This fall has been devoted mainly to archival work – sourcing, mastering and clearing all the film and photos we begged, borrowed and... It’s thanks to a second grant from Patricia and Edwin Matthews of the Gould Family Foundation that we’re able to do this important work. I brought on a pro, Lynn Adler, who has done three big archival films: The Summer of Love; The Most Dangerous Man in America (about Daniel Ellsberg); and Connie Fields’ epic about the anti-apartheid movement worldwide, Have You Heard From Johannesburg? Alyssa Martin also came back and the three of us have been working for three months tracking down archival footage from everywhere. Our biggest, most crucial sources agreed to license or give us their material -- a huge relief. Then we started in on the $60-a-second crowd and ran into roadblocks. In one case, not only did they want $60 per second but they insisted we get permission from the original source, which would have cost another $60 per second – if we could get them to deal with us, often an impossibility in the case of local television stations. As a way around all this we explored fair use, consulted a lawyer who, to our surprise, said most of the archival film qualifies. That was great news. But it left us with the problem of mastering: how do you duplicate masters without licensing and paying for it first?

Kim Aubry of ZAP came to our rescue. He has been experimenting with a black box called Dark Energy, which was invented for special effects but turns out to be excellent for converting video to high-def 24p. We did a trial run with a DVD of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and it looked great. So we’ve found a way to fair use the big commercial archives and little television stations that no longer have their footage. Over the end of the year we’ll be doing as much mastering as possible, so we can go into the final editing assured that archival footage is in hand. I enjoy archival work even if it’s a million details to doggedly pursue. These months have been a welcome break from the demands of directing and writing and fundraising, and set us up to finish the film well.