As Gold Sponsor of the FIAT/IFTA World Conference in São Paulo, FASTFORWARD is returning to Brazil with practical experience from European archives, live demonstrations of the HERO16 and our new MiniHERO.

And an invitation: bring your questions and explore the possibilities with us.

How do you turn large film collections into an accessible resource? How do you use your team and their knowledge in the digitization processes? And how do you move from individual projects to a sustainable, everyday workflow?

These are questions we have explored in our experience working with broadcasters and archives across Europe. This October, we look forward to sharing what we have learned and hearing which questions matter most to you.

When we first visited Brazil in 2016, we came to meet people, explore ideas and understand the challenges facing audiovisual archives. Working with technological innovation requires serious research, and these visits were fundamental in our design process.

Over the following decade, we continued developing our approach with broadcasters and archives across Europe, including DR, BBC, SVT, RTÈ, NISV, and RTVE among others.

That experience resulted in the digitisation of more than 300,000 film reels. We are now returning with our full end-to-end solution shaped by that work, practical lessons to share and something new to introduce in São Paulo.

If there is something we learned is that experience is usually very diverse among regions, and no automatic answers can be assumed. That is why we return to discuss what could be useful in your archive, what would need to be different and ask what we can learn from each other.

We are bringing our dedicated 16mm digitisation system, HERO16, and introducing MiniHERO, a new, compact member of the HERO family.

Both reflect the same ambition: to make high-quality film digitisation more manageable for the people responsible for the collection.

HERO16 supports high-volume work within the archive. MiniHERO brings a more portable, flexible option, opening up possibilities for working across locations or adding capacity to an existing setup.

Rather than simply telling you about the technology, we invite you to see it in action. Watch the workflow, ask questions and discuss how it might fit your materials, your team and your plans.

For us, digitisation is about more than moving images from film into files. It is about making those images available again: to researchers, programme-makers, educators and the communities whose stories they hold.

The people who know a collection bring something no scanner can provide: an understanding of its history, its context and its potential.

Our role is to support them with tools, training and practical experience, not to put technology at the centre of their story. This is why we like to say that the scanner is called HERO, but the real hero is the human operating it.

Preservation protects that potential. Access and use help realise it.

Working with archive teams has taught us that successful digitisation takes more than an excellent scanner. It takes a workflow that people can use confidently, a clear approach to quality and a connection between preservation and the future use of collections.

At the conference, we will share our experiences from previous and current collaborations, including recent work with RTVE and RTCG. These can illustrate interesting outcomes and offer practical starting points for conversations about:

• Bringing digitisation into the archive and building the team’s capacity to manage it;
• Organising work at scale while maintaining quality and control;
• Making digitised collections accessible for research, production and new audiences, and;
• The needs, limitations and potentials of Brazilian and Latin American archives.

Every collection has its own priorities and constraints. Whether your immediate concern is a growing backlog, limited resources or how to get started, we would be happy to discuss it with you.

Our visit does not end when the conference closes. We will be in Brazil for more than three weeks, meeting archives, broadcasters and audiovisual professionals.

Together with local colleagues, we are arranging archive visits and community sessions, in São Paulo, Brasília and Rio de Janeiro. These will combine practical examples, demonstrations and conversation, with opportunities to try the workflow where arrangements allow.

The discussions will be shaped by the people taking part: their collections, their expertise and the challenges they want to address.

Meet us at FIAT/IFTA to see the HERO16 and MiniHERO, explore the experiences behind them and talk about your own archive.

And if you are interested in extending the conversation beyond the conference or exploring the possibility of an archive visit, contact our Project Manager, Amanda Parra, or Tobias Golodnoff, our CEO.

We will be happy to discuss what is possible within the tour schedule. We are coming to share, listen and learn. We look forward to meeting you.

Please contact us at:

Amanda Tristão Parra – Project Manager
amanda@ffw.io

Tobias Golodnoff – CEO
tobias@ffw.io