Archival & Preservation

Here is how this works in practice. Archive preservation in Australia routes through NFSA — the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia in Canberra (founded 1984), one of the world's most full moving-image archives — and ACMI Melbourne (Australian Centre for the Moving Image).

Here is the short of it. LTO-9 tape (18TB native, 45TB compressed) is the working archive standard for active projects across Cutting Edge Brisbane and Sydney, Range Films Sydney, Disney Studios Australia, Village Roadshow Gold Coast, Animal Logic Sydney, and Rising Sun Pictures Adelaide.

Here is the breakdown. Cloud-tier archive uses AWS Sydney (ap-southeast-2, online since 2012 and one of the largest AWS regions in Asia-Pacific) and AWS Melbourne (announced 2023) S3 Glacier and Deep Archive, alongside Azure Australia East (Sydney), Azure Australia Southeast (Melbourne), Azure Australia Central (Canberra — sovereign-cleared for state and defence work), and Google Cloud Sydney (since 2017) and Google Cloud Melbourne (2022).

Here is what that looks like on the ground. Format strategy holds OCN as the deliverable of record (ARRIRAW, REDCODE R3D, Sony X-OCN, Canon Cinema RAW Light, Blackmagic BRAW), plus IMF mezzanines, ProRes 4444 XQ masters, FFV1/MKV preservation copies, and DPX sequences for VFX hand-back, with MD5/SHA-256 checksums and PREMIS metadata wrapping every container.

Australian Indigenous-language and culturally-sensitive archive material clears AIATSIS protocols across 250+ Aboriginal languages — Yothu Yindi, Gurrumul, Archie Roach lineage included — under negotiated access rules with custodian communities.

Here is how the picture comes together. All preservation data falls under Privacy Act 1988 and the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme via OAIC enforcement. Historical drama and documentary holdings reference titles from Mad Max: Fury Road, Moulin Rouge!, Master and Commander, Lion, Happy Feet (Animal Logic 2006 Best Animated Feature Oscar), The Babadook, and Animal Kingdom.