When Oprah Winfrey decided to end her 25-year run on the Emmy Award Winning Oprah Winfrey Show, planning began for the relocation of Harpo Studios to the West Coast. Team TDAG was called in to assess the massive collection of archival materials and initiate a plan for the creation of the Harpo Studios / Oprah Winfrey Legacy Archive.

Time was of the essence. The building had been sold, and with so much to achieve in less than one year, the only solution was to move a team of 12 archivists, image technicians, and a fabric/wardrobe specialist onsite to historic Harpo Studios in Chicago. In addition, TDAG brought in multiple image capture and scanning devices.

The extensive collection included over 500,000 / 35mm negative film images from Ms. Winfrey’s life, beginning with childhood, encompassing the 25 years of the Oprah Winfrey Show and additional Harpo Studios productions. Each image was captured and digitized utilizing 80mp Phase One digital-back cameras with a specialized film substrate carrier to reduce the handling of the film. All images were dusted prior to capture and digitized in RAW file format. TDAG metadata specialists embedded descriptive data pertinent to the show airing and the subject matter of the production.