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The Story of a War, One Clip at a Time

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by Meghan Horvath
Courtesy the Ciarlo Family Courtesy the Ciarlo Family Ken Burns's pioneering use of archival images in documentary film has become one of his trademarks. Since 40 million Americans tuned into the first broadcast of his documentary series ‘The Civil War’ on public television in 1990 his work has become increasingly known outside of America. Even Apple has paid homage to his form by naming a function on its iPhoto programme ‘The Ken Burns Effect’. As one of the associate producers on his upcoming 7 part, 14 1/2 hour documentary series 'The War' and part of the team responsible for unearthing archival footage (a separate team headed up the still photography research) for use in the film, I experienced first hand that compiling archival images for one of his epic documentaries was no easy, straightforward feat. Our objective was two-fold: 1.) to locate the most relevant and stunning footage, and 2.) to organise it in a way that would make sense to both the editing and production team at the time as well as years into the project. The end result was the product of years of research, steered along the way by a ‘process’ refined over the years but still scrutinised in relation to the demands of this particular film about World War II.  

To a large degree the nature of the film will dictate the research process and we were no exception.  'The War' is the story of how 4 geographically and demographically diverse American towns - Waterbury, Connecticut; Sacramento, California; Luverne, Minnesota; and Mobile, Alabama- were transformed by the Second World War.  The film stands apart from others by Ken Burns in that no one was interviewed who did not experience the war firsthand - either in combat overseas or on the home front. These first person accounts from which the documentary was constructed allowed us to take a different approach to the film research. Hence a large part of my job became about digging up ‘home movies’ from our towns.  From an archival point of view, this grass roots effort along with the vast amount of film we collected on an already well-covered subject makes 'The War' documentary an interesting research case study. The nature of documentary means that every film is its own beast, yet I believe I hit upon a few universal truths on this project which could be applied to almost any other.
Establish A Schedule
Anyone who has assembled a documentary film largely based on archival material knows that one has to find and screen nearly 10 times the amount of that which ends up in the film. We were fortunate to have a decent amount of time for this massive endeavour as the making of 'The War', from conception to its broadcast on American public television in September 2007 will have taken 6 1/2 years.  Even still, we realised the necessity of having a rough schedule established at the outset –one that we continually reassessed as we sought the most comprehensive yet efficient research strategy. 
    
Approach Research Like A Detective
A film researcher must be one part tenacious detective and one part obsessive librarian.  Firstly it is important to follow a lead - no matter how negligible - as far as one possibly can.  Roads that look like dead ends must be viewed as opportunities to develop new strategies to track down the footage rather than obstacles. We did not give up hope on a few pieces of footage until the very last frame of film was locked. Secondly and equally important is impeccable record keeping.  Leave a good paper trail of all the roads you've gone down which can be interpreted by anyone else on the team. Even on our generous time line we were conscious of not doing the same work twice!  

Throw In The Kitchen Sink
The first stepping stone of our research was our 'wish list'.  Once interviews were transcribed and before the narration was written, we began compiling lists of key battles and personal recollections mentioned by our interviewees.  We cast a wide net and the lists were identical for both footage and stills as we wanted to give our editors as much material as possible from which to choose. In terms of actual war footage, we were lucky enough to have the main source of this material be The National Archives of the United States in Washington, D.C. Because this material belongs to the public, this meant no usage fees which freed up some room in our budget. Clearing rights gets expensive so all the better if you can find free sources of material. And as a producer it’s good to know how much each clip will cost to use before your editors become too attached.

Deploy A Small Army
The downside of having the bulk of material at the National Archives was that there were sometimes access issues.  Staff and budget limitations of this government agency meant our requests couldn’t always be answered quickly.  We hired freelance film researchers who worked independently of the archive but who had established long professional relationships with archive staff to offset this issue. The researchers acted as liaisons and facilitated our research in a way we could not have from New York.  Adjusting your plan of attack is sometimes necessary for the specifics of each archive.  The National Archives’ online catalogue was not comprehensive and not all material had been transferred to tape. This meant periodic visits to D.C. where we trawled through old-fashioned card catalogues and screened film on flatbeds.
 
Get Creative But Look Out For Red Herrings  
Working with war footage and footage in the public domain raised unique issues.  We were conscious that World War II was not only well documented but also had countless documentaries and films already made on the subject.  If only I had a pound for every person who said, "Not another film about World War II!"  The amount of time we had to conduct research allowed us to break ground in terms of finding footage rarely used before.  Without the luxury of time, imagination is just as useful for visualising answers to the most seemingly impossible scenes to illustrate.

From the literature written about what was shot and how during the war, we knew that not everything was always what it seemed. We double checked that details on a film record matched the actual footage and that the footage was a true representation of a battle or event and was not a recreation. (Like in the case of Pearl Harbour, where much of the footage was recreated). This would be less important if you were making a more abstract film, but as a historical documentary we did not want to pass footage off as something it was not.  

Be Meticulous  
It's always worthwhile when organising footage, especially vast amounts, to spend time thinking through a solid system that will continue to be viable in the various phases of your production.  This requires foresight, and for me it was useful to rely on those on the team with more experience. Once the script was written we revised our wish lists and became subsequently more strategic in our searches.  Each tape that arrived at our office received a unique number before we logged them into our database.  Part of my job during one phase of the project was to screen and log the footage, not necessarily shot by shot, but shot by shot as it was relevant to our script.  These logs became guides for both the editing and production team so we constantly questioned whether the information was useful to both so as to not create busywork. Although it may seem like a big hassle to fill out each field of the database record when logging, it will be even more of a hassle when you don't know who to request permission from to use the clip.  

It’s important to cultivate a good visual memory so that when an editor frantically asks, "Do you have any footage of X, Y, and Z?" you can direct them to the clip or provide a good explanation as to why you don't have it. Also it was common for us to come across many versions of the same clip from different archives. Although incredibly tedious, it was important to keep track of the different versions so that we were not paying usage fees unnecessarily in the case that one of the clips came from the National Archives.

We tried to minimise human error and randomness in logging by constructing a field on every database record which was a scroll down menu of key words.  That way if an editor wanted to find all the footage of a particular battle, he could do a keyword search. We held our breath before each keyword search, hoping we had created a near fool proof system.  Subsequent whoops or sighs erupted across our office depending on the results.

Go Beyond the Usual Suspects
The grass roots level research we did in addition to research at the archives was important because our film told the experience of a world war through individual wars.  Most of our interviewees were able to lend photographs of their days before, during and after the war to our project.  It took more effort to find footage.  Word of mouth generated a lot of leads.  We went first to the obvious places in each town (historical societies, local museums, archives and churches).  We announced our project in every publication of these organisations.  This yielded phone calls from people who had boxes of 8 mm and sometimes 16 mm, often without any idea of what was on the film.  

When we travelled to each town we held meetings at community centres where people had the opportunity to bring what they discovered in their attics and basements. We opened countless boxes, some of them vinegary, and screened the films on a 8 mm projector we bought from EBay. We transferred clips we thought might be useful to Digibetas.  Luverne, Minnesota, our smallest town, brought the most surprises. There was a rumour that someone had filmed the National Guard regiment marching down Main Street on their way to Alaska, pre Pearl Harbour. After many phone calls over many months, we found the film. But not in Luverne. It came from a neighbouring state, where relatives of the family were now living. We felt unbelievably lucky to find visual material to illustrate a story someone told us on camera. We also unearthed colour footage of Luverne, Minnesota from all seasons. Two teenage boys attach themselves to the back of a pick up truck and ski across the plains. A little girl helps her family plow hay in the autumn. During a visit to a potential interviewee’s house in Sacramento, he started telling how, as a boy during the war, he played war games with his friends. Then he remembered his father had filmed this. He started searching his house for the videotape. I missed my flight but it was worth it when we screened the footage of him as a young boy with a bandanna tied around his head, falling to the ground after being hit by an invisible bullet and his friend running to his side to administer First Aid.

This personal material added another layer to the archival images in the film and it felt to us like we were exploring unchartered territory. In most cases our requests for these movies meant that the families had their first excuse in 60 years to watch their own films.

Film research is the kind of job where you feel like your work is never done.  We held our breath for miracles until the bitter end.  Yet I can say the satisfaction of what we turned up nearly compensated for the panic that occasionally woke me in the middle of the night.  I hope you’ve found the same.

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