project team interacted with the material, which I thought was interesting. You have a strong sense of the source materials as objects that move through time and as such, have stories of their own – for example, how they have passed through different hands over time. You derived different conclusions from the examination of the site than I did personally, and articulated your point of view in a way I could understand.