British Universities Newsreel Scripts Project

The core aim of the British Universities Newsreel Scripts Project was to digitise and add some 80,000 cinema newsreel documents, together with other enhancements, to the existing British Universities Newsreel Database (BUND). These were recognised of documents of high value to researchers into history and the media, and they had been almost completely inaccessbile to academic researchers. The project integrated these documents with existing newsreel data and related resources to create a conte-rich and powerful online research tool. The overall aim of the project was to re-establish the newsrel as a subject of serious academic research, by greatly enhancing access to appropriate resources, and to encourage the use of newsreels across a wide range of research topics.

arts-humanities.net

Principal investigator
Dr Niall Luke McKernan
Principal project staff
Dr Niall Luke McKernan
Start date
Sunday, August 1, 1999
Completion date
Tuesday, July 1, 2003
Source material
The digitised documents dervied from a collection of newsreel documentation relating to the British Paramount, Gaumont-British and Universal newsreels, donated to the BUFVC by Reuters Television. To these were added documents from the Pathe News and Pathe Gazette newsreels, owned by British Pathe. These documents were of six kinds, each central to the newsreel production process: assignment sheets, shot lists, commentaries, cameramen's dope sheets, programmes and ephemera.
Publications

Books:
John Turner, Filming History: The Memoirs of John Turner, Newsreel Cameraman (London: BUFVC, 2001),
Luke McKernan (ed.), Yesterday’s News: The British Cinema Newsreel Reader (London: BUFVC, 2002)

Articles:
Luke McKernan: ‘A History of the British Newsreels’, British Universities Newsreel Project CD-ROM (BUFVC, 2000)
Luke McKernan, ‘Twentieth Century Treasure Trove’ (SCONUL Newsletter, Spring 2000),
Luke McKernan, ‘Making History’ (Viewfinder, May 2000)
Luke McKernan, ‘Reeling Back the Years’ (Archive Zones, Summer 2000)
Luke McKernan, ‘Useless if Delayed? The newsreel databases of the British Universities Film & Video Council’ in The BUFVC Handbook (BUFVC, 2001)
Luke McKernan and Nicholas Hiley, ‘Reconstructing the News: British newsreel documentation and the British Universities Newsreel Project’ (Film History, 2001)
Luke McKernan, ‘Reading the News’ (2001, www.hero.ac.uk)
Luke McKernan, ‘BUND: The British Universities Newsreel Database’ (History Today, December 2002)
Luke McKernan, ‘Celluloid Survivals’ (2003, www.hero.ac.uk)
Also entries by Luke McKernan on newsreels for The Encyclopedia of British Film (2003) and Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia (2003)
Linda Kaye: ‘Digitising History’ (Viewfinder, October 2001)
Jeff Hulbert: ‘Right-wing propaganda or reporting history? The newsreels and the Suez Crisis of 1956’ (Film History, 2002)
Jeff Hulbert, ‘The Newsreel Association of Great Britain and Ireland’ in Yesterday’s News: The British Cinema Newsreel Reader (BUFVC, 2002)
Sarah Easen: ‘A Game Women Cannot Play? Women in British Newsreels’ in Yesterday’s News: The British Cinema Newsreel Reader (BUFVC, 2002)
Mark Broughton: ‘In and Out of the Whirlpool of War’ (Viewfinder, December 2001)