Behind the scenes of streaming and as you can see we have already with us Mr. Siddheer Mishra where he doesn't need any introduction but let me just revive all that we know about him and all that we appreciate and applaud him for. He's a film director and screenwriter known for directing films including Hazaro Kauaishi, Dharavi, Chamele and in his 30-year career span he has won three national awards from the President of India. He has recently directed the thriller web series that we all love, Pastages. A very warm welcome to you sir. And in this panel discussion we have with us Karan Anshuman who is a director and screenwriter of Mirzapur and Bangustan is also the creator and director of any nominated drama film Inside Edge. A very warm welcome to you too. We also have with us Rassika Gugel known for her roles in several Bollywood movies. We have recently seen her in Mirzapur out of love. I know everyone has been talking about made in heaven you've seen her there as well. Delhi crime and humorously yours. A very warm welcome to you too. Ladies and gentlemen we also have with us Shriya Pilgaokar who is an Indian film actor as we all know for her well-known part in successful web series like Mirzapur, Garindar Chattas, British TV drama, Beecham House and the film Fan. She will be next seen at from, this is something that has been shot from home as I'm told. It's a lockdown thriller series, the gone game action series Crap Down and also a tri-lingual film Hathi Mere Saathi with Rana Dugabati and Anubhav Sinha's film Abhipa Party Shree Hoi Hai. So excited for these upcoming projects for Shriya. Also we have with us Anupriya Goenka who's an actress, a dynamic performer who has made her own space in the world of cinema with her distinct film choices. She has starred in one of our favorite web series. We all know her from Sacred Games, right? And also Tiger Zinda Hai, War, Padmavad, the final call Abhay, Criminal Justice and Assur. And steering this very interesting conversation, we have with us our session chair who is Frizar Palia, head boot select, youth and entertainment, English Entertainment Wacom 18 channel, a seasoned media and entertainment advertising leader with an experience of over two decades. I don't see Frizar here yet but Frizar, alright, I see Frizar now brilliant. Hello, so Frizar, I'm going to leave the screen to you because we all are super excited. We might just jump from our seats. So why don't you stare the conversation forward? Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Khyati. And thanks everyone for joining in. It's a tough one to be moderating and normally never on this side. So bear with me. Such a super, super panel. And you know, when we saw the topic of the panel which said behind the scenes of the OTT world, I think you pretty much got all the brighter shining lights of the OTT world on this panel. So thanks for having us. And in the essence of time and I have five lovely, lovely people who I'm going to have to dig a little deeper into. I've already requested them saying don't give us any answers which are already available on Google. Because all of you are very well known and people know all about you. So the onus is on them to give us something that none of us know. So there, no pressure. Let's get to know them a little better and how they got into this big bad world called OTT as we know it, which is over the top. I'm going to start with somebody who I think has taken a pretty drastic different step while getting into OTT and that's Karan. Karan, you used to be a film critic with with Mumbai Mirror, right? So how's it now sort of being on the other side where at one point you used to critic people and now you are being critiqued in some sense all for the better. How does that change been for you? Thanks for having me guys. So, you know, as far as when I was a film critic, I mean, I was always sort of a filmmaker who began when I was always writing and it was always sort of my dream to make films. And it just so happened like, you know, becoming a reviewer for Mumbai Mirror just happened by chance. It seemed like a fun week to do, which is, you know, it was a big for me to sort of get paid while watching movies. So, you know, I can't, for anyone who's a film lover, I think that's just the way it comes through. I didn't, of course, count on the fact that 95% of those films would be absolutely terrible and I can't just get up and walk out of the theater and I have to save the food. So I didn't really think that through. But the thing is, I think a very different sort of job will be making a film, writing about film or a review. This is something that is depressing on how you've read about it at the end. It is definitely not reflective of the kind of work or the craft that goes into making any film. And it's not quite the fair comparison. So I, and that's something like I think a lot of people sort of struggle with understanding that it's not really two sides of offense. It's, you know, some guys sitting in a theater watching something and assimilating opinions and thoughts on it and just putting it out of it. But it happens to be, you know, that you can reach out to large audiences with that and your opinion does affect things. But it's not, I think, fair for anyone, any filmmaker to expect that, you know, anyone who's writing on their film can, you know, possibly relate to what the journey is or, you know, how the film has shaped up or any of that stuff. It has to be a very objective view and, you know, filmmakers should really kind of understand that. So I guess now as a filmmaker when I read reviews on my stuff, I don't actually read a lot of reviews, but I read the reviews of people who have always respected sort of, you know, to my reviewing days, whether it was like, you know, and these people are something, you know, who are sort of respected opinions. So I always sort of look out for what they have to say about my work. Do I know that like really like it's what I expect of myself if I were to review my own work and that's how I've probably seen it. So that's the state. But how do you see the world now that everyone doesn't need to be in a privileged position to be able to make that review get across to many people. I spend many nights actually getting a lot of learning from some some pretty fun YouTube reviewers.  So who, who do you, you know, do you like following the regular critics or is this new, new breed of YouTube reviewers sort of getting under your skin at some point of time or the other. I think I'm obsessed with any kind of reviewer as a critic or anything like I don't really follow. I read one or two reviewers and that's pretty much it. Like that's that's my, if I really need an opinion because as a filmmaker you want to just go and experience things or even as a film you are like the idea is I don't watch trailers. I don't read reviews. If I like the sense of what a film might have to promise and I'm happy to go watch it and not have anything about it beforehand. I do enjoy reviews that look at it sort of critically analyze films after I've seen them so I can sort of understand what might have gone and I think that happens more with like Hollywood films or more global films rather than what happens. Sure, sure. I'm not even hearing your current very well. Is that a problem with everyone? Yeah current I think I think you need to maybe adjust your internet just a little bit it's gotten a little better than it was earlier though. But we move to, to Sudhir now who obviously needs no introduction and Sudhir I think you're on mute so before you, yeah. So you did one of the, one of the first Indian originals and I love the way we call it originals. There used to be a time where we used to say web series banana and that used to mean. For 50,000,000 will be the whole series to now, you know, getting to a scenario where we're calling it Indian originals and, you know, some others call it something else and, and so on and so forth. How was that experience really been from you for you, you know, being one of the most celebrated directors in, in the Indian film industry to then moving and getting onto a format like hostages. What was really the, the biggest learning for you.   So I mean, long form storytelling for me was a bit like that. You know, I mean, in India, we came to it Sunday.  But, you know, in the West, it came more gradually so the television became where the writers went and so HBO came. Right. And so OTT was just a change of the delivery system, but Sopranos already existed. The wire already existed. You know, I mean, so there's many people who did that kind of work for me. I was, you know, waiting to do it and Indian television wasn't offering Sunday. Amazon told me to do something called government where they asked me to help out in a series with the AIB boys were kind of, Irfan wanted to do. And so my job was to kind of mentor it a bit. I kind of did that and I really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, Irfan fell ill and I did what I had to do, but you know, we could shoot half of it and then unfortunately, but you know, that got me a bit hooked to the whole thing. I then sort of developed some things and I wrote some things and, you know, which I was working with Samir Nayar of applause and while this those things were being developed. Samir asked me, why don't you look at hostages? So I saw it and I said, well, I mean, I thought maybe, you know, if I did because it's an already existing Israeli show, right, hostages are kind of remake. So I said, it's good if I do it on a structure which already exists and I'll kind of get it a bit more, right, not because I'm, I am a filmmaker and I've done many films. So I mean, I'm in that kind of habit. So maybe, you know, I need to know whether I can unlock myself from those habits. I found it great fun. I mean, I think it's, you can elaborate on a lot of things. Anyway, I was a lot of people used to tell me that I make films like my film structure like Hazaro is a bit like a novel. Like Israel has multiple narratives, right? So I mean, supposing I went into the multiple narratives of Israel, all the characters, right? Then, you know, that would be a web show. Right. So I mean, except that I will list them into one film and they came. So I found that very interesting, you know, and I think I have my, what I think of my structure is the stories that I think of. I have a natural, and I like asides. I like developing a lot of other characters. I like ensembles. I, the reason why male superstars don't work with me is because my heroes are frail. Right. They're kind of softer guys. Manu Joseph said I'm a collector of frail men, you know. So, I mean, I kind of like smaller characters. I sometimes want to delve into the story. The side character interests me a lot more than the main character.  I mean, you see Better Call Saul.  No. Is it a medium? So then that that that is sort of interesting you more than than a than a 90 minute or a 120 minute. Everything interests me. What is good is that you can do, there are some things that are organically suited for this. See, if you don't force fit, it's good. Some things are meant for a short film. That's the wonderful thing about about now. You have a short film idea. Go short film. Right. You want to do a documentary series.  You have now something called a documentary series. Right. So I know America like I never did. And I know why Trump won because I'm seeing those documentaries right. I mean, I think it's wonderful. You can do what I mean, organically, what you want to do what the story that you think of, I mean, if it works, I think if you force fit something, it's still wrong. If things are meant for two seasons, they should be done for two seasons. It was just a limited series that we've done for six episodes. If it's a film like a film, right, I'm just a serious man for Netflix, which is which is with Nawaz and Western book by Manu Joseph. I've just finished a film for a platform. I've done hostages part one, part two. I'm developing another series, right? Yeah. And I will make a theatrical film as well. I mean, I'll do what I think works and I think that's the great thing about now. Like you said, it's an interesting time because it's opening up a lot of storytelling formats for everyone. Look at the characters that you can develop, right? You see something like Orange is the New Black. Look at those wonderful cast of women. Would you have ever have seen them? Would you have ever known about them? Would you have ever known those actors?  They are neglected, but wife turns over, you know, right? You know, they look at those wonderful, all sorts of diverse backgrounds. Look at the flowering. So talking of diversity, then I go to our next guest and that would be Rasika. So Rasika, it's been diversity unlimited for you, right? You've done quite a bit of television. You seem to be on a roll picking all of the very, very good shows and some phenomenal roles, carrying them along by yourself. Carrying shows completely, which to my mind is one of the great things that we've seen on OTT, right?  And that's despite 70% of the paying OTT audience being male and from the top 10 cities. So that's the estimate. How has the change really been for you from television to OTT? And like I said, you played some diverse roles there and I'm sure that you're reaching to play or are already in the works and on playing some truly unique roles there. So how's that journey been for you and what's really been the process that goes into it for you? I wasn't really a part of mainstream television, so to say. I, in fact, was a part of television shows which were, which didn't have the highest TRPs and was sort of not the norm at the time that they were being made. I was a part of a TV show called Powder, which, a film production house, which was Yeshraj's, one of the first few shows that Yeshraj had made for Sony. And it was not a daily show and it was a show which had a limited number of episodes. All of these things were not the norm in television at that time. And neither were these shows which got TRPs at that time, possibly because of these reasons. I don't know why, but now Powder is on Netflix, for example, and I always thought that it was a wonderful show. So I've not been a part of mainstream television, so to say, so I don't know. The series format, in fact, is more recent to me with the coming of the OTT platforms. Right before that I was more a part of independent films which were, which I either didn't get released or got releases which were very, very poor. And I didn't get the screen timings or the number of screens that would give a small film a fair chance. So that was mostly what I was doing before OTT platforms came and saved the day for me. And also, I think with Mirzapur, I started with humorously as a show for the viral fever. Then Mirzapur, Daily Crime and then Out of Love. So I've had an opportunity to work with many platforms. And what I find really interesting is that it's broken the myth that audiences only want a certain kind of content. And that there isn't a possibility of multiple genres to coexist and be successful. So the success of something like Made in Heaven and Mirzapur is a testimony to that. So I'm very happy about that because I used to constantly feel that way about it, but something that would constantly be thrown at independent film setups or people who largely worked in independent films was, you don't know what the audience wants. Actually, as an actor, I still don't know what the audience wants. And I'm not sure if... Even the audience doesn't know what the audience wants. Yeah, absolutely right, Shreya. Actually, that's the honest truth. You know, until you don't put something out on the table I'm not necessarily sure that the audience is very sure. I think all of us as creators really think that we have a formula and know what the audience wants. And you try and serve them a little more of the same thing. The oddity platforms seem to be not serving a formula at this point in time from where I'm looking at it. Of course Karan and these are a work behind the scenes more than I have. So they would have more knowledge on what platforms want and what they don't want and what those dictates are. But from where I'm seeing it, it seems to me that it is a setup which invites a lot of newness and therefore is inherently democratic in one sense and celebrates variety. And there's a lot that is being experimented with there. So I'm very happy for that. As of now, I'm very happy for the fact that up until now there hasn't been a regular practice of releasing numbers at least publicly. Though recently I read an article in which did say that certain platforms have they've released which are the top 20 films and what the views on that was and that sort of broke myths of what really people were watching on that platform. So I'm happy that so far there hasn't been much of that because then the chase really is for who can make better content rather than who can hit higher numbers. So I see all the positive things at least for myself as an actor. That will all change, Rasika. Let me tell you that. I was sure you were going to say that. We're all in this for business. At some point of time we'll start chasing one number or the other. Either it's an audience number or... As long as the business encourages you to let it be competitive in this way. That's what I'm thinking of. Of course it's a business and it's a business for everybody. I mean it's not like it's either a business or a passion. They're not binaries and they're not mutually exclusive sort of categories. And for some it's one or the other but for a lot it's somewhere in between and different projects mean different things in your career for you. And I'm sure it's a business. I just looked at the business encourages the content to be good. That's all. Well it seems to be clearly because I think at least from our point of view to establish any sort of differentiation in what is already becoming a crowded space the stories are going to need to stand out. So that thankfully is inevitable because the device is now democratized. So anyway, sorry, like I said I'm not the one to be answering. So let me go and ask you guys some questions here.  You've done regional work, you've done work in Hindi. I'm not sure you've done a regional web series as yet. Do you see that on the anvil for you? Do you see Hindi as more of a mainstay or are you open to doing various kinds of language projects? I'm very open to doing various kind of languages because though I don't think I have flair for languages like some people are able to pick up languages just when they are around that the local space. I'm not. I have mugged up my lines and that's the difficult part for me because when I was doing my Telugu movies I think that was the biggest challenge that I had to really constantly keep mugging them to the very end and otherwise I've always been very free with my lines. But apart from that I'm open to doing regional stuff as long as it excites me content-wise. That becomes very important that as an actor if I'm feeling that that kind of work and effort is worth it and if I'm getting to have another sort of journey and experience which is fulfilling. So something like that hasn't really come up till now. If it does then definitely is. Sure. Somebody told me that Asur was one of your most enjoyable shows. I wonder why. How was that experience? I'm not surprised that you're asking me this question because it is good. I have to do my shameless plug-in. Yeah, of course. Why not? I wouldn't say that Asur was one of my best experiences going to be. But that doesn't happen. I will tell you this because I was playing this. I have done 10 centromatic roles like in the sense which are very high in terms of the emotional quotient and by the time Asur came to me, I had already done a few of those and Sacred Games had just ended somewhere around that time and I found the role very similar to that. And also my character, Grapha Nasur, was of a girl who is traumatized throughout. So I was very worried that she would just keep crying all the time and that was a value with me. But then we kind of got me to say yes and I loved the concept. I met Unir and I really enjoyed meeting him and I loved how the way they had combined my apology with a thriller or a psychological aspect which is quite novel. So all through my shooting process in Asur, I used to keep troubling Unir actually. I used to keep teasing him that of course I need to cry again. Of course he needs tears again. And he would be so shy to say that ya ya cry a little. At first he would say no no no you don't need to cry. And then he would come back to me and he would say ya ya you need tears. But then I really enjoyed shooting with him for sure. And the whole process because the cast was really amazing. And when I watched it in fact I was very proud of the series because it is something which has been very crisply done. The content is very new and it has been handled very well. I think the pride factor was quite... All the tears all the tears paid off. Yes you can say that. And to you Shreya believe you've been rather busy during the lockdown period while most of us have been sitting home and trying to read scripts and so on and so forth. You know you're not just sitting at home because I was busy with your show. Thank you, thank you, thank you for that plug again. No I'm kidding. As you had mentioned earlier that it's been a good sort of experience to try and creatively engage yourself in a time like this. And of course as actors we don't want to get used to this. Because it's not easy. I'm sure Rasika will agree to this shooting remotely and doing everything by yourself. As actors we have always, we have gratitude for people we work with but now the gratitude perhaps has exponentially increased when you have to sit and do everything. And this is exactly where sort of the joy of having streaming platforms comes in because if that wasn't at play today I don't know if we'd be able to create something and something not half-hearted. Something which people can actually watch irrespective of pandemic or no pandemic. Keeping that aside. So it's been interesting. And that brings me to my next question which I'm going to throw open to all of you which is that the whole world has changed. Normally the six of us would have been sitting on a stage in a banquet hall and doing this.  It seems like everyone's pretty certain that the entire game has changed where the way you shoot, how you shoot, what you shoot. The way things are being written now because of fears that there's a whole new normal that has come about our lives really. So how do you see the medium term panning out where productions and roles and everything else to do with even, for example Karan, are you writing differently for something that may be coming up in the near future keeping constraints in mind and so on and so forth. So I want to throw that open to you guys. Well, okay, I'll go first. But personally, I am not really writing differently because I feel we're going to get over this and knowing the way we operate. I don't think any kind of... We can all pretend that we're going to take a lot of care while shooting and all. And of course we're trying our best. But at some point it's going to become rather loose and I'm not sure that we're going to be able to... I don't think writing for a situation like this is something that should be looked at. In fact, I'm writing some of my most ambitious projects right now in this time I've had because A, one has so much more time to just sit at a desk and keep writing and which is really, for me, the most satisfying, best part about filmmaking and just the idea of restricting yourself because of something that is going to blow eventually is a bit silly, according to me. So yeah, in the medium term, if there are projects that need to get on or are starting up right away, I'm sure there is some thought being given to that but I'm really not looking at it that way. Sure. And for you, Shreya, Rasika, Anupriya, does it worry you that there's a risk to get back onto set whenever that is or do you have a different mindset which is that enough is enough and we just need to get out and deal with it as best possible? So I think that finally we need to get going and figure ways to work around this condition and life can't stop beyond a point and many people are dependent upon the film industry for the livelihood so sooner or later, I mean the sooner it gets started, it's better that way and for that, of course, every little bit of fear we have to exercise a lot of caution and follow guidelines but beyond a point, I at least I don't operate from fear like that in terms of thinking that the worst will happen. We should be sure of ourselves and be very responsible and trust each other also. I'm asked this question quite often these days that whether actors would now be afraid and skeptical of doing intimate scenes. Probably we would try avoiding them as much as possible in the script or maybe push them to maybe another month or so when people are producing a series or a film or whatever but after a certain point or maybe if it is really required then we will do it and it's full trust and faith in each other and just go with it. Sorry Shreya, you were saying something. No, I was saying something on similar lines that I happened to do just one or two one day shoots during this time period and of course the crew is downsized for sure but people seem to be taking that precaution. Now for how long they'll continue to do that, I don't know. Also another aspect is I feel we can't entirely be selfish. I know we're dying to get back to work, we want to go on set but if the numbers don't reduce, I feel like if it's not immediately necessary and if it can be extended then maybe project to project everybody has to take that call with some sensitivity just considering the whole scenario. And Sudhir, given that the old adage of the show must go on do you see newer formats evolving during this medium term till effectively there's a vaccine and the vaccine plays out all right and so on and so forth? Yeah, I think some of us old horses don't know how to do things differently, right? So I mean I don't know how to write for this time. I mean I'm writing like Karan is saying, I don't know how to shoot for time. Maybe technologically some young biscuit will tell me, here Sudhir, this project of yours is going to shoot it like this. Take these shots separately, we'll composite them. I mean maybe if it goes long enough, maybe we'll have fine solutions like that but there are two aspects to filmmaking. It's also living for a lot of people. There's a lot of daily wage workers who need work. There are a lot of assistants who need work. So I mean I think younger people and newer format should happen in the meantime so that people can work. It's also you need software, you need things to put on, right? Yeah. And so I mean I think a lot of people are shooting. I don't know whether I'm supposed to say that but a filmmaker, I mean I have a lot of assistants who are now bigger filmmakers than I am, I mean commercially and all of them are telling me, Sudhir, I'm shooting. I'm doing this show, I'm doing that show, I'm shooting from August. So a lot of people are, right? No shoots have opened up. All projects are starting that I know of and pretty big ones, right? So I mean and I hope they're careful, I hope they have insurance, I hope they know what they're doing. I'm thinking of starting a shoot in January. Okay. By which time I think I'll have written everything by which I'll think whatever. But I have, you know, I'm working for people who kind of understand that and I have a great relationship with Sameer and I are who's the wonderful, you know, understanding, not so I mean, so he, we'll be working together on two or three projects where, you know, we'll do it right. But I can understand the problems of people who want to come in and work. Yeah. Start because there's, you know, there's this people holding on to units. There's daily wage workers. There's this. That's livelihood. That's livelihood. It's not being able to pay rents. There's young assistants, you know, how long can you hold on?  Mostly I turn my assistants into writers. Right. So I work with them. So most of them have worked now, you know, because we're writing. It's just a pure technical assistant. What does he do? Many of them gone back home. Sure. It's, it's a tough one. But I think I'm not going to change my methodology. I think it's also. And I'm going to do it well because if there's another problem, you know, I mean, there's a standard that's not being set. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's, it's changing. And I think what's, what's happening, the world over is, is people are finding different ways to, to, to make sure that, that content does get out and that quality will also keep getting better as, as, as we go along. There's a lot of film shoots that the bigger film shoots, some people are going to Scotland. I hear. Yes. I hear there's some people, there's a lot of places. I think Thailand has a very few cases. So I mean, a lot of people, ad films may be going there. I think might be going there. I mean, most of the Eastern countries seem to have handled this Vietnam. Taiwan. South Korea, they seem to have handled it really well. The COVID crisis. So a lot of people may be going there. Yeah. No, we'll get there as well. I'm pretty sure. We'll get there. Everywhere, 10 states have a problem. Maybe there are places in India where you can shoot. For example, Hathi's Garden, for example, Goa, for example. There's a lot of places where you could go. There are options. There's a whole unit that's going to Udaipur or Jaipur, one place that's going to stay in a palace and shoot in August. So I mean, the figuring out ways where, you know, smaller units will go and park themselves in one place. Everybody tested. You know, nobody moving out. And, you know, and being careful about food and props and things that come. There's a lot of innovation that's happening because of that. That's a good thing. And I hope that stays like, you know, like just being able to do a lot of things.  Such a waste of time.  And even like post, like there's so many things you can do. We're just trying to figure out like how to stream, like, you know, sound mix into and just do it. I've just mixed my, in fact, I've done my entire post of serious men and hostages in this time. I've really learnt a lot. You know, we have dubbed with Nawaz being in his village. Exactly. We have mixed with those two recorders being in their studio. And I, in my room and the others being in their house. And then we've kind of, it's taken a bit long, you know, but the platform helps and everybody helps. Then, you know, I mean, I think there is nobody. It's likely long because again, you might want to first few people who have done it, but eventually there's a point of efficiency where you should not have to physically be at studios. You don't have to physically be at Recky's. Like I think that's an amazing waste of time. I dubbed for suitable boy from home. Very good. Okay, so good. So everyone's been doing stuff from... Nawaz dubbed from home, Nawaz dubbed from home. Swannan Kerkere sang from home. You know, all the actors, serious men and hostages, whatever the dubbing that happens in hostages too, I'm talking about, which is also ready. It was all done. The internet connection has to be amazing at this point. Wi-Fi has to be a saviour. Like it is on this call. Yeah, thanks. Okay, so I'm being sent a countdown timer on time. So I'm going to try and ask you guys the last round of questions post which we need to hand over because there's a nice big award ceremony that's happening after our panel. I want to, you know, for the people viewing us at this point of time, you know, it's been a very good start for the Indian OTT industry. There's been, of course, events such as the coronavirus, which have been catalyst in driving adoption, much quicker adoption of the space, especially paid subscriptions and, you know, what we call the SWAT players. What I wanted to ask each of you is, where do you see the trend for the kind of content in the next 24 months? We've seen a lot of crime. We've seen some breakout shows like Made in Heaven, like you mentioned. What's the next bastion to cover? Do you see things like horror and so on and so forth making their sort of debut on OTT or any other trends that you may see? I'm going to request you guys for a precise answer in the interest of time and then we can sum it up. So Karan, do you want to start? Yeah, sure. I think, you know, what Rasika, you were saying in terms of, you know, being original and trying to push stuff out and, you know, working in a symbiotic relationship with the platform is all very good, but there's a lot of data sort of coming in and I think it's just going to be start, you know, there's going to be a point where they're funneling everything into, okay, we need this, we need that. So before that happens, like, you know, personally, I want to just push the boundaries of every kind of genre that I can possibly in that time and, you know, experiment with new things and sort of try and because we need to, as creators sort of open up the, you know, the amount of stuff you're looking at in terms of subjects and things and stuff that we haven't had enough of is where one should be focused on, at least I am, a lot of people, you know, like to follow trends and things. So I'm, you know, that's where I am sort of focused in trying to do genre that we haven't seen a lot of on streaming, but... Sounds great, yeah, that sounds great, yeah. What about you, Rasika? I don't know actually. I haven't really given the thought to what has not been done already. I'm quite, I can't think of anything which is not on OTT platforms. Like what genre would you say Karan?  What is it only that's not been explored? sci-fi, I don't think has been explored too much. sci-fi comes to my mind immediately as one thing that has not. Am I right or wrong? Yeah, absolutely right because you've never had technical know-how or the budget. I kind of hope that the OTT platform doesn't make the mistake of saying this filmmaker ko ap sudharte, aisi ye banoate. It is a natural proclivity that filmmakers have. So what is interesting about it? OTT is that there is this window where all sorts of things are available, right? A guy goes to a platform thinking he likes this, stumbles upon that and develops a taste for this. That's the wonderful thing about OTT. You can find a film anytime you want. So I hope and then like in films, meri film ko kam log dekhne hoonge, I've disproved it with hostages but supposing some guy is less popular obviously maybe he gets a lesser budget, maybe some guy gets a bigger budget but all sorts of things should happen. So I think that's the wonder. You should explore all genres. How do they know what they want until you don't? Otherwise it's the same old Friday thing. Exactly what platforms need to break in a big way. I don't know why we are still restricting ourselves to like two half films or two and a half films. What is the time frame? That's something so based in history and limited by the directly proportionate size of your bladder because of as Hitchcock said. Like Katya Bars for example is a documentary film supposing it was a documentary series now I'm sure would be very popular. Supposing you did, I mean there are all sorts of things that you could do I'm not saying that the rules of filmmaking that you don't have to make them engaging that you don't have to... I mean there's those rules but I think that's... My film or your film is 40 minutes and that's all I need to do I should not be forced into making one whole show out of it or even a feature length film. I mean so as a platform you have the capability to just accommodate something anything from like zero to ten hours and it's about how long that story should take. Actually organically hold. Exactly. I think that the platforms will allow for that and like we were all discussing I think in some it's effectively differentiation that will will really make one platform stand out from another. I think they're doing it.  You see all the platforms have a variety and I hope they stick with that and I hope don't these you know statistics don't come into play. There are all sorts of things and I think people are slowly given time. People are you know evolving.  It takes a little time but I think people younger give the young the little chance. They'll come up to it. Instead of saying no no no they will like this. This is what happens in India. There's such a star. I hope OTT doesn't get into that. I think the audience becomes a star. I mean the biggest breakout star in the last six months has been Jaiti Palawat. As actors in fact that is my worry or concern that I hope this doesn't transition into a space where social media numbers are looked at to cast actors or again you go back to the same thing because slowly I noticing that that is happening now. On behalf of principal director no one looks at any social media numbers. I am hoping that's the hope. That's the hope as actors but I have been in situations where I have had these back end conversations and that is the only disheartening thing but the good part is I am talking to platforms and I am talking to everybody. Nobody is now insisting on casting. Most of people are saying cast right. That's also giving actors the wrong message. Directors and creative producers and writers have to see it. I don't have to do an Instagram post. I am so easy on them actually. The amazing part is that even if the critics have not written the best things about a show that you have done online but it finds an audience. People will watch it.  They are going to write to you and this is where you feel hopeful that every actor is able to with whatever even one scene you are able to be noticed and in fact strangely that ends up helping your film career also. That's one thing. I just hope that the writing is given more time. There are a lot of good series that have come up and are being made but a variety of them are still hurrying up that process quite a bit. I still think that sometimes there are very unidimensional characters. The lead writing, the lead concepts haven't really kicked in as much as they can. I've been doing some stuff for the pandemic and I had huge hopes that now with people having four months to themselves we see some great writing and great concepts. The concepts are good but again they are not woven nicely. It's not very well placed. It's good that an actor is saying that and I hope producers and platform and everybody is listening. People are hurrying things. But a lot of better platforms, better producers when I work with applause I've been given a year to develop something now. I work with some people and I hope those people stick by it and I think some platforms are also doing it. For example, on Netflix when I worked with Netflix on Serious Men we took about eight months to finish the script that was already written once before we submitted. We took eight months to I think that's wonderful. I think we've got to take heart from the fact that earlier you would be asked to develop something in two weeks. The very fact that it's got to four months, five months, six months, eight months in some cases a year or two years is actually a great sign because that is effectively going to essentially drive the way content gets made and the quality of content that gets made with fantastic writers such as Karan being given enough time to write and experiment and do things. It's going to have to professional proclivity. Some guys write quick. Some guys, it's just I'm talking about the process of development. It's just I'm talking about the entire development process till we actually hit the flaws is now sizably expanded which holds well for the entire industry. We're going to have to leave it over there. Thank you guys very much. We would have loved to stay and talk a lot more. But thank you for an amazing session and always good to see you guys. Thank you. Good to see everyone here. Thank you. Ladies, I would love for you to just go through the chat because a lot of compliments come in your way. Thank you Karan, Sudhir, Farzad for this very very interesting conversation. It was wonderful having all of you here. Thank you for your time and your insights. Thank you so very much. Thank you.


to you, our hosts today, Dr. Susan Berger from the FAIC, and Heather Riggs from NEMA. Please go ahead and begin whenever you're ready. Hi, everyone. This is Susan. And I just want to welcome you. We're so excited that we can do this Connecting to Collection webinar with Lunch with NEMA. So I'm going to go through my spiel, and then Heather Riggs is going to give hers. And we'll get on to the webinar. So please remember to put your questions, and I'll catch them. We'll answer them at the end, and we'll get going. So Connecting to Collections has a lot of different aspects, and they're all free. So take advantage. You can register to post questions in our discussion forum. There are links to resources for smaller and mid-sized cultural institutions, and all the past webinars are available on the archives. And they will all have closed captioning soon, but they'll be linked to a different website to get the closed captioning. So we're on Facebook. We're on Twitter. And if you'd like to keep up with what's happening, we have the C2CC Announce List, which only gives announcements. It's not a discussion list. And if you'd like to subscribe to that, you can use this web address. And if you need to contact me, this is my email address. And if there are people that have emergencies, FAIC has the National Heritage Responders List, which used to be AIC-SIRT. And this is their 24-hour emergency line. So don't hesitate to call if you need help. And in Connecting to Collections Care, we have coming up a Credly badge course on Management 101, Getting a Grip on Collections Management. And if you take all four of them live, then you can get a badge. Or you can take one, two, or three of them, depending on your desires or your availability. And so if you look on the website, you'll get this Management 101. If you want to register for all four, or you can register individually. Now I'm going to turn it over to Heather and take it away. Welcome, everybody. My name is Heather Riggs. I'm communications and operations manager here at NEMA. Welcome, everybody, that is outside of New England. This is pretty exciting for us to be actually working with Connecting to Collections Care on this particular lunch with NEMA, just a little bit more about lunch with NEMA. It is a free webinar the last Wednesday of every month at 12 noon Eastern time. So I would like to say good morning to the West Coast out there. It's more like breakfast for you guys. I also want to say thank you to Connecting to Collections Care for partnering with us and for Ben and Nicole from Historic New England for speaking about a topic that we probably really don't want to be thinking about at the end of August, but probably need to be thinking about it pretty soon. So after that, I just want to mention that we do have some upcoming events, some onsite workshops, and then our annual conference in November at Missick, Connecticut. So I wanted to keep it short because we do have a lot of information to go over with Ben and Nicole. So I will hand it off to them. Hi, welcome. Today's topic is called hibernation, not just for bears, putting your house museum to bed for the season. And today, I will be speaking. My name is Ben Havoc. I'm the team leader of Property Care, and I'm joined by my colleague in our Collections Department, Nicole Chalfon, who is our collections manager. So our agenda today, I'm going to give you a little bit of background on just who Historic New England is, and then we'll kind of get into the details of closing up buildings and landscapes for the season. And then we'll discuss interior collections work we might do as part of that closing up. And then we'll try to allow lots of time for questions at the end. Now in full disclosure, you'll see a lot of winter pictures because that is we're based in New England. And the majority of our closing out is related to weather, snow, and ice. And so you'll hear a lot about that today. So my apologies, I saw someone from Albuquerque. Some aspects might not be totally appropriate, but you can just thank goodness that you're not up here with some of our issues. So Historic New England is a heritage organization. We have been established in 1910 as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. And we changed our public name to Historic New England, for those of you who don't know, somewhere about 10 years ago. We have many different program areas. So we have collections, we have archives and publications, educational program, preservation services. But we are here to talk about the intersection of preservation and collections, which is focused at our historic properties. And our historic properties, we have 36 from Rhode Island up to mid-coast Maine. They range in date and style from the 17th century timber frame houses up to the 1938 Walter Gropius House. And of course, we're all here to talk about house museums and closing house museums up for the season. And that's what our properties are. Not all of them, about 10 of them don't have furnishings in them, but the majority do have furnishings in them, the objects, the furnishings. And of course, we interpret them to specific periods of time. And the care of these properties is very important. I should say that only about 8 to 10 of our properties, it kind of depends on how you define open for the winter might be, but only about 8 to 10 are open year round in some capacity or the other. So we're actively closing 26 properties basically every year. Our open season is from June 1 through October 15. So a lot of these activities happen kind of late October through November and maybe even leak into early December, depending on how busy things are. So I will now talk about building and landscapes. And my agenda is kind of shown here with inspection, cleaning gutters, secure openings, secure outdoor art and objects, turning off and draining water lines, maintaining active environmental systems, shutting down systems, and then preparing for snow removal. You are welcome. We have a handout that includes a link to our website, which has white papers. And there is a white paper on winterizing your historic house museum. So a lot of this information is found there. So those of you playing at home are certainly welcome to download that and any other way paper we have to learn more about our approach. So starting with inspection, I feel it's kind of important to take stock of what's happening with your buildings before winter. They've been open for the season, so it's good to know kind of what happened over the course of the year. But it's also good to kind of understand where there might be problem points for the winter and also just to kind of document the existing conditions. So the survey of the property is very important, but you don't have to be. We're lucky enough to have preservation staff, preservation professionals on staff, but that's not a requirement for this. It's something, a basic inspection is something kind of everyone can do. And I'm really focusing on securing the exterior envelope, so all of the kind of features on the outside. So if we start at the top, what you're really just looking at in the chimney, for example, is whether the mortar looks to be intact. And of course, the mortar is in between the bricks. Now, are there all the bricks intact? Because sometimes you might have spalling. And you can see in that highlight that there's some brick damage evident. And although not chimney related, you can see right next to the chimney with the black circle, there's a piece of the roof that's lifting up. So you're kind of looking at anywhere, really, this is anywhere water can get into your building. On the roof, are the shingles lying flat? Are there gaps in the shingles? Is there biological growth on the shingles? How are all the different components fitting together? Gutters are a pretty critical component. And so starting at the roof line, are the gutters intact? Is there damage around the system? Are there downspouts intact? Or even on the picture from the right, we're obviously missing a downspout.  And even if you have gutters and downspouts, are they functioning properly? So on the left, we see an image of a scupper that's overflowing in a rainstorm. And that's obviously an indication that there might be a clog somewhere in the system. And those are all things you want to address before winter comes when you're going to have additional rain and bad weather. Once it hits the ground, is the water just being dumped at your foundation?  So any water that gets kicked out pours right back? Or is the water being funneled as far away as possible from your building? Is the siding intact? We can see here are some missing clappards. Hole in the wall is not an intact envelope. And it allows water in, obviously. Missing paint, not a great thing. And then with the windows, certainly traditional in New England are glazed windows with putty. And that glazing definitely deteriorates over time. How is that holding up? Do you see any major areas where water can get in to the building? And then how is the vegetation doing? Are the bushes kind of crowding out the building? Are there trees in close proximity to the house? Or, say, historic trees that have large branches kind of looming over the house? All things we kind of look at. Now, admittedly, if you're just looking at this in October and November, there's not that much room to make a major change to any of your system. You're not about to just contract out a roof replacement. And I'm sure most people are not in place with funding to do that at that point. But it is pretty important to make sure your gutters are clean. Gutters are a nightmare for all of us. I think, certainly for us at Historic New England, they are very important to clean, but are very difficult to get clean. When you have a 40-foot tall building in the gutter on the front gets clogged, you have to bring in contractors to clean that. So how many times are you going to bring the contractors? If you bring them in in October 15, then your gutter is going to get clogged from leaves before snow flies. So we have to think about that, and we have to think about the timing of when we clean gutters. And so these are often kind of the last things we'll try to cycle through and put up with the fact that they might be clogged for some fall rainstorms, and they might not work ideally. But what we really want to do is kind of clean them all out before the snow starts to fly, when they can get super blocked up. And that's when ice and snow can kind of work their way back up the roof line and under the roof and get into your building. Also, we generally schedule a lot of our tree care for fall and early winter. It's a good time to kind of get in. The sites aren't open to the public, so you have a little more access. And we are able to kind of prune a lot of the trees, and make sure their canopies are lightened for the season before ice and snow start to weigh them down, make sure things are safe. We also have white papers on tree care. But in general, we have a kind of prioritization process where we start with the kind of historic buildings and structures as a top priority. Another top priority is anywhere visitors might be found to congregate, like parking lots or paths to the properties. And then we kind of cycle away. If you have a large property and lots of trees, sometimes it can be difficult to know where to start, but that's kind of how we approach our tree care. Securing doorways, windows, and skylights pretty much just as it says, if some places we have storm windows, then we'll make sure the storms are down for the season. Some places we have historic storms, so wooden storms that predated our ownership and go back to historic ownership. And we're always happy when we have that, because it gives us a good excuse interpretively to do that. Some of the sites I've worked with in other locations had paneled shutters, as opposed to louvered shutters and paneled shutters you can close for the season. Here we're seeing an image where some of our houses, some of the doorways and openings we can kind of close up with. In this case, we're calling it a storm door, but you can see it's a wood, really a wood door that we're installing to keep snow and ice away from the historic front door. And the picture on the right shows a skylight and the wooden panel cover is kind of lying on the roof, but that's about to be installed on top of the skylight. And so again, when snow starts to fly, it keeps the snow off the window and helps protect it from the elements. Securing outdoor art and objects. We have sculpture. I mean, we have picnic tables and chairs that we might bring in. You want to kind of clear your landscape of objects, because again, with us in New England, winter storms also can come with high winds. And so we want anything loose, secured. In the case of sculpture like this, this sculpture that's being removed has actually a couple of seams to the sculpture, some previous break points. And once the water gets in there and it freezes, of course, you're talking about the freeze cycle and the freezing water will expand and just continue to deteriorate a collection item like this or even a historic pot for plants. And so where we can, we bring those objects, we dismantle them and bring them indoors for storage. And many of our sites, we have barns or basements that we can kind of move objects into. At some sites, we don't have that luxury or the object is not able to be moved. And so we've been known to box in objects for the winter. We have made boxes that kind of fit over, so we're not making new boxes every year. We just deploy the same ones. Or the picture on the right is a fountain that has been partially dismantled, but the kind of center post section has to stay in place. And so that's wrapped for the winter just to keep the weather off of it. Turning off and draining your water lines, it really depends on what type of property you have and where the water issues might be. So in the landscape, you might have an irrigation system or you have hoses or exterior hose bibs for your water system. And those certainly in New England are prone to freezing. The water inside might freeze and burst the pipe. So we need to drain those. Some of our sites might have outdoor bathrooms and those need to be drained down if we're not heating them. And even inside the buildings and even in houses that we might actually put in a small amount of heating through the winter, we might still drain or kind of freeze-proof some of the fixtures. The process, there's kind of different processes. We always bring in a plumber. We don't have a plumber on staff, so that's part of our kind of maintenance, operational costs every year. Some of them are easily drained by gravity. So you open a valve and water drains down. That's the ideal. Some more complicated systems you might need to blow out with compressed air. So you bring a kind of air machine and make sure you're blowing all the water out of the system. But that's not a full proof. If by definition you have a system that's kind of complicated enough that you need that, and it may also mean that water can still be sitting in low spots within your system. And the biggest example is if you have a radiator system, it's very difficult to blow and totally clear water out of a hot water radiator. And so in those situations, you're better left to keep those in operation unless you're totally committing to not having heat ever in that building. And then the final step, not a big fan personally of adding glycol or antifreeze to a system. You can do that even just to a radiator system, but it has a high kind of maintenance cost. It's a very corrosive material. You have to continually kind of maintain your system. But antifreeze does have its purpose. And for like toilets that you might be shutting down for the season, you can add glycol to the tank and you can add glycol to the water trap and that will help prevent water that is just naturally in those low spots or in those areas, help keep them from freezing. And then in the spring, you can clear it out again. So the big question might be whether you're gonna leave on your heating or your environmental system or not. And I don't have a global answer for that because every site really is different. So the key is monitoring your conditions and have you been doing that all along so you know what typical conditions are and will you monitor it when you try and experiment? So for us, we're very fine in our house museums of having a range between 30% and 60% relative humidity. We have sites that have heat for the winter. We have sites that have heat only in the basement for the winter. We have sites that have no heat. And some of this is just kind of learned over the years. There are sites that we can shut everything down and they seem to be totally fine. And then there are sites we shut down and mold grows almost immediately within the building. And so you really just have to be patient and kind of understand and take the time to understand your building and experiment. And I'm always in favor of doing a little bit at a time to experiment. And so you don't wanna go too crazy with any step you take, but this is an experiment that we have done at many of our houses.  We have pictures here of, well, certainly sexy HVAC maintenance going on. But we do bring in outside contractors to do a tune-up of all of our heating and systems. So that's our oil-based systems, our natural gas-based systems. And then on the right is a dehumidifier. So that's just underscoring the need to make sure you change filters, both for those and your heating systems. At a site where you're not going to have heat, you certainly wanna think about shutting down like computers and other sensitive equipment. So we now have kind of internet-based phone systems and so those are hooked to computers and computers don't do well in really cold temperatures. This image is showing the reverse happening, which is in a house or two, these are showing two different houses that don't have heat. But in order to keep, say, the alarm system functioning, we put it in one house, we put kind of the alarm computer panel in a closet, there is a light bulb in there that generates just enough heat to keep that system going and the picture on the right shows kind of a little boxed-in room that we built in the basement of one of our houses and there's a little just electric radiator in one of those, in that structure to help keep that equipment warm. And in there there's more of a network system than others. And then kind of the final step is just actually preparing for snow removal. Those were a lot of the steps we've taken, but then we wanna make sure we're staking for snow plows. We wanna make sure we're installing snow fences and kind of protecting any sensitive vegetation. We wanna purchase our snow removal supplies, update emergency kits, open cabinets under sinks, that's where heat never gets the cabinets under sinks and that's where water might be, so it's always important to open those, put some sort of weather block where we know it snows inside, protects fireplaces, generators. So these are kind of backup generators. If we lose power at a site that needs heat, we wanna make sure that if we have a generator at that site, it's not in a location that's gonna be snowed in. We wanna make sure we can access it at a different time in heat tape. And I'm gonna kind of run through some of these, not all of these. And the first question might be why do we wanna remove snow if we've shut down the house for the winter? And the answer is fairly simple. We wanna maintain emergency access throughout the season, so we wanna make sure fire trucks can access the building if there is, hopefully there will never be a fire, but if there is, we wanna make sure they can get in. If you have a system, you might need fuel, delivery, and some of our houses, we have tenant access, and of course we wanna be able to access it to inspect the property after storms. So an example of just staking for snow plowing, this is a driveway. You can maybe see the wooden stakes on either side of the driveway to mark the driveway. Very simple concept. They're there for to guide the plow trucks once the snow comes, and this is just an example of the house. You can see the stakes kind of peeking out of the snow, but it gives you the sense of when snow is on the ground, you don't know where the roads are. Very quickly, sand versus snowmelt versus salt. What I will tell you is salt and snowmelt of all of its different types are all just in the end, damaging to masonry, vegetation, or both. We have used snowmelt a lot. We're seeing the impact there with our masonry, and the ideal for me would be to use sand if you need traction of some sort during the winter, and but the problem there is like out of sight that's open in the winter is that sand can be tracked into your museum. So there are challenges anywhere you go with these materials. Another peril of ice and snow is that a snow plow might knock down, say, a masonry pier. That's what you're seeing kind of right here in that image, or in some of our communities, the town may snow blow the sidewalks and the image on the kind of right-hand side is showing a fence column and an urn. The woodwork on the fence column has been knocked off by the giant snow blower, and the urn has got a giant scar on it. It's harder to see that from the kind of the big section of the equipment just kind of grazing by that and just knocking it off, or similar on the picture along the bottom, the fence getting knocked out, the pickets being destroyed by a similar piece of equipment. So again, underscore is the need to kind of inspect your property before the winter, take some photos, and then after storms make sure you pay attention because you need to know if these kind of things are happening to your sites. I mentioned you should know where the snow generally blows into your buildings and maybe you wanna take steps to prevent that in the future. These are just two images showing wind-blown snow. When it snows, you might wanna reduce the load of the snow on top of your building. So whether it's occupied or not, snow load is always a major concern. I would never advocate anyone going onto the roof except someone who's trained. In that, it's very dangerous, especially when it's snow and icy. But the long tools you're seeing here are called snow rakes and they extend quite away and they allow you actually to very quickly and easily grab big chunks of snow and pull them off. And the picture on the right shows ice dams and ice dams are formed when perhaps water melts on your roof for whatever reason and then hits the gutter, which is projecting out into the cold, the gutter is cold itself and then giant icicles can form, the gutter fills up and then water forces its way back up into the house. In this case, an icicle fell, hit the roof on the left and caused enough of a hole and break in the system that water then could get in and that's the water damage you're seeing on the right. So again, inspection throughout a process, always important. Things you can do to mitigate that. On the left are kind of snow guards that we installed in one of our houses. There is an interpretive aspect to this and we discuss interpretation all the time. The snow guards don't belong on this house, but in this case, there is a public sidewalk right on the other side. So having huge chunks of ice fall onto the sidewalk. Trumps everything sometimes. And on the right may be hard to see but there's actually something called heat tape that we installed to help keep the kind of bottom courses of that roof free of snow and ice as well as we might apply it just to the gutter system. Snow and ice laden trees can break and crack, causing tremendous damage. Again, needing to inspect after major storms to find that there's damage and then the happy tree crew that spent a better part of a week at this site after a major ice storm cleaning up the site. Or the final issue I'll talk about is just that when the ground is frozen, water has nowhere to go. And so in the late months of winter for us, the ground is frozen, but it may just rain. And when it rains, all of the water then has nowhere to go. It can't get absorbed into the soil and so it tends to go into the basements of our houses. So an additional thing is you have to keep your eye again, inspect after major storms and look for areas where water might be getting in. And now I'm gonna pass it over to my colleague. Here's for several of the winter months. And all of the work that Ben has described not only protects the fabric of the historic building itself but also which is a large collections object which you eat the buildings as collections objects but it also helps to protect the collections that are housed inside the building. So we do this closing work from mid-October to mid-November, sometimes into the summer. Sorry to interrupt, Nicole. You were actually muted right at the time that Ben passed it over to you. So if you could please start again. So sorry, I forgot to unmute my microphone. So as Ben said, most of Historic New England's 36 house museums, which are located across New England are closed to the visitors for several of the winter months and all of the work that Ben has described not only protects the fabric of the historic building which we treat as a large collections object but it also helps to protect the collections housed inside the building. So we do this closing work from mid-October to mid-November and sometimes into December if we are a little bit behind but we try to get it all done before the water to the house, the bathrooms are shut down and it's too cold in the unheated properties for staff to work comfortably. So to ensure the safety of collections during these months we take steps to prepare the interiors as well as the exteriors to reduce potential damage from pest infiltration, temperature and weather changes, moisture infiltration and light exposure. We also take this opportunity to give the house a thorough cleaning and assessment. So each historic New England Historic House is thoroughly cleaned and assessed in the fall to make sure that the objects are stable and prepared for the winter months. Daily cleaning, vacuuming and dusting is undertaken throughout the open season by our guide staff but they're not expected to do deeper cleaning on a regular basis so twice a year the collection staff tries to visit each site to give a group effort to go over each room. And while we're doing that we dust and clean the woodwork and interior architectural elements. We vacuum historic textiles including bed covers, rugs and carpets, window hangings, vacuum the more hard to reach places like under large pieces of furniture and beds. Possibly wipe ceramic and glass objects if it's needed and if training has been given by the collections team. With clean windows and plexiglass UV covers paying special attention to keeping the windowsills clean. This is a list of supplies that we at Historic New England use. This list is in the handout that you can hopefully download on the left side of your screen. It includes the basics that you'll need to keep your historic house clean. Also in the handout, this is a list of the products that Historic New England uses to deep clean our collections objects. Just handy bits of information for you. So this twice a year cleaning is a good time to assess any onsite collection storage spaces usually in attics, closets, sometimes in basements. We always clean and replace any sheets or dust covers. We cover things with plastic if there's any chance of water infiltration. And this is a good time to make sure that everything is nice and tidy. So this twice a year cleaning is a good time to take a really good look at your objects and examine them for signs of mold, of any surface instability that may get worse over the closed season. And largely, very importantly, any pest activity that needs to be addressed before you close up for the season. Through your thorough cleaning and assessment of the collections in the Historic House it will help you make decisions about where to focus your efforts for the next few steps. Museum pests are an ongoing and unavoidable problem for the Historic House Museum. The dark undisturbed spaces provide the perfect environment for pests to live and multiply without attracting attention. And the nature of many objects in our collections just call to pests and provide wonderful habitats for them to thrive. For their larvae to survive, pests lay their eggs in proteinaceous materials, horsehair mattresses, featherbeds and pillows, wool rugs, window hangings, silk gowns, and old wood, which are things that largely make up our museum collections. The months when a house is closed up and not regularly full of people and activity provide the perfect time for pests to multiply and get out of control. To prevent that from happening, sources of pest food should be checked extra carefully during your cleaning and suspicious materials should be quarantined and treated. It's very important during this cleaning to pull back bed covers, look in upholstered chair crevices and places where window curtains fold or drape is these create hidden spots that pests love to live in. And then you have your treatment options when you do and you probably will find pests. Freezing is a good technique for treating pests in textiles, but this must be done in a very controlled way to be effective. The National Park Service has a conservergram that outlines the procedure. There's a link to that in your handout as well. And here's a mini commercial. Another option is a controlled atmospheric treatment which is a high carbon dioxide low oxygen environment inside a special tent. We at Historic of England have one of these facilities we call it the bubble. All living things inside that tent die after two to three weeks at that high carbon dioxide concentration. Historic of England is the only facility in the country that offers this service to outside museums and institutions. And this service is especially critical for objects that don't lend themselves well to fitting in a chest freezer such as upholstered furniture, mattresses and large case furniture. There's a link to more information about our bubble in Historic of England's website in the handout at the end of the commercial. Vertebrates are also a really big pest problem. So squirrels are trying to find a nice snug place to pass their winter months and you need to be vigilant about closing up exterior holes to prevent re-entry. I highly recommend contacting a professional exterminator who can prevent animals from being trapped inside your building. They can cause a lot of damage and will eventually find a way out even if that means chewing through many things to find it. Ice are another very destructive pest problem. They like to build their nests and mattresses, upholstered furniture and even floors. And you may want to contact a professional there also if you're squeamish about trapping them yourself. Water infiltration, I think water leaks are the stuff of nightmares for all museum professionals. Using Ben's tips and tasks to secure the exterior envelope of your building is the best way to prevent unwanted moisture infiltration to the interior. However, despite your best efforts, disasters can happen and collections can be affected. There are a few steps that we take to try to mitigate the possibility of damage in places that are likely or known offenders. One simple step we take is to remove the fireplace equipment from the hearth in each fireplace in each historic house. The tools, fenders and irons, et cetera, are all laid out on a piece of plastic sheeting away from the fireplace. But just make sure that that place that you lay the fireplace tools are out of the expected foot traffic for the room, that they don't block access to windows, doors or other areas that you may need to get to. We then place several water absorbent mats which we call hogs or pigs based on the brand name that we purchase. There's a link to newpig.com in your handout which sells a variety of hogs, pigs and snakes to keep things interesting. And they're just water absorbing materials so you can place them under the chimney in each fireplace as a precaution. And the same thing can be done for windows with a history of water infiltration or the blowy side of a building where you know the water, I believe in the picture on the right, this is the water ocean side of this building and we know that the wind comes off of that ocean and can blow snow right up into the windows of the house. So we would move objects away from those areas and proactively place the water absorbent pads, the pigs in those windows. Light exposure can easily be controlled with old sheets and window shades. The finished woods, paintings and textile objects are the most concerned when it comes to light exposure causing damage. We cover furniture and textiles that cannot be moved away from the sources of light. I do not recommend covering framed paintings or mirrors as the gilded decoration is often very fragile and could easily be damaged by the covering or uncovering process. If it's necessary to remove paintings from the wall to get them off of an exterior wall or to prevent light exposure, just make sure you have a very safe place to put them before you take them off the wall for the season. If a table or a piece of case furniture has small objects on it and we want to cover that piece of furniture to protect it from light, all of the small objects are taken off and either stored inside a drawer of the piece or placed back on top of the piece after it is covered with a sheet. You never want to cover small objects with a sheet as you won't be able to see what you're uncovering in the spring and you can cause damage to objects that you don't know are there. This is also a good time to snap a quick photo with your smartphone or a digital camera so you know how to return the objects to their places in the spring. For objects that can't be moved away from light sources, you can install room darkening roller shades or simply drape black or dark fabric over the window openings and hold them in place with tension rods. So the basic takeaway of preparing your site for the winter is to know your building, know your collection, prepare for all possible problems and hope that it is a quiet, uneventful winter. We hope that everyone has a less nice weather staying outside the building and your collections, snug and happy inside your building. So is it time for questions? I think it's time for questions. Okay, first of all I want to tell you then that it does snow in Albuquerque, not like you but it snows. Okay, we have a question. This is for Ben. In terms of outdoor sculptures, are you ever worried about microclimates within the boxes or under the wrappings? Yeah, I think that's a, excuse me, I think that's an interesting question. I think we are always concerned and I think that's part of our kind of criteria. It's not set up very well to monitor those conditions but I think over the course of years we've had our object conservation staff is actually the ones in charge of putting our sculpture to bed, our buildings and landscape staff help and so there are I would say generally always doing condition assessments before and after to make sure the objects are certainly not visibly deteriorating. And that's also I think in one of the images you could see that there was in the box there was a ventilation system built in because we weren't trying to create an airtight environment. We were allowing air and moisture to travel in and out of the space. Okay, I wanted to remind you that the evaluation is up in the upper left hand corner so please take a minute when this is over and fill that out, thank you. Is there preferred material for wrapping outdoor sculpture that can't be boxed or moved inside? That's a good question. I don't actually know the answer right now. I'm gonna, Nicole, do you have an answer to that? I think we can certainly look that up. Again, it's our object conservation staff have done that but we can check on that. Okay, if you wanna give that to me I'll post it with the recording. So that'd be great. Let's see, how often do you check environmental conditions for all of your homes monthly? So our environmental conditions, we certainly, unless we know that there's an issue or we are like doing an experiment, we are certainly kind of in the long view and we download our data probably about quarterly and we have a cycle of meetings with our collections team where we highlight certain properties that we wanna focus in on and do an in-depth review. If anyone anecdotally said, boy I feel like it's moist in a site then we will target that site but we do not look on a monthly basis at what every property is doing. That's a pretty exhaustive system that we actually are not set up to do. Someone asked, where are all these museum locations? Yes, our museums are located from Rhode Island up to mid-coast Maine in the New England, five of the six New England states. And Ben, are there particular issues to address with log cabin museums? I'm sorry, I didn't hear that question. Are there particular issues to address with log cabin museums? Log cabin museums, that's interesting. I might parallel that we don't, well we do actually have one structure that is built entirely of logs, that's the Gilman Garrison House. I generally feel like that house certainly hasn't distinguished itself separately from our other properties, whether they be timber frame or the Gropius House and generally how they interact and respond to the weather. I think a big thick log like that will actually probably fare pretty well because it's one material where we have problems at Gilman Garrison is that the plaster on the interior was applied directly to the logs, so now that's when you start getting into trouble zones because no matter what, the logs are gonna kind of respond to the seasonal changes and swell and shrink, and if your plaster is applied directly to that, you'll get a lot of cracking and failure and that is one thing we do struggle with. So the logs themselves, it's not a big problem, they're gonna move a little bit with the seasons but things attached to the logs, you might see some of the effects. On average, how much staff time do you allocate to closing a building? And then there's a related question, how many staff people do you have working winterizing the interior of a house museum? That's a great question. We work, I would say, from October 15th through December 1st, the collections team is getting to as many sites as possible and the core team is four to five of us plus interns that we drag with us to close up properties. I would say each property we try to do in one day, the interior cleaning and assessment and covering and prepping, and that's just the interior side and opens team does more time on the exterior. So I would say we try to get each house interior set in a day just because we have so many, we don't have as much time to spend at each one as we would like, but so four to five staff persons per day per house and that's very experienced collections team staff that come in and go crazy in the house. I guess from the building and landscape side, we have one regional person basically. We have four regions, so we have one per region. Each region has let's just say 10 properties, a couple or less and a couple or more, but the one person there is kind of will work with the collections team if they need it. He'll manage the contractors that need to come in, the plumbers, the HVAC maintenance people. We have a couple landscape staff. So again, I only have a staff of 12 for all 36 of our properties, so we're not stocked out with maintenance people for every site. These, we're based on kind of a regional and maybe if we're lucky, we have two people per region that might be able to lend a hand with a couple extra carpenters if we need something. So we have a particularly large house that has the skylights that I showed and so there we would deploy our carpenters to help button that one up. So we might have four people from my team doing that stuff, whereas the majority of our sites, it's really one person kind of coordinating some of the contractor work. We have a related question. How much do you spend on contractors to winterize? Well, it really depends on the house and the size. I mean, I guess if I were gonna speak in very general terms, a general house to bring in a plumber to kind of drain everything is gonna cost us $400 to $1,000, kind of depending on the site. I think we, I think one person threatened $1,000 and that's when we actually moved to a found a different plumber. But HVAC maintenance work is $250 to $300 for a service visit unless you have a high-end system for say archives or these are for systems that are like your more traditional home heating system if you have a more detailed system cause you have archives or you have other situations the costs really can kind of skyrocket for your system maintenance. Okay, there's a question on what sorts of electronic environmental monitoring do you use? Well, we use the onset hobo data loggers. This isn't a commercial for them. We certainly are exploring or constantly exploring different kinds but at one point those were established and so we've kind of continued those. Again, this is not either positive or negative towards them. They are our system and we're experimenting with some of their Bluetooth enabled ones to make downloading easier but generally there are one off data loggers that are not connected to any system so we have to go through manually and download the data for each one. With the paneled interior shutters Mike closing and unclosing 18th or 19th century shutters each season damage the shutters or the building fabric too much. Could you recommend another annual window covering instead say black fabric or something? Absolutely, I think if you have any chance of catching your window shutters and not being able to get them back open again in the spring or too much stress on them black fabric exactly is a really great option. You can pick up tension rods at the target or wherever you shop or the hardware store and just put tension rods on the inside of the window with black fabric covering the light that will be a really good light blocking. It doesn't adhere to the fabric of the building. It doesn't damage the fabric of the building at all. Very easy to put in and out. Do you mark objects for salvage priorities in case of a disaster? We do not physically mark the objects. We have in our each house has its own disaster plan and disaster binders several copies of it in various locations and in that binder are priority lists and so when new staff is hired for each property they're made familiar with the disaster policy and with the objects that are given on the priority list. Okay, do you, how do you cover carpets to minimize light exposures? Sure, so if we have small room little area rugs some of those will take and stack within the same room on top of one another. We don't like to roll carpets. It tends to stress the fabric especially hooked rugs too much. We have a lot of hooked rugs in our collection. So we lay them flat but sometimes stack them on top of each other. If they're going to be either in a place of getting light exposure or a walkway through the room our rooms are visited weekly by site manager staff or tenants resident overseers. So weekly we have someone walking through the building so we don't want wet boots or muddy boots tracked across carpets. So we may move carpets out of that pathway and then cover them with a sheet. If it's a large room size rug we might just cover the corners of the portions that are either in that walkway or in danger of light exposure. But sometimes it's easier to attack light exposure at the window source than it is at the object level with room darkening shades or blackout fabric rather than trying to do that. If you have UV filters on your windows do you still cover them for the winter with fabric? We do, yes. Is UV filters block certain, block usually UVA of the light spectrum any visible light is going to cause damage to the objects? So UV light filters are incredibly important really good step in the right direction but any visible light in the room is going to damage fabrics. I have a question, if you have a building that where you have basically no heat it doesn't that, isn't that another way to control pests? I know here there are some places that are like there's a historic mill that they basically turn off the heat in the winter to get rid of pests. Pests in cold weather will go into hibernation but they will not die. That's why the using of a chest freezer as a treatment option for pest eradication is incredibly challenging. It's a very specific, very quick reduction in temperature and it has to state a very specific stable temperature for enough time to actually kill but there have been many instances when things have been treated in a pest freezer and have survived the treatment. So any warming or cooling or if it doesn't decrease in temperature rapidly enough that's not going to eradicate pests. Unfortunately, I wish it did. Okay, this is our final question. How do you bring buildings back online? Yeah, I mean I think it's actually, it's simply stated, reverse those directions.  I think the same would be true with the collection side. You're going to uncover the objects. You're going to start to put them all back in place. You're going to look and make sure there was no winter damage and you put them all back into place. So reversing the steps. Okay, we have a couple of other questions but it's time for us to stop. So I'll collect them and if you guys can answer them I'll post them with the recording. So thank you so much. Thank you Heather for letting us be lunch with Nima. Well thank you for actually presenting lunch with Nima for us this month. Yeah, well we're happy to do it and you can go to the Connecting to Collections Care website and you'll find the recording probably tomorrow and along with the PowerPoint, the any trailing questions, the worksheets, everything will be there. So thank you very much and I hope we'll see a lot of you for the Management 101, getting a grip on collections management next in a couple of weeks, in September and early October. So thank you and don't forget the evaluation. We really need to have it. Bye bye. All right, thanks everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you.


Hello Emma, I think you're the only one here right now. Hopefully a few more will trickle in Happy Friday. Happy Friday, Aowyn. Happy Friday, Julie. How's your day been going? Well Super Yeah Yeah We had yeah Just it didn't really amount too much. I should move my computer so you can see out the window. We have about Two feet of snow in the front yard We got two inches. I'm not happy I wouldn't be there. You're so lucky. There's June Hi, June. Welcome. Glad you're here again It's always such a tiny crowd on here on Fridays I kind of like it. We have a loyal following We do I love it. I'm gonna wait for a few more people to trickle in and then we have some exciting stats kind of Should I share my dad? Yeah, yeah a great idea. So my dad I just went and picked this up from him because I helped himself publish it, but it's a book that he wrote about his Time in the military It's not a short book very cool Yeah, I'm excited. It's not a short book Is there any cool pictures that you want to share? Yeah, he has a lot of cool pictures, but I don't know if you'll see him Here's my family. Oh It's tiny To the to your left I think I know that I could see the blank page. Yeah, that's all right Yeah, there's Isabelle Hi, Isabelle But I'm excited. I just I Just talked to her a minute ago. She thought I was gonna be here by myself. So she came to keep me company. I think Was nice of her Yes She's my new ranger leader, you know, I help her. We're all very excited. So excited. Yes Very excited. All right. We're very excited too. We got a new leader. Oh sure yesterday And she's already now the co-leader of two projects Awesome We need we need leaders We need we always need more helpers. There's Ann Young. Hi, Ann Have you been to Friday date night before? I'm not good at remembering names I don't know. What's her last name? What's her and young? It's right there a one I Know I wasn't looking at the chop I was looking for something else for a sec Hmm, Isabelle wants to know what the second project is Oh Good and the and the newbie to our Friday nice Well, I'm not brought pancakes for everybody. That's very nice, too We like pancakes. Oh And from Australia. Awesome. You're just getting your day started then If I if I have that right, yeah, it's probably like six six or seven in the morning there Yeah, oh and there's Glenn Baker or somebody else from from down under awesome 29 degrees and raining Oh, you're Celsius. I can never do the con. I can't convert in my head. So It's 19 Celsius or a Fahrenheit here Glenn and snowy outside So I hope you're enjoying more summer That should be like see That should be like 70 degrees sharing height. I think I'm terrible at that. Yeah Janine already into her weekend. What was the first? Scotland Pretty sure it was Scotland. Oh, yeah, I think you're right We're talking about a new leader for those of you who just got here My husband's father rod is just Is that right? His mom was born. Did I know that? Oh, I knew that. Yeah, you told me that a long time ago. I Have a map of relatively speaking Cool Have you done his genealogy yet? A lot of it's been done But I haven't had a chance to really look at it super closely, but I'm excited to Janine sharing Haynes Goodson and Sharon Haynes is here. Welcome everybody. I guess we could do a few That's awesome our little Friday night Or Saturday morning as it were Should we do some stats or anything I'm gonna go to the stats page and then while I'm doing that if any of our new People have questions. Please ask Emma says the US black US black heritage connecting challenge has over 2000 new profiles in three weeks Wow, that's crazy All right, go on to the date night screen. Here we go Can you see it I See it not in the chat yet though. Oh Really? Yeah Gotta add it to the stream We both did it at the same time meaning we're so cool That happens a lot Especially when we're unscripted true So for the people who are new I have a free space page here for you. It's wiki tree Friday date night and It's linked in the g2g post and we just have our schedule out here And we have instructions on how to find profiles without dates Some different places to look we have the suggestion reports and Some other ideas to I my personal favorite for finding profiles without dates is To start searching for duplicates Because you always find profiles without dates So that's always a good good thing to get those cleared up So you could just work on your watch list and go through and see if you find duplicates there And then there are instructions for when you find a date We have a category set up In case you find something that is for a living person and it does not already have a manager You can put it in this wiki tree admin category and that means that I can go look at it later and See if I can find a date or somebody to manage it and We have How to estimate dates down here There's a help page. It's a great help page. I used to use this all the time Just has some good words of thumb and you know different dates that you can Estimate I right before we came on I Found a date for a lady based off of her marriage date. Oh, nice. There was at least that. Yeah I had that to go on and so I found her around on family search What else do we have hints and tips a Little bling we have a sticker if you want to put a sticker on your profile Do I I don't think I have an example to show for that yet. Can you see that? Is that shown up in the no? Oh No, it's not because I'm you just did the screen Yep, I just did the tab And We have stats. I love stats. Yes We made some really good progress since we started doing this in November hasn't been fast But as those of you who've already done this know, it's not fast Sometimes it's really hard to find dates But I wanted to point out That we are just a smidgen away from 5,000 profiles and I think we can do that today or tonight or Whatever whenever you guys feel but before we meet the next time very excited. I Think we can do it. We just need like 228 more profiles Isabelle's making jokes. Oh now what? She said I should not be doing this actually and Emma said why not and Isabel said it was Valentine's Day recently and I went without a date guess. I'm just not good at this I'm sorry, Isabelle She's so funny. I Have a date. He's in the other room But we're both working so What's everybody doing there Friday night tonight besides looking for dates You we do love Isabelle There's Tammy Hinkle who did I miss while I was gone looking at the other screen Dallas Maher and Tammy Hinkle and Steven. I'm not gonna try to pronounce his last name Tomazowitz yeah, Tommy is a butch Book I think or bug Thomas Tommy. I've asked him this before With that and Thomas Cone line Think Cool, we're very happy to have you guys here. I know we're up to 20 Look June has a furry date tonight. I usually end up with a couple of those two when I'm sitting on the couch They're both gone now. They've abandoned me That's sad. Oh Yeah, kind of sometimes I need for them to go You've been here when they're barking I understand Mary Margaret Taylor just joined from Southern California and her grandparents are from Scotland Mary It's pretty cool and Kathy Nava. Hi. Welcome Kathy. Oh You see you're have a Friday night time to To get some some dating done before your husband gets Sounds terrible. Oh And Steven's gonna be planting seeds What kind of seeds Steven? We need to know these things If it's okay for you to tell us Here anyone should we get bigger? Yes Ken line Thomas Ken line In line cool. I was sort of welcome. Where are you from Thomas? Peppers and tomatoes Stevens getting ready for spring to roll around. It sounds like that's smart. I used to try to do that That is smart Someday, I'll have a yard right in garden Probably not too long No, we'll have a little backyard That'll be cool Cabbage and broccoli. Oh, those are good winter Like cold weather crops that you got there I actually on a whim because you know, we have a pandemic. I took the butt of my Head of romaine and when I went to clean it I just you know sliced off the bottom and I put it in a little bowl of water and it started growing And now I have it in dirt Little baby leaves growing out of the middle of it. My husband said yeah, we'll have my fall. We'll have lettuce That's funny Yeah, well It's something to watch We're stuck inside right now. I know a little remind you of what it's like to be outside right Hasn't been fun Illinois has not had as bad a weather is Texas. So we're at least prepared for it I feel so bad. I feel so bad That could easily be us here in New Mexico. It's kind of scary Yep, Kathy We need to learn. William Vincent is here. What? We both started reading comments at the same time. Oh Here William said and he say what many of these without dates are essentially generic Yeah, and if you find somebody that you just are stumped on and they don't have a profile manager Put them in that wiki tree admin category and I'll take care of them So but if you find so if you could if there's no connection with anybody no dates No, nothing no change history and you find somebody with records for that same name go for it You can turn them into that person Just go to town Let's see what was Kathy saying Yes, we would like you to learn how to use wiki tree That's always fun. Oh Kathy, I'm gonna send you an email and explain about being adopted and having a biological family because I that's me too Excellent. There is a way that you can have both. It's one of the few exceptions we make Yes Yeah You've got the right person here to help you with that and actually Yeah, I'm I can help that too Don't they'll come track you down Kathy and help you get started gonna find her awesome Are you I have to ask now that you're here. Are you familiar with the adoption angels project that we have? wait, I just messed up my comments here I Dallas great way to relax until you realize you have a whole duplicate family that needs to be Yeah, I know nothing relaxing about that Remember back when wiki tree was just a baby genealogy site and we didn't know what we were getting into and We let people add profiles without dates That was almost 10 years ago It was more than 10 years ago Well, I mean, we had our tenure in her since we started doing the dates Like oh, yeah, it's a requirement. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's kind of crazy So Thomas, I'm gonna say it right Ken line is from Seattle Hosty he and Steven are in the Steven Tomaszowitz are near each other They have lots of snow oh I'm in the Midwest Thomas, so that's cool Let's see back in Germany and Norway cool Welcome, let's see who else there's Luther. Hi Luther He's singing a song And likes our year of accuracy idea. Oh Yeah, okay. Yep What was it? I just saw up here.  He's a he has grandparents in Chicago and Cousins in Texas. Yeah, I have friends in Texas. They're having a terrible terrible time And I'm just outside of Chicago. So who? Christine Searle Christine welcome You're here. Oh, hey, look Kathy. Yeah, we haven't Haven't seen her for a while. I'm very happy. Oh Cool great Clark and Perseus glad they brought you over Yeah, very cool. We'll put that up and you already have a profile Yeah, that's awesome That's very cool. We have a nice crowd today. We've I For you new people this is good for us because on Friday afternoons for us It it's not always well populated, but we're always happy to see whoever can come and with Dating some of these profiles because it is it's fun. It's kind of addictive Don't you think we should probably get to it Yeah, that's what I was thinking. We'll let you guys go and we will see you We're out on discord So if you're on the main wiki tree server look to the left and see challenges and there's a Friday date night channel So pop in there if you have questions. I'll be trying to monitor that as much as I can And we will see you as we like to say in the branches I know it's a clever. All right, you guys will see you later. Bye