Becoming a Film Archaeologist

Two archaeologists walk into a bar...

This September I will be starting a Masters program in Information and Library Science with a Media Archival emphasis at UCLA.  Many of you are probably wondering: what the heck is that?  People who haven’t seen me in a while might be a little bit confused: weren’t you trying to become the next Indiana Jones?  For everybody interested, I thought I’d detail a little bit not only about what my master's program is about but my plan for the future and how I got to this point in my professional life.

I enrolled in Brigham Young University as a freshman majoring in archaeology.  (Just so everyone’s on the same page, archaeology is the study of ancient civilizations and peoples, not dinosaurs which is paleontology.)  I really loved all my classes, professors, and fellow students in the program.  I had the opportunity as an undergraduate to do original research and even excavate in Petra, Jordan, three times!  Quite the educational experience if you ask me.  The only problem I found was figuring out what I wanted to do after I graduate with an archaeology degree.

Dealing with all of my personal crap: Carrying a wheelbarrow full of thousand-year-old donkey dung while excavating our tomb!

My undecided future plans really got me worried as I went on my archaeology field school in Jordan after my sophomore year.  A group of a dozen BYU students, graduate students, and archaeology professors lived in a house close to our excavations in Petra, Jordan.  As I interacted with this fabulous group of students and archaeologists on and off-site, I realized I hadn’t quite found my passion or desired field of study within the discipline.  A couple of students knew exactly what they wanted to study for the foreseeable future, whether that was topical, such as gender in the ancient world, or based on a specific place or time period, such as colonial Peru or medieval Georgia.

I asked myself in my journal during that field school, “What area of the world should I speciali schools do I apply to?  Is archaeology even for me?”.  I realized that whatever I decided to focus on, I wanted to study history and wanted to conduct my own original research and have avenues to share it with others, be it other academics, students, or even the general public.  I wrote that I recently had “been internally debating film vs. archaeology.  What if my one period of interest isn’t Mayan or Near East but Hollywood Golden Era and the Silent Era of American film?”.  (Shawn Hall’s personal journal, 5/19/2017).  I decided that for the time being I would continue my studies in archaeology and wait to make a decision until I had more experience in my archaeology program and in my media arts studies minor.

Upon returning from my summer field school in Petra, I continued my course load in the program, became a teaching assistant for anthropology 101, and began a research project studying pottery we had excavated in Petra, Jordan for my senior thesis.  During this same time, I took film history courses, read books I checked from the library on film history, language, and theory, and continued watching classic movies from various countries and time periods.  I continued looking into various career paths in both disciplines, talking to professionalslkn both fields, and conducting numerous Google searches.

The summer before my senior year, I found that more and more of my free time devoted to film (Exhibit A).  I got lost in an ever-deepening hole of film knowledge and always wanted to know more.  I was fascinated by not just the films themselves but how they had been produced, how they influenced cultural and social values, and how each film reflected the time period it was made in and the ideas and values of its producers and creators. I came to the conclusion that my two-year debate was over and that film was winning out.

You would think that I would be relieved that I had finally made my decision but it was a lot more complicated than that.  The plan I had for myself since the end of high school suddenly changed.  I felt like I was betraying my previous schooling, my department, my family, and everyone I’d told I was going into archaeology.  If I had loved my experience in archaeology, why was I leaving it?

A preview of possible projects to come: Me standing with an exhibit I helped prepare as part of my internship with the BYU Library's Special Collections. The exhibit was on John W. Bubbles, an African American tap dancer, vaudeville performer, and actor.

Besides my personal feelings, there was a lot of technical concerns with making the switch just as I was about to start my senior year.  Because applications for graduate school were due in a couple of months, time was running out to figure out the specifics.  What exactly do I want to be doing the rest of my professional career?  What type of masters programs will help me achieve this specific career path?  Which programs should I apply to?  Will I be able to afford them?  Will they even let me in?

Luckily I had already narrowed down three key ingredients on my field school previously in Petra: history, research, teaching/sharing.  All I was doing was narrowing my topic of research to classic film.  I found that there were plenty of opportunities to apply everything I had learned and loved in my archaeology undergraduate program to the study of film.  In fact, my experiences working in Petra and examining the material culture of the Nabataeans greatly influenced my desire to study the material culture of film, simply trading in pottery shards and ancient manuscripts for movie posters and film reels.

In the end, I chose the career of being a film archivist or, as I like to call it, a film archaeologist.  My Masters Program at UCLA in Library and Information Studies will teach me how to organize, access, and research library collections involving all media.  This will allow me to work in film archives to not only handle and study the material artifacts of film production and consumption (from shooting scripts, to film reviews, to the physical film reels themselves) but to conserve and preserve film and its specific history and culture for other researchers, the public, and the future.  My program at UCLA will also provide me with invaluable internship and networking experiences, being located in Los Angeles, the very heart of the film world.  Upon completion of my master's program, I plan on going on to get a Ph.D. to be more qualified to carry out original research (and cause Dr. Hall has a nice ring to it).

I’m excited for this next chapter in my life that will build off my recent experiences.  Being back in Petra the past couple weeks following graduation has allowed me to reflect on my past four years of my experience as an archaeology undergraduate at BYU.  I will miss being able to come to Petra each summer and get knee deep in dirt, donkey dong, and Nabataean pottery but I sure am excited to dive head first into film collections in various archives to further explore the culture of film production and consumption.  I am grateful for all the relationships I’ve cultivated with friends, professors, and fellow students and am excited to create even more relationships in my future career.

As I once asked myself in my journal, “Is there such a job as being paid loads of cash to promote film history and old movies so people can be touched by film as I have?”  Yes, Shawn, there is.  And you’re about to do it.