A media archaeology project reveals how film crews worked together. By reuniting analogue equipment with the professionals who used to use it, the ADAPT project is able to unpack the professional routines and relationships of both people and technology that are at the core of television production. This detailed study of a film crew setting up 16mm equipment reveals the constraints and affordances that defined analogue television material. To study working practices in a historical setting also reveals that there is an absent area in contemporary production studies: the work of ‘content acquisition’.