FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2025

Although audiovisual archives have traditionally focused on preserving the final broadcast content, there is growing recognition of the strategic value embedded in the production process itself. This presentation is based on a Master’s research project that investigates how production design archives — including art direction, set design, costume design, makeup, props, and graphic design — can become assets for innovation, productivity gains, and memory preservation in media companies.

The presentation highlights how the integration of these production design assets into Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms — combined with the use of ontologies, taxonomies, metadata governance, and artificial intelligence — enables new forms of reuse and supports strategic decision-making. These often-overlooked records hold significant potential to enrich future productions and to feed AI-based systems for metadata generation and generative content creation.

The session will discuss how aligning artistic production archives with a broader archival strategy — especially through MAM/DAM system integration — creates synergies that elevate the archive from a passive repository to a dynamic competitive resource, through interoperability between platforms. It will also address the risks of neglecting these materials, particularly in a landscape where AI tools rely on rich, diverse, and well-structured data.

Through concrete examples, this presentation aims to provoke reflection among archive managers: are we truly valuing everything that forms the history of our content? Does our organization recognize that what happens behind the scenes — the production design process — is also one of its most valuable assets?