In this episode of The Archive Room, Dominic Dare and Sandra Coelho sit down with Kate and Mike Griffiths of Clearance Matters, the husband and wife team behind the archive research on documentaries including Broken English with Marianne Faithfull, Paul McCartney's The Hunt for the Lost Bass, a Culture Club documentary, and Elton John's Never Too Late. Kate and Mike talk through how they trace missing footage, build trust with private collectors and contributors, and pull together photographs, audio, and film from archives around the world to help shape a film's story from the earliest stages of production. They share stories of tracking down long lost footage of The Clash, David Bowie, and Elton John, and discuss the challenges of clearing music, working across UK and US productions, and why credits for archive contributors matter so much in their work. The episode closes with a Quickfire round covering some of the biggest myths in archive research and the collection Kate and Mike would rescue if they could save just one. The Archive Room is brought to you by Silversalt Restoration, the UK's foremost film and television restoration company and part of the John Gore Studios family. You can find them at silversaltrestoration.com. Welcome to the Archive Room, the stories behind the footage. There's another great thing on the Culture Club.com where a teenage me would have just been beside herself. I got invited, we got invited to John Moss's house and ended up in John Moss's garage going through his archive. And again, very generous, very trusting. You know, there was everything in there. It wasn't sorted. It was literally just boxes and boxes and boxes. So this week on the Archive Room, we're with husband and wife duo, Mike and Kate Griffiths, talking all about music documentaries. We look at their films Broken English with Marianne Faithful, Paul McCartney's The Hunt for the Lost Bass, a film on Culture Club, Elton John's Never Too Late. It's a deep dive into their craft honed over many years. If you're enjoying these podcasts, please do consider subscribing to the Archive Room. That way you'll never miss an episode. And if you want to see what we look like, you can head over to our YouTube channel where you can watch the whole podcast there. Thanks for your support. Kate and Mike Griffiths began their careers in the 1990s in rights clearance, research, and production, enjoying successful roles between them in broadcasting, advertising, and the music industry. In 2005, they set up Clearance Matters to offer their extensive knowledge and experience to media and corporate clients. In 2019, they decided to fully merge their eclectic skill sets as a combined archive, production and research team. They now focus full-time on archival projects, particularly feature documentaries, bringing a joint perspective and a more resourceful approach to the work they undertake. Recent projects include documentaries on Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney, Culture Club, and Marianne Faithful. Kate and Mike, welcome to the archive room. Thank you very much. We finally did it. It took us very much. a while to get here. we've had hate storms, we've had technical issues, but We're delighted to have you guys here. So listen, Mike, let me just Should we? start with you first. You guys have got different skill sets. We we'll get on to where you're at now and the the films that you guys have been working on, which are we're very excited to talk about. But just take us through your background 'cause you've got a different skill set that you bring to this kind of approach that you guys have. Yeah, so I started out as a T V researcher in the early nineties working for Open Media, the company that made After Dark. Do you remember After Dark? Yeah. Yeah. They they I was a researcher on a queer show called Don't Quote Me, which is kind of a bit ahead of its time. It had lots of celebrities, politicians, etcetera on it. I can't remember the name of the the host who was the BBC's Jeffrey Jeffrey, Jeffrey Parker? Perkins was the host, the BBC's head of comedy. He tragically passed way before his time. And that was all filmed at L L W T and that was fantastic and I thought, great, I'm I'm in, I've arrived, I'm in I'm in the business sort of thing. and then struggled to find another job and ended up With one phone call, getting another job for a production company doing voiceovers and writing voiceovers for trailers, for like movie trailers and stuff like that. I met my wife, Kate, through this very phone call because she was working at a kind of sister company on the same site. and then from that point on, I stayed with this company called Key Film and Television. We were doing promos and trailers. And then suddenly the burgeoning infomercial market swept across European TV for music products. So I was writing 30-minute infomercials. Featuring people like David Jensen as the host or Paul King from King. And we were selling, you know, half a million units across across, you know, European kind of shop home shopping channels, which is when the majors jumped in and thought, hang on, why aren't we doing this? So we did stuff for EMI, for BMG, for Sony. And then I w the company I was working for was taken over by the Sanctuary Group, who were set up by the two guys who discovered Iron Maiden in a bar in Birmingham in the seventies. And they built this big management empire that realized in in the nineties they didn't have any IPs. So they started buying back catalogue labels. They bought Trojan, the record label, they bought what else did they buy? Castle Communications. And so I started making TV ads, 30 seconds T V ads for colour CDs. And of course the CD market disappeared over time. 2005 I was made redundant. And luckily they gave me a fair wadge to go. So Kate and I then decided, well what are we gonna do? So we set up clearance matters with the intention of doing what we're doing now. Forty at that point Kate was yeah, Kate was bringing up the kids. I was a gun for hire really. Some I sidetracked for the next fifteen years into commercial post production. I've no idea how that happened at all. I started working on corporate videos for for Sony and people like that. And I think in 2010 I I bluffed my way into being a kind of a a a post producer for the the new iPhone, the the iPhone three when it came out. So basically we were versioning it for European markets at Rush's in central London. And that was kind of the link between the American production company, Apple, post houses around the world. And not really knowing what I was doing at all, to be honest. But did that quite successfully for 12 months and then ended up working for a company called Hogarth, who were part of WPP, a big advertising group, basically working on big accounts like Coca-Cola. People again, beats headphones, all kinds of brands. And then in 2019, I was ill for a while, had to take some time off to recover. And that's when, I think September 2019, Kate and I started working together pretty much full-time. And then in 2020, we just started the job, our first job together, which was for a production company making another one of those series about, you know, how did Marilyn Monroe die? How did you know Elvis die? It's something we really didn't want to be doing, to be honest, but we needed the money. So We stepped in and then COVID happened. We went into the office once. We went in once and then COVID happened. That project was shelved, but then suddenly archive was everybody wanted archive because because no one could go out and shoot anything. And that's at that point, Kate and I sort of started to do what we originally set out to do back in two thousand and five. And so it's all happenstance, isn't it, life? I mean, you know, you just jump from one thing to the next and suddenly you've built up a career. I mean, you've got quite an extensive production background, really, from that. I mean, we used to do Huge amount with these infomercials and time life from those guys in the States. Massive business. So so you come to here. Kate, what tell us a little bit about your journey then prior to sort of twenty nineteen? I began my career at company called Diamond Time in the late 80s. They were a public location programmers who did video Jigbox and had a collection of 10,000 music videos. And they hired me to sit in a dark room and watch them all and log them, catalog them, copyright information, data, metadata, and then put them onto a created database called Clearance and Rights Database. And then after that... and I was watching them on one inches and two inches in pneumatics. So I had a good grounding in, in a technical, you know, tape formats. Then they set up a company in New York to do clearances. It was called the Clearance House, Diamond Times Clearance House. And they sent me over there to learn under a brilliant woman called Cathy Carappella. We did sample clearances for bands such as the Spice Girls and Everything But The Girl and... great dance tunes. I've got a couple of stories on sample clearances, but I don't want to go too in deep. Maybe I'll save that one for another time. But one of my successes actually was to clear a Dawes recording that nobody had ever cleared before. And then also really, actually, I will tell you, Garbage had their first single, Stupid Girl, no, it wasn't, yes, it was Queer. Their first single was called Queer. And... They wanted to sample Frank Sinatra, Eel Wind, and he was still alive at this point. And so I wrote to the manager because you had to clear with the artist as well as the publisher and the record label. So this gave me a really good grounding in copyright and ownership and how things are split up. So we wrote to Frank Sinatra's kit team, said, we've got a band called Garbage and they've got a song called Queer and we want to sample Mr. Sinatra. And of course it was in the time of fax machines and you know, gee, this fax came back, which was my nicely written crafted email or letter request. It was before emails and it just was crossed out and it just said denied on it. And I I thought, no, okay, well, I'm going to try again. Cause that's one of the things that we do is we never give up the first time around. It's always try, you know, if you say no. keep going, keep going, you know, until eventually it's a hard no, or you can try and persuade them otherwise. So anyway, I wrote back and said, look, you know, this is actually, they're a really cool band, garbage, they're the producers, Butch Beg, work with Nirvana, you know, it's going to be, you know, a massive album and it'll be really credible, you know, be really good, it'll do really well for Mr. Sinatra's credibility. Catching Yeah. at straws, clearly. And then anyway, I got a reply to that on Facts that basically said, Mr. Sinatra doesn't have to worry about his credibility. I can't know. But we didn't give up because that was only on the recording side. So actually the publishing, the song wasn't written by Facts Sinatra. He had no copyright control over that. So we re-recorded it. it was, ironically, it wasn't even his vocal, it was an oboe. But because he had a credit on it, had to, long story short, we got to use it, but not the original recording. And I actually met the band a long, long time later, you know, and told them that I did this and they had no idea, you know. And we'd also cleared a Clash sample for their album as well. So lots of really good stories about sample cleaners, but the main reason is to tell you that it was a good grounding to learn about copyright and who and how things are split up. So, um, I worked at Starmtime for a long time and that's where I my lovely husband. Uh, cause as he mentioned, he was, um, working for a sister company and we, bonded over a sofa, on a sofa over intermarshals and cigarettes and cigarettes. Yes. Heavy smokers at that point and you were allowed to smoke indoors. um, Yeah, you'd find footage for infomercials. I would, I would. You'd be writing 60s, 70s, you know, commercials and we'd find the archive to illustrate. And what was great about infomercials was that they were seen as commercial, obviously. And so we didn't need artist permissions, literally, because it was to promote the song for the artists, the artists are given their name and likeness and their performance. So we literally just licensed the footage. Obviously, nowadays, when you're clearing clips for documentary use, you often need the artist's permission to do so. So actually that was a really lovely time where we just found lots of brilliant archive and we were working with, you know, that's where we discovered archives all over the world who had this kind of material. So we did that together for quite a while. And then I got poached by MTV, which was nice. So I went to work for MTV for a few years, which actually was madness. But that kind of gave me a grounding in broadcast and from the other side really from an inside, you know. So we'd always worked in music and archive. And then when I took a break to have the kids, went into his business, which he's already explained. And then in 2005, we set up Clearance Matters. And from that point on, it was really a case of hiring. I mean, Mike says he went to work in another job, but... He was always helping me, if I'm honest with you. He was my ace in the hole at the back, you know. I I lo I really love music archive particularly. So I kind of if Kate's could you go and find me this? I'm yeah, let me go have a running around. So even though I was doing all this advertising stuff that was just making the money post production, it wasn't really it wasn't creative enough for me. There there was no enjoyment in it really. I mean, you know, apart from getting paid. So when Kate was working on all kinds of projects, and she wanted some help, I'd just step in and help whenever I could. Well, you were instrumental on the Sparks Brothers. although Tess and I got the credit for archive producers and got the so-called Research of the Year Award for that, which is nice, Mike was very instrumental in helping a lot. mean, he was a massive Sparks fan, which was also brilliant. He had every single Sparks album that I've made him give up for a car boot sale once upon a time. All Yeah. of them. We had to rebuy lot of that stuff. But he knew, you know, helps to know the subject, but obviously equally, even when you know nothing about the subject, you know, you can quickly immerse yourself in it. And if it's music, there's between us, I think we have a lot of knowledge, you know, of all types of music. Yeah. Your journey is happenstance and coincidence, but like you could not have planned a better training, really, from learning about one inch formats, working with Kathy, you know, there aren't that many music clearance people to understand because you know, music clearance isn't straightforward. And then to kind of working on these kind of feature length docs, it's sort of a natural progression, really. And then there aren't that many people that do what you do. I mean, you know, you're combining archive production and research now. So that's kind of like, you know, how does that work? So bring us forward to today. How do you operate? when you first get put onto a film? So what tends to happen initially is that we'll kind of get a the concept for the film from somebody. Well will say are you interested and we'll go, well it depends who it is or whatever it is. If it's music, we're kind of yeah, pretty much particularly if it's you know, back in the day. yeah. I mean the culture club for example, it was our era. We were 18 when do you wanna do Do you really want to hear me came out. So it's just like this is bang on. We we were just all over it because it was our you. But what we yeah, what we tend to get we'll tend to get a kind of some sense of what they're trying to do with the story arc and everything else. And then what I'll do, I I tend to start by bringing in everything I possibly can. And I kinda tend to do that in a bit of a a sort of follow my nose way, really. I mean, we'll go and find video, we'll go and find photographs, we'll go and find audio. and obviously there's the the you know, the the the general sources, BBC, Getty, you know, ITB, whatever it might be. and then or lots and lots of other archives like yourselves, and then and then, you know, the wider sphere globally as well, depending on how far they want to go, how big the project is, you know, are they s concentrating on one specific period like they did Nelton for the first five years, the last five years? So yeah, so I tend to do what I think my big skill that I bring to us is I'm very good at taking huge amounts of information and kind of Streamlining all of that, putting together a grid that we'll share online with the client that we'll put in, you know, tabs for video, tabs for audio, tabs for photographs, and then we'll we'll kind of continually be adding stuff to that. We'll we'll use a dam like frame IL or really like frame and we'll sort we'll we'll upload to that depending on how they want to do it. So on the latest Delton thing we're working on, we'll we're doing it by year because it's easy to put everything in. So I'll do a year folder with video yeah in that folder there'll be video, audio still just for that year. But sometimes it's the it's the harder to sort it out like that. So we we whatever works for us and the client basically. And so we've got a huge amount of stuff. And then w we'll then sort of go to a first pass with a with a cut and the client client will come back and say, right, we're missing this, we're missing that, so on and so on. so that I get I kind of get us up to that point really. With K to obviously I think you you tend to fo focus more on the initial on on the on the photography side, I think. I think your relationships. Okay, it's relationships with photographers that we work with in the past is hugely valuable in in getting us to kind of you know i tick that box Yeah, well, I think it's a bit of both really I mean I think you know because fortunately because of our history and how we've got to know a lot of people and we have a lot of contacts globally that we can kind of almost Strategize and work out who's gonna you know who's likely to have more footage or where is there because one of the things that we're always Always asked for is I want the unseen I want that off, you know, they the rushes I want this that and the other and I know as we all know, you know, they don't always get kept or they're lost or they're mislabeled. So it's putting your heads together to kind of work out where is that likely to be. One of the resources that we both do is we go to books because that's the first thing. The internet is an ocean of information, but it's culled from all over the place. And it's a fraction of actually what's out there. One of the most informative things is to find a book. the earliest book that you can was written about the subject because that's going to be as close as to that point and have more knowledge. So like we've got the Philip Norman book over there that was written on Elton John that we dipped into loads for the first film for the Never Too Late because they were looking for the 70 to 75 period. So that gave lots of information that was lost or wouldn't be picked up under an issue, you know, just Googling. So it gave us leads, gave us names, dates, places that we could then... The appearances I mean, one of the things that we're on the new Elton John project, which you can't really talk about because it's, I mean, we're working on it. We've talked about it now, but I can't give you specifics, but they are after two very, very specific things that are currently don't exist, but they definitely exist. It's absolutely that they were filmed and they were photographed. We have an idea where one of them is, but it's just speaking to the right people, saying the right things, know, beguiling people to let them give you their treasure. The other we have... That's Kate's really, really, really good at is getting through the door, making that relationship being mildly annoying, probably to some people, as much as you can steal back to it. But then building that into a friendship so that there's the relationship that allows you to go into that trust area where people are like, okay, this is my stuff, and I I kind of I've never really shared this with anyone before, or I might have it somewhere, I don't know. You know, I but then ca will keep going back and keep going back and keep going back until they that stuff is Like the wonderful Alison Hay, who was Roy Hay's ex-wife, who shared her own archive with us for the Culture Talk. She's a wonderful woman, it was quite a task to get her on our side. Can I just can I just jump in here? So she seen we Kate managed to get us to be invited round to her flat, right, to have a have a look at I'm going to mace some stuff with her. Yeah. And then Kate Kate's trying to park the car. Where where did she get? Kate's Winston some way. trying to park the car. So I'm sent I think you spoke to I've spoken to her. So I go up the stairs. She's a chain smoker. I'll get in this fog of smoke or whatever. absolutely lovely, lovely, lovely personality. But she's suspicious. She's like, you I've seen docs on the band before or and people have kind of done hatred jobs. I'm I'm not interested in sort of thing. So I can sit down at the table and and we're sort of chatting and I'm waiting for Kate and something I've got to try and engage, you know. So we start talking about stuff. Well first thing only she asks me what what star sign am I? So I'm a leader. That went down quite well. So that was good, that's a touch. And then and then we started talking about a f I don't know, a friend of hers who was in Wales. was like, I'm from West Wales, I'm from Pembrokeshire. And then we started talking about you know mystic kind of lay lines and all this kind of stuff. And then I was talking about the blue stones that came from Pembroke and Stonehead. that was it then. So we'd we'd had this conversation going by the time Kate had parked the car and came back up. Then Kate joined the conversation. And then by the time we finished, we were there for a couple of hours. She was just like, hang on, I've got s I've got these scrapbooks. So she gets out these scrapbooks, I'm like, Wow I mean these pictures, these Polaroids of the band before their first ever gig at Crocs in Essex. there there's pictures of them, you know at the but his house is at Roy's mum's house. Yeah, Mikey's ironing his shirt and whatever and they've got made they're all made up and they're they're fantastic and yeah, just it's stuff had never never really been seen before. Yeah. you Be right back in a moment. But first, a word about the hard work that goes into keeping our cinematic heritage alive. Silversalt Restoration is renowned for its care, expertise, and attention to detail and has delivered award-winning restorations for studios, archives and labels across the globe. You can find them at silversaltation.com. It's the rapport that you need to build, as Mike said, the trust that you need to gain of these people because they are sharing their personal things. I mean, we're so grateful to Alison for doing that. There was another great thing on the Culture Club where a teenage me would have just been beside herself. I got invited, we got invited to John Moss's house and ended up in John Moss's garage. Literally having a rummage in his garage. going through his archive. And again, very generous, very the, I got the chance to meet the brothers out there and I said to them, as I said to John, what archive have you seen or that you know that you were filmed that you've not seen or that you know exists? And so John said, well, I remember auditioning for The Clash as their drummer in 1977, wait, 78. And I know it was filmed. I've never seen it and I'd love to see it. I thought, okay, can you remember who filmed it? No, I have no idea. But we logically, Mike and I said, well, it's going to be one of two people really. It's either going to be Don Letts or it's going to be Julian Temple because they were both filming with The Clash at that point. We'd worked with Don a few times, which is great. I had his details and got in touch with him and he was lovely. He said, no, okay, it wasn't me. No, no, no. He said, but I think it was Julian. So I was fortunate to work with Julian as well. years ago I had his details and I rang him up and he said, yeah, yeah, I shot. Yeah, it was the roundhouse. Yeah, I remember that. I said, we kept the footage. He said, oh, it's somewhere, somewhere. No, no. Anyway, spent four months chasing him. just very subtly, very, you know, I spoke to his also not just him. spoke to his wife. spoke to his editor. spoke to him. So, It's left. That's what it's high. you know, that's how you do it. You kind of, you wear these people down gradually and gently. And then four months later, he said, I found it. It's great. here it is and he sent 20 minutes of this footage that nobody's ever seen and it was quite a little bit does end up in the finished film. only we'd only use a snippet because we couldn't afford to clear the the Clash song that they were playing because our budget was so tiny that we had to restrict it to Culture Club songs so we could only show a snippet of what was there and that's also another amazing thing is that you find all this treasure this amazing archive And then a tiny bit ends up in the film, either through cost or time or whatever reason. So, I mean, there is so, so much archive. You gather hundreds of hours for a documentary. The Elton John, Never Too Late, we had thousands of assets, literally thousands, and it made up a 90-minute film. So, there's all these wonderful bits of archive. The culture club was great actually for the for the archive in it. There were some amazing things that we we were we were given access to that was just that were just brilliant. getting bigger and bigger. mean, obviously it is it goes by every second, more archive is generated, but more archive is being found now or being recognized. I mean, at this time, it's a terrifying time for us in the archive industry where archives are being taken offline, put behind paywalls, archiving itself, mergers happening that makes it even less able for you to get AI coming along and recreating it or you know it's terrifying so this is why it's so important to find the real you know historical archive I call it archive archaeology where we're tracking down you know films that you know it's about a subject but it shows so much more information we often look at backgrounds we're looking at you know when you want for the Led Zeppelin document we were asked about this this music shop. Yeah, so there's a it's a legendary guitar shop with a Tran Cross Road and about halfway up on the right and it was open between late fifties and the mid sixties and I every time I find any footage I'm looking at, I'm trying to find this bloody guitar shop. I've never found it. I'm never gonna give up. I will find footage of it one day. Literally everybody, Selmers, everybody, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, every great guitarist bought a guitar in there at some point in the early sixties, to mid sixties and I I'm I I just know somebody just a passing view. If you see a photo of Selma's record shop on the Charing Cross Road in the 1960s, which You let it go, you're right, it's the one that got away, know, all that stuff that you find. when I asked Ron, lovely Ron, mail about a bit of archive, what he wanted, you know, to see, and he said, well, in the mid-70s, we appeared with Jacques Tati on a European show where Russell came out of a wardrobe riding a white horse. And I was like, did that actually happen? Is that a dream? And he said, no, it actually happened. So, you know, and we can pinpoint it to a time and a broadcaster. Sadly, that footage never came about, but we did find an amazing documentary that made, that changed the whole direction of the film. were about a year into the film and there was this, we'd only ever seen these tiny snippets of this footage and we couldn't quite work it out. But you tell the story, how did we find that? You found that footage is Swiss. Okay, I found the 50. You went out didn't you go over did you I can't remember. It was a broadcaster, man, wasn't a broadcaster, it was a filmmaker. He'd only ever made two films. One was on Sparks and one was on the Himalayas or something. He wasn't even a known, and I'm so sorry because that was a few years ago, I can't remember who it was. If remember we can post it in the notes afterwards. Yeah, I can dig it out. It's all in my notes. I keep everything, by the way. I have hundreds of thousands of emails. I never delete anything. In fact, I've got multiple copies of things. That's my brain. That's my past. That's everything I've ever researched. It's the archive, exactly. But yeah, so we found this amazing half-half film of the brothers in... Austria. was in Austria. we pinpointed it from the background. They were in the street, they were filming and we spotted a very unusual looking shop. And I Googled it. I thought, what was that shop? What was that then? And we found exactly where it was. And it was in Munich. No, it would have been Vienna. In Vienna. Geography's not my great point. Anyway, Mike, we pinpointed and we found this and we tracked it down. He'd passed away, but his son, we managed to get a hold of his son. and his wife is still alive. And the day that we called them or contacted them was the anniversary of the guy, of the man who's filmed it, it was his death. He died 10, 15 years before, but it was the day that he died. And that was the day that I got in touch with the mother and the son. And they said that that in itself was a sign that, you know, and that they wanted to give us this film. And they sent us the entire film. It's amazing. so beautiful colour, it's the only footage of Dinky Diamond interview before he died. I mean, it's a really brilliant time capsule of the band of which we had no footage at that period. Edgar Wright, who was the director of the film, went so crazy for him, he so happy for it. And it basically became a centrepiece of the documentary, you know, and that's what archive can do, you know, when you find this, you know, nugget. Well it's you it's it it's fascinating to me and I think it's a kind of good segue and you talked about archive archaeology. you know, broken English, right, like is has a I'll let you guys explain it, but the conceit ultimately about the film is that the collective memory can be wrong and that by looking back and finding archive and reevaluating the collective memory, we can then change how we perceive and remember people. so it's a fascinating kind of postmodern approach. very unique film. Just tell tell us the audience a little bit about that film, just set it up for us, and then we'll get into how how we looked at that. I guess I think the great thing about that project was that we when we were invited on right at the start, Kate and I, and then Tess joined in as well. we were kind of we had to sit back a little bit at the scale of what they were trying to achieve. First the conceit the concept of I think initially it was very much not just kind of re-establishing or correctly telling the truth about Marianne and and you know putting right that wrong the way she has been perceived throughout her life. but also the concept of was the initial original title forget Don't forget me. me. So I think it was a if the concept was more kind of like when you past, what's your what's your legacy? What's your mark on the world been? What have you left behind? What have you done? And I think that was the concept that with Marianne that was she'd done all of this and yet she was only being remembered for being Mick Jagger's girlfriend or made up stories in the press about sex parties in the sixties or whatever it might be. So that was a that was a great thing to kind of go, Well we really want to be involved with this 'cause this this kind of ticks all the boxes for us. It's like it's we're we're we're kind of retelling the tr we're telling the truth. Yeah, we're retelling the story and the world will now see that this is Marianne's legacy, which is what it's proved to be because it's a fantastic film. but with that one, their concept of how they were going to do that and the idea of the Ministry of Not Forgetting, which is where Marianne's interviewed, very kind of almost sort of Orwellian in its look. It's very sort of nineteen eighty four you know, they built a an archive up in Elves Tree. yeah, it's kind of very much as you with confining cabinets and shelves going up there and and you know, wheeling things in and out and you know, photographs and bits of footage and and then the way that they they showed Marianne those assets, yeah, th th that's your physical handing a picture or watching on a monitor with the burnt in time code, is you there's this kind of illness to it. Yeah, and she'd not been prepared for that at all. They were actors. We'd never been involved with anything like this before. The directors in and Jane had never really attempted anything like this before. So we didn't know how it was going to go. We didn't know how Marianne would react. Would she remember something? And there were things that she didn't want to talk about and got angry about and other things that she asked about that we didn't have. So we were winging it for two days. with her, she was on an oxygen mask, she'd just got over COVID, it was quite fraught. And of course, George McKay, the actor, young actor who plays the Arthur. So they had basically cast actors as us, know, so Tess and I were in the research room, you know, playing by these two women. And the white board that's in the back was our white board that we've used. created. So that that whiteboard of story arcs and themes was when we first went to see Ian and Jane at Somerset House where they're based. They have this whiteboard of all these connecting factors within Marianne's incredible kind of life and career. and we literally that's what we took away. We I took photos of those, we came back, we then I created grids for each one of those themes, connected archive to those those themes and those grids and then presented them back to them. And then evolved from there really. So in that sense, we were kind of one of the things we can get onto as well is how much more we are getting involved with the pro with the production process rather than that kind of just go and find the archive, send it to someone else, and then they kind of say what they want to license and whatever. But being involved in that and shaping it and and and recommending it and providing options for for key things they might not have has become very much part of what we do. But we also have to balance that in terms of affordability and clearability. So, you know, all of the archive that we brought onto the set, we had to make sure that it was clearable and affordable because otherwise if they filmed it, they couldn't clear it, they couldn't use the footage. And we had to persuade some amazing archives like your lovely self, Sandra, to give us clean material. that we could, I mean, sometimes we chose to keep the actual asset, know, the time coded screener online, because that's real, that's how you view stuff. But other things in terms of quality, we needed high quality, we were projecting onto the wall, so it needed to be, you know, master quality. And we know as we were capturing it, but we also had to keep track of what it was. And we had hundreds of assets on that set. So we developed a our own logging, we had the labeling, you might notice on some of the photographs and things, we had our own logo and label and we had a file naming protocol on each physical asset so that we could see in the edit, okay, that's photograph number 2234, and then we go back to our grid and we know what that was, you so we weren't eye matching, we weren't trying to visually, we were trying to, you know, create our own EDL on screen at the time as well as... Pretty much I matched Their Thursdays plans doesn't always work, it was just a brilliant production. I think I think we knew from the start, before anything had been shot, that this was this was something different different. And that we were really privileged to have been part of. and and and yeah, I mean I think as as you're saying, the end result is is is is is is unique. It's a fantastic film. It's ph it's phenomenal and it's almost a doccure if people haven't seen it. i I cannot recommend it enough. I was in tears at the end. It's incredibly moving. Courtney Love is blows your mind when you see it. I think the one of the things that stuck with me was there's just so Marianne Faith is obviously towards the end of her life, she's very unwell. you know, and that that transpires in the film without giving way. There's some footage of her watching the Seven Deadly Sins rehearsal footage, and she'd never seen it before. and her she was transfixed by the fact and you could see her visually, so she's kind of real-time watching this over three days in L Street. And I've just I it's such a clever, immersive way. To celebrate archive. I you know, it took me a couple of minutes at the beginning of the film to kind of buy into the conceit. It was like, this is really a little bit kind of structured. And then as soon as you understand it, very, very unique, incredible. And so and for that that short period of time to have all that organized, I was just sitting there going, God, you know, you've got to be in the project from the start, which goes back to your point, Mike, is you know So we let let's turn to the Hump for Lost Bass, which is well to give give us a little bit of an overview of that film so we can kind of give the audience some some some bacon. So that so that's that's the the story of Paul McCartney who bought his first bass guitar in Hamburg in nineteen sixty-one, when the Beatles were no one, they weren't famous at all. and he played it up until 63. and then he got a a slightly better model. so the original bass was on backup GTs. I then it was kind of with him throughout his career and and then at some point it it disappeared. And it wasn't until much later in his career, I think, that towards the eight early nineties, when he was touring and was kind of bringing Beatles songs back into his set because up until that point he was real like those days are gone. I'm on you know, wings or Paul McCartney, I'd you know. That he was like, I think Elvis Costello asked him where it where it was, the original one. He's like, I don't know. And I think it's his theory was that it's been lifted from the Apple building, in yeah, when chaos had the late end in the end of the sixties, early seventies. He was really keen to find out where it was. and so a couple of journalists, Scott and Amy Jones, Scott was watching his Glastonebead performance and said, Is that his original bass that he's playing there? And then sort of thought, sort of did a bit of research to know the original bass is missing. So then Scott wrote a kind of piece for the the the Sunny telegraph, I think. that attracted huge amounts of interest globally about the the search for this missing guitar. And over the course of the next couple of years the search you know found the guitar, you know, ironically incredibly only 30 miles from where Paul Pagardi. Which You're not. is absolute madness. but the search for it and and the journey i is just it's just a it's a really fun film actually. It's a really enjoyable film. It it's brilliant. I mean, did you have any hand in like D did you ever ha did you ever find it in any of the archives yourselves? Yes, I did. I think I think I think well in the I think the best thing that we found it in was that a few years back Getty acquired some colour super aid footage shot by a lighting director on the set of Ready Steady Go. And the Ready Steady Go edition is black and white. So this is in colour, it's absolutely glorious, and it's of the rehearsals. So they wheel in the Beatles, like on a little platform and a company and all of this. And Paul's got the the 61 bass, and then he's also got the 63 bass. And when when you've studied it enough as we have, you can tell the differences in the in the sh in the style of it. But they're speculating that he he kind of might because the new bass hasn't even got a strap on it, that it might even have just arrived that very day. But it's actually fantastic to be able to see him with the old bass guitar that was stolen and then his new one. and there are various sightings of it over the years, but then it goes it goes missing. I think I think the last sighting of it is in Let it be in Let It Be, the the documentary. On the Roof. On the Roof. I mean, he played it a lot, you know, up to 63. But of course, as we all know, most of that footage is gone. know, thank your lucky stars, that's gone. You know, all those early TV performances aren't there. know, the the cabin footage, cabin footage is, is he's playing on that. But yeah, so it was a piecing together photographs. And, of course, when your subject is not actually the focus of the camera. So obviously, the guitar was on camera whilst their focus was on Paul McCartney, obviously. once the guitar had been put aside, actually, like you said, you spot it in Cher, you spot it in the corner of things. I was very, very fortunate to be allowed to look through the rushes for Let It Be. because we know that there was lots of stuff captured. So we could piece together that last ever appearance of the guitar on film at that point in the rehearsal studios, on the rooftop, at the Abbey Road. And we saw it actually quite a lot, just propped against the wall on the floor in its case, things like that. So we could find, that's not the star or the focus of the show. It's like that brilliant documentary, 23 Feet from Stardom that Jessica Bowman did. trying to capture the backing singers. that's more than the challenge. I mean, each documentary brings its own challenges, whether you've got an artist that's so well known like Elton John and there is oceans of archive to sift through, to find those one interactions that you need. Or a band like Sparks that... Although they were going for that many years, they didn't have an awful lot of... they had fleeting commercial success and their archive wasn't as kept, you know, and you're trying to search the word sparks in metadata and things like that. you know, there are all these different challenges like, so the bass, you the lost bass, was like... How do you tell a story of something that's hardly ever on camera and goes missing for 50 years? And how do we tell that story from, won't spoil it, so hopefully people will get to watch it and find out for themselves what happened. But there was that period of time where it was like, well, there's no footage of it. So how are we going to tell that story? What's interesting about that doc doc from an archive perspective is that it couldn't have been made really without Apple's help and and NPL Paul's company's help. So so we had the footage of the Shea Stadium, we had all that wonderful early footage of wings in the studio, and so on and so on. But actually th for me, the mo the the the bit of footage I'm I'm happiest that I found in there is a van driving over the Westway. And that van driving over the westway to to Ladbrook Grove, right? Right. Is was filmed a week after the base was stolen from Lab McGrove. Pretty I'm giving the way now, you scum! impressive. That's pretty impressive. It's the B-roll, it's that stuff that, know, the ephemeral stuff that tells the story that builds up the, you know, the tension that sort of, yeah, the POV of, you know, we love... My favorite archive footage of all is supermarkets. I love supermarket archive. Just 'cause it could it defines an era. yeah, whether it's ideally British, but i i i i American, whatever, it it it puts everything into context. So people the way they look, their clothing, their shopping, what's on the shelves, the tins, the designs, the packages, all of that. Thank you. Absolutely just love it encapsulates life for supermarket archive. It's fantastic. I mean it's a i it's a it's a wonderful film and I I think we said you know before it it you couldn't really do it without Paul being involved in it. it's a it's a you know, it's a gentle film. I really ti I I really loved it. It's on BCI player for people in the UK to see it. you know, I think it's sort of looking back, how hard was it? I mean, you said it was difficult, but Labrock Grove was kinda looked legendary back in sort of the early seventies and that period with Hawk Wind and you know, we could get into it. But like was that difficult to find? I mean that's that's again your era. You know, how how do you how did you get to find that stuff? I think they were, you know, like find me some footage of a hundred hundred Cambridge Gardens, which is where the squat was that was involved in in in the story and all of that. you know, we worked around that with squat footage from that period, but obviously not that main road and stuff like that. there's interesting enough the c you know, the BBC back in the day did some amazing things. Yeah, they make documentaries. You know, n none of it's like, I've got a minority interest, I'm gonna make a documentary about it. Absolutely fantastic. So there were quite f well not a few. There were a few. BBC Docs. there's a great film called Getting It Straight in Notting Hill Gate, which came out in seventy seventy one, I think. Which again, we we didn't use anything from that, but all of those bits of archive really helped us to help the director and the editor kind of create the flavor of what was going on at that point. and obviously where they tr they they tracked down what's called Paul I can remember his name for the Pink Fairies. There's another band called the Pink Fairies who were part of that scene as well along with Hawk Quick. And there was a great photo of them. so our director went over to Canada to interview this guy for the Pink Fairies about that time and and and you know knowing a hundred Cambridge gardens he was living there as well and he happened to have photo and we would I case found out who the photographer was and those photographs of of of Labra Grove, black and white seventy, seventy one, seventy and really incredible pictures. I mean ju bomb I that's the thing. What amazed me really about the area now, which is so kind of bougie and expensive to live in. Still yeah, damage from the war, you know, the tyres and in the street and yeah, rubbish everywhere and I mean, you know, squats and it was it was grim. It was a really grim but out of that comes this kind of you know, kind of crazy community that's producing all kinds of stuff as well. So yeah, as I said to you before, I mean another documentary beckons there, I feel it's a fascinating I mean that that you know that's I would do want to get into that and you know the the you know you guys may be developing your own stuff. But I think one of the things, you know, I've just remembered watching the film and it says first ever Beatles performance footage in the Cavern Club, right? Yeah. And I just and I was my notes I was watching I was thinking like, God, you've got a lot of responsibility to get things right on a film like that. yeah. Because of the scrutiny. Yeah. will tell you, my god, the criticism that you have, you have to be authentic and genuine. that is one of the things with when we were doing Elton John, Never Too Late Doc, they had pulled in in America, so the edit was in America and they were American. And they were trying to tell the story of the 60s in London and Pinner and Elton's, know, Reg Dwight, the early paying in the pubs and things like that. And they had pulled in some Okay, it was just placeholders, but their idea, their vision of what a pub was. Kind of not very nice n North London superbia pub or whatever in the early seventies like no no no I need to see double diamond on tapu, it's gotta be right. So exactly, I, you know, and again, that the part that plays a part in the McCartney doc, you know, that I love that footage, that's fantastic. was brilliant, that was Pathé. Loads of loads of ordinary people, you know, missing teeth, bad makeup, loads of cigarettes smoking, everyone's drinking, the pub is just like, you know, this you can't barely see 'cause there's so much So yeah, authenticity for us is really, really important. you know, as we are working, you know, quite often with American companies, American, you know, to try and bring them the, you know, the authentic, but, you know, we've all seen, you know, the footage of the artist on stage is that, you know, but it's the other stuff around it that tells the story that's so important. But you also have the practical limitations of when, for example, the McCartney doc was for an arena special for the BBC. We were very much leaning into BBC Archive. So, know, A, because you can use BBC Archive for free on a BBC platform. And when you have a limited budget, even for a documentary like McCartney, know, budgets are all being crushed. mean, I think we, you know, all of us out here are finding our job harder and harder to do because, you know, yeah, budget. are just a fraction of what they used to be. And so you're having to get clever and creative with how much archive you can bring and afford. Before we continue, a quick word on what the restoration process actually looks like. Silver Salt Restoration works frame by frame, combining film conservation expertise with the latest digital tools to bring archived material back to broadcast quality. It's meticulous work, and it's exactly the kind of work the guests on this show spend their careers trying to protect. You can learn more. at silversaalt restoration dot com It's great. I loved it. I mean, I'm dog mad. But I think one of the things that I wanted to ask you about that film was how do you manage a very, very US ultimately pretty heavily US story? What are the challenges for you guys being based in the UK and dealing with having to find local affiliate stuff and his breakthrough after the Troubadour? Yes. Well, mean, late nights is one, know, obviously the time zones are different. So your, your edit and your online is coming on, you know, online just as you're wrapping the day at five o'clock. ultimately, well, for five o'clock is Okay. when they come online, not when we finish, when LA comes online. So, you know, so, I mean, that's a good thing that we, as a team, you get two of us, you get, hire two essentially for the price of one. and you get two heads and we can tag team. So Mike's an early morning person, I'm a late night person. So in fact, you know, he'll start earlier than I, but that's one of the things is like just making sure that you're there and present because you know, I worked, started my career at a time when everyone was office-based. Everyone was very much working, you know, always talking to each other. So there was a lot more communication and collaboration. So we've had to work very hard to keep that going. Always insisting on Zooms, regular Zooms with the producers, directors, edits, try to be as, you know, connected as possible dialogues. I like, I'm a verbal person. You probably can tell that. I like to talk. And, you know, so I like to get on the phone and have conversations with people. And that's where you do get the sparked ideas for things, you know. agree I I think it's when you're when you're kind of communicating by email, you don't really get to the nitty-gritty as quickly as you possibly could if you picked up the phone and talked to somebody. But I I think I think the way that we work together does allow us to kind of for me to focus on things while you're dealing with other things or vice versa. You know what I mean? It's it's yeah it's quite it's fortunate that there are two of us with big projects, particularly when they're US based as you're saying on because they're they're Y d there can be the sense of disassociation being the other side of the pond, you know what I mean? concert that he's gonna do to spend time with his family, which is gonna happen at Dodgers Stadium and it And and this gig, this gig he did to 110,000 people. One of the things that, you know, so that that's it's a great film. Really, really interesting, really moving. And and one of the things that I kind of for me I thought was fascinating and challenging was concert footage. So there's scenes in there where you've got Elton playing the piano and you've got a view from the back of the arena, you've got a view from on stage looking back at the audience, you've got different views, different points. How tough and how difficult is it to find multiple angles and multiple Kind of coverage film concerts. That's a good question. Usually there'd be only one camera or one person present. For example, the Dodger Stadium 75 concert was a Brussels-Harty special. They had the exclusive. They were the only ones that were allowed to be filmed. We searched so hard to try and find alternative footage. And we did find snippets of things, but it was, you know, outside the arena or news stories, was fans. And we were kind of trying to find fans who'd filmed stuff. There was one guy, David Minnescien, who shot there. We used a lot of their footage. There was another guy that had contacted us. I mean, when we are a challenge, we're trying to find something. And so for example, another Elton project, and I can't say specifics, but there's this event and we're going, okay, so who was there and who was likely to have a camera? Who would likely to be photographed? So you'd see, you know, you'd see a photograph and you'd see a cameraman in the background with a logo. So you go, okay. So that's that, that channel was there filming. So then you'd go after that. And then there was one where we had captured. So I went on the trail for the Dodgers to Russell Hattie to see whether there any rushes, whether they're extra shot. And it's quite an epic story, actually. I'll try and encapsulate it. Lots of people had died that weren't actually involved, that were involved, but we managed to find one of the cameramen and the editor and the producer who all gave us really fantastic information that allowed us to kind of really categorically find out, did it exist? And sadly, the truth is no, there were no rushes. And the editor said no. Basically, there were two cameramen on that shoot. There were news cameramen. They were told to follow Russell and the family. were minimal concert footage. As we all know, Elton wasn't particularly well at that point, so they were told to stay away from him. They got one great interview with him, but the rest of the time, that was it. And they ran out of film. They only took limited stock with them and they ran out of film. And so the editor said when he came back and he had to edit this thing together, he said, I used every single shred of what was usable. There was no nothing left over. If there were tiny trims, they were definitely shutting shut. thrown away, you know, put in the bin. And I also contacted Trevor Popple and you may or may not remember Trevor Popple Sanders. Trevor was the in-house archivist for ITV, LWT in the 90s. And I even, you know, when he was still alive, sadly he's passed on, but I spoke to him and he said, I remember throwing it all away. remember all the extra stuff. said, that's sadly quite a common... I have a one quick story actually, because I'm going all over the place. Sorry, I'm hogging it now. But it was great when we did Spandivalidoc, Sob was the Western World in 2015, which really for me was that springboard into FeatureDocs. It was one of the first big FeatureDocs becoming very popular in the noughties and onwards. And the band wanted to make a big film about them. We were trying to track down some tube footage, tube brushes, and as you may know, the tube would carry on filming after the live broadcast, so you'd often get stuff, extra stuff that wasn't shown. And I was actually on the trail for that. It took me to NIFA, the North East Film Archives, that held the Taintees collection at that point. So I contacted this brilliant guy whose name's just gone out of my head, but I'll tell you who it is after, as he's still working on David. I rang him up and said, I'm trying to find these rushes about this band of ballet. And he said, oh, I said, I wish you'd contacted me a year ago. And I said, oh no, why? And he said, well, we had loads of staff and I was told to get rid of it all. said, wow. He said, even said to the powers that be, should we not call the band? Should we not get in touch with the band? And they just said, no, no, no, get rid of it, get rid of it. And I was like, no. And he said, but I didn't. Yeah. He said, well, they did get a lot of stuff. He said, I did throw stuff away, but there were these 15 cans of 35 mil color film, all made. And he said, I couldn't bring myself to throw that away. So he kept it, he squirreled it away. And it was the Birmingham NEC concert that was filmed, five camera shoot. beautiful color backstage footage that you know, never they made it into even when Sony even when in years gone by the re-released the concert they did where they never had this footage to have access to and we were so lucky. Thank you, David. Thank you the guy at Neif for that kept that footage and that's what we are. you know, these wonderful people all over the world that keep their, know, when I went to MTV in the 90s, had producers that kept their rushes, kept their tapes, took them home with them. Try and get hold of the MTV archive nowadays. Paramount have got a, you know, stranglehold over it. It's impossible. But these producers, they've kept their tapes. They've kept their films. So hand over to you. No, so we just yeah, we going back to Elton and the the moment in nineteen seventy six when he comes out as bisexual in Rolling Stone. Yeah. We to that's such a pivotal moment in his life. It's like and one of the things that the the cake started me off on this trek, and and we do it all the time now, is is that okay, that's an interview in Rolling Stone, he's gonna take a a a a tape recording with him, he's gonna record the interview, he's gonna Make his notes on that, write the piece afterwards. Does that exist? So we tracked that down to his estate has been bequeathed to the New York Public Library. Cliff Jarry. Ciao. Cliff Jarry was called. So we were to them, they said, Damn, it's we're looking for this. It's like we'll have a rummage and see what we've got. And they found the tapes. Not even they found the tapes, but we got, so you can hear him interviewing Elton, American producer Ryan Philosophy. Ryan Gutt. Ryan Gallagher said, I think you can hear a camera in the background clicking away. It's like, wow. So then we worked out who the photographer was as well. So that whole sequence where he's coming out, that audio, 'cause we had nothing for that apart from the the Rolling Stone article. But now we could bring the the i the actual audio for the interview, which had never been heard before, plus these photographs which had been seen a little bit, for they were shot but not many. of four have been published but he had 60 but he was just click click click click. But it I mean it's absolutely pivotal. It's the first moment where he really opens up and you can almost hear the pausing in the way the editors when he's talking about it. astonishing. That's great. So it's all about the hunt. I mean, there's another piece of footage in there that stuck with me, which is when he's kind of I don't know whose it is, but he sat at the piano explaining how he writes the music for Tiny Dancer from the lyrics. It's just brilliant. It's so you're just there. It's Aquarius. Aquarius ITV that is. It was, was it? He's wearing a jockey, he's wearing like a spotty sort of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just I've got this one for Birdie and he just sort of knocks it out basically. Wow. as it happens. Elton is an amazing subject. There is so much story to tell there and we touch on it, obviously, in Never Too Late and hopefully in this new project you're going to see more of that. There is so much material out there. But the funny thing is a lot of that, Never Too Late, there's a lot of unseen footage in there. And I... looking at reviews or looking at fan, because that's another thing. We are essentially stalkers, know, our subject, we have to stalk our subject and find out as much as we possibly can. So we join all the fan sites, because they're brilliant, because the fans actually are the real experts. They have followed and shared. Not sure if it's you know, there's one guy on Facebook at the moment who's just like... I mean I'm a bit suspicious that he's AI because he's just got so much information that he's Yeah, it's definitely a full it's gonna be a full time job though, 'cause he's digging up stuff all the time. When we're familiar so much with Melton's archive, but this is like where that from. Yeah, but exactly Bye. that, you know, passion as well. it's, you know, we do. And this is, you know, this is where we kind of come around to going, you know, we don't do this on our own, you know, we are, we are kind of the epicenter of it. But there are so many hundreds and hundreds of people that help us to get to that material to bring, you know, whether it's private archives, collectors, fans. know, contributors, contributors always have something. There's always at least one band member that's mum or auntie or brother or someone collected there, you know, kept the scrapbooks, you know, look at the WAM documentary, the scrapbooks that were there and, you know, the Sparks had the scrapbooks. It's like these are, these tell the story, help tell the story and they're the hundreds of people. That's why credits are so important to us. And we are really insistent on trying to get obviously, contractual credits, yes, but also just thank you credits. 'Cause people really do go the extra mile to help you get this stuff. And then you get challenged by the streamers or the broadcasters that squish all the credits right up in the... Never get to see them or just say, we haven't got time. it's like, which is so unfair. And it's a battle that I'm constantly fighting credit where credit is due, you know? I'm just gonna ask you, Kate. I mean, and Mike, you work on a lot of projects that are authorized documentaries. Do you ever work on unauthorized? And is it harder to work on an unauthorised documentary? Very much so, because it's unauthorized, you just don't get that access. I think a lot of times we'll go through the door at the f at the start with a with the with it's an official documentary like the Paul McCartney one, you know, the the the the lost base or culture club or whatever. When you've got that, you're kind of people are kind of gonna trust you. Like for example on the Culture Club doc we got in touch with Stephen Bean, the band's producer, who provided us with some fantastic archive photos no one's ever seen before. He was just like, I've done a couple of these been interviewed by a couple of these videos before. It's like, you know, I don't wanna do this if it's gonna be shit, is what he said. So I can't tell you what it's gonna 'cause we haven't started yet, but I think it's gonna be good. But he also had copies of a load of TV shows that the BBC had wiped. And he had those copies. And they were only VHS, but they were actually pretty decent quality. yeah, so we've there are a couple of BBC things that were wiped. One that he had for a s a Saturday morning kid show in the summer when the main series had finished. It was like a the series of summer specials they did. There's a brilliant interview just as they're recording their second album in what's the studio? What's his studio's called? I can't remember. Basically he's in the still in the studio with him, as Peter Powell with him and with Boy George. And I'm fan this like online thing, this is great. we haven't got a copy, it's been wiped. It's like The YouTube footage is just it's just not gonna hold up. So We'll you. we were talking to Steve and said, 'cause we went to Liverpool to see him. Again, he very accommodated, lovely guy. And he was like, so you want a VHS copy that summer? He that it's pristine. He I I keep all my stuff with real care. So my I love you so much. Can we borrow it off to you? And took it to the Flying Spot and and got it Yeah, Thanks, Tim. thanks Tim and got it it looked I actually held up on IMAX it held up. It's fascinating. I mean we we're doing a thing at Footage Fest this year on VHS itself and like if it's not been done a million times, it's the first quality is not isn't that bad. it's nothing else. I mean it's just It's such a joy to have it as a copy. But it's also about the machine as well and the heads and everything. So equipment, you know, that's why the tech people are so important. know, whether it is brilliant Tim at the flying spot, Jo and her team at Restore, they did all these wonderful scans of the Forbes, Brian Forbes in the Elton Dock. Again, none of that footage has ever been seen. was a, he shot a documentary in 73 called The longest title in the world Elton John and Bernie talk and say goodbye to Norma Jean and there's a story. Getting that one on the screen, that's a roll list. But he shot 15 hours without him. He shot him in, you know, on Hollywood Bowl, Edmonton, at his house. So there's a bit where he films him doing the vocals to a candle in the wind. Just like just just I mean whoa. Here's the back of your neck stuff. Fantastic. Yeah. Joe and her team were brilliant. That had been in storage, in Elton's storage for, well, since Brian had given it him in the 90s and they'd never had it scanned or anything. So that was the first thing we did. And Joe and her team did a brilliant restoration job on it. 4K, beautiful. Individuals, I don't know if you, I'm sure you might come across David Dean. Is he not? Yeah. David Dean, yeah? David has machines that no one else has. David had the only machine that we were able to, there was this filmmaker called Hoppy Hopkins, John Hoppy Hopkins, was a 60s, he did all kinds of things. He was involved with the International Times. was an agitator and a, you know, he was funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He was given money to go and buy the earliest tape recording machine. This was post film and told to go out and record happenings and events. And he filmed so many incredible things throughout the sixties, but on tape. it was an open real CSV tape that didn't exist. Anyway, David was able to get this transferred and it's footage that is just going to blow everyone's mind. I love I love it. So yeah, had goosebumps when I was watching it. was like, my God, you found it. Yeah. These people are so important for our industry, you know, and I have to give a shout out to Nick Menga at VandaQuest and his team at VandaQuest. And Nick was an in-house BBC guy who, you know, had off air recordings of everything on the BBC and fortunately kept copies. Yeah, well, that's another story as well. anyway, Nick is brilliant and he has, you know, they're always trying to buy bits and pieces for their one inch machines, their two inch machines and the D1 machines and all these, you know, so many different formats. You guys know how many dozens and dozens of formats that Archive comes on, you know, from the humble VHS onwards, you know, to the, mean, obviously our Holy Grail is film. because film allows you to scan and scan, you know, we're on 10K now, aren't we? think you could go to 10K scans and it'll keep going. So, you know, yeah, all those. It you know, it it's it's it's a collaborative industry and for that reason it's massively important that, you know, we have conversations like this so that people are aware who's got what because they might have the last device available or be putting it together. I think there's a real rise in physical media, the interest in physical media, and I think that that is gonna you know, is a good thing for our industry. I think, you know, people I I'm we're doing this thing in New York in Brooklyn Footage Fest and we've got this This night owl video. It's the it's a new video VHS store that's opened up in Brooklyn and all these hipsters and owl hipsters and owl involvement. It's the artwork they're interested in, it's the type of VHS, that when what the folder it comes in, you know, all this kind of stuff. So so anyway, so it's exciting to see new generation finding all that stuff. So, Kate to Mike, this is the quick fire round. Quick questions, fast answers, just say what comes first into your head. The quick fire round today is brought to you by Reading in the Year's, production. the premier source of footage from musical artists, entertainers and history makers. One person, living or dead, whose archive you'd love to explore. Well, I'd like to say Mike Mansfield, but apparently he doesn't have an archive. if he did, Does he? well, yes, indeed, although he does. Mm. VHS betacam 16mm. Biggest myth people have about archive research. but you can find it all on YouTube. AI, friend or foe No. You What's more exciting finding the footage or getting it cleared? Because you get to see it, even if nobody else does, ultimately. We've seen some great things. What is the clip that got away? Well, there's the clip that... What do mean, the one that we found that we couldn't clear or the one that we couldn't start? Yeah, the one that you couldn't find that you know that is out there. I'll his record shop on this. One archive tip everyone should know about. Okay, here's a good one. It's not quick fire answer, but we found an amazing piece of footage. was, I don't claim for this. The credit really should go to Jessica Berman. It was for the Moonage to Adrian David Bowie documentary. And Jessica had asked me to help out on a tiny bit of research in the UK. And they were trying to find a film that David had shot in the early eighties called Ricochet, and it was a live tour film. filmed in Asia. Normally David Bowie had his own archive and everything was in it and he was very, very strict at collecting rushes and outtakes. He's got an amazing archive. But they didn't have anything in the archives to do with this live tour. So they said, go and find it. So I managed to track down the producer and director of the film, husband and wife, team. Unfortunately, they divorced. The husband was acrimonious. The husband was not contactable, but the wife was. And I won't mention the names because I can't remember them. I have found a landline number for her and I rang and I left a message and nobody called me back. So I rang again. And again, this is where tenacity comes into play. It's like, don't ever stop. So I kept ringing, kept ringing, left my messages and then I got a call back from her and she was brilliant. She was very helpful. And she said, she called me on her mobile. And she said, oh yes, I remember filming that. was a complete nightmare. David was very strict. We definitely sent everything back. Absolutely everything got sent back. And so I said, okay, well, thanks very much. And so went and told Jessica and she said, but it's not there and it should be there. So go back and ask again. So I was like, okay. So I rang her on her mobile and I explained, said, you know, because it was official and everything, she was duty banned to be as helpful as she could. And she said, okay, well, look, I'll pull all my files and boxes and things and, you know, get back to you. So again, didn't get back to me. So I kept chasing and chasing. And then she said, right, I pulled the boxes. All the paperwork we have was on fax and fax paper has faded and we can't read anything now. So, but I pulled my diaries from that time and we kept extensive diaries from that shooting period. And she said, I noticed that the working title, of the film was people to people. And this is my tip. Working titles for things are different from the end titles. So armed with that information, I went back to the archive and said, right, search under people to people. It should be there. So they did a search, extensive search, nothing, nothing came back. So we were like, this is weird. This is really weird. So she said, go back and ask again. And I thought, so third time, anyway, she stopped replying to my phone. She'd done her thing. But I just thought, can't, I can't let it be. I've got to keep going. So I rang the landlines again and I kept ringing the landline, ringing the landline and then it picks up and it's a young man on the phone and I'm saying, hi, my name's Kate Griffiths. I said, yeah, I know who you are. Yeah. I'm really sorry about this, but we're trying, we literally were trying to find this stuff. And he said, yeah. Anyway, I engage him in a phone conversation and we end up chatting for about half an hour. And it turns out weirdly, he's next door neighbors with Joe Stones. Hi, Joe. Because in the middle of our conversation, he says, do you know Joe Stones? And I was like, yes, I've heard about it. said, well, she lives next door to me. So anyway, we have a rapport. have a... And at some point during that conversation, I say, well, people to people. And he says, what's people to people? And I said, that's the working title of the document. How did you know that? And I said, well, your boss told me she found it in her diaries. And he said, she never told me. And he said, hang on a minute. And he went off and he went on, he came back. yeah, we've got it. It's all on the shelves here. And we found everything. because it had all been listed under people to people and then just lost, put in a corner. And when Brett Morgan, who's the director of that documentary, I rang Jessica and I said, I think we found it. And I got one and only call from the director, which was lovely. Very thank you. Very grateful. And if you've seen Runeos Daydream, that opens the film and it's used extensively. It's David going up and down escalators and on the boat going out to the playing the drumming. And I think they use about 15 minutes or 20 minutes in the Finnish film, you know. And it was just, you know, sitting there on the shelf and nobody knew, had put the pieces of the information together until that moment. That's a great story. That's brilliant. wow. Quick a quick plug for Footage Fest. So Jessica has got us Brett Morgan coming this year to Footage Fest. So we're gonna we're we're gonna we're gonna ask him that. We're gonna ask him about that. Go up to Brett and say, me about people to people and see what you can do. May or may not on it but amazing, amazing. We had a conversation with him to prep him the other day and and he he said in all the film and I didn't realise this, you know, kid stays in the picture of Middle Age room, lots of lots of amazing films he's made. He shot but he reckons he shot about fifteen to twenty minutes of original interviews, his high entire career. It's all archived. So he's gonna be he's gonna be fascinating. going to be. Kids in the picture actually is a pivotal film. It's brilliant. And it's one of the first. Well, it it's twenty five years old. So and can you believe it, right? It's twenty five years old coming up this year. And a hundred percent. I mean, his the the that that sort of kind of the use of photography in that film and the way he kind of changed it is amazing. It's like a drama, isn't it? It's like, you know, the way that actually that what's the main character I've forgotten his name, the Robert Evans. Evans. Yeah, Robert Evans. He narrates it as a third person. It's almost and that footage that Jessica found of him talking to the sponsors at Paramount, you know, trying to persuade them, don't shut me down. I've got three films in. It's Yeah. just brilliant. It's not Yeah. I'll open the door, I think, to a lot of people seeing how you could make, like Senna, how you could make documentaries dramatic through the use of archive. But you need multiple cameras. need all these, like you're making, you're shooting a film. That's our goal. It's like we always say for day one of the edit, you want to have basically collated as much archive as you possibly can, like dailies, like rushes for that director. that to then build their story up from the beginning. That's exactly what he said, Brett Wong to us on the phone call. He says, I get everything up front. I get everything in I can. And he was he w it's well won't get too much away, but he you know, we're he talking about it the use of archive in in a much more kind of like philosophical way and the the the how imagery can be used in different ways and it don't have to just use archive to be re expressing what it was factually shot for. And it so it's he's got a very interesting take on his use of it. but yeah, getting as much in, getting you guys in early as possible. is is vital. Right. Okay. Can I just say that was the longest rapid Sorry, I I had to tell that story though because that is one of my most brilliant stories. Don't take It's a great story. It's a great story. for an answer. Okay. Mike, are you ready? Okay. One archive discovery that gave you goosebumps. The Elton John that we talking about before the the interview where he's talking about coming out as bisexual, I think finding that and then hearing that was was really, really just an amazing moment, I think, because it was such an important part of the film, an important part of his life and career. So just yeah, just to find that was great. Okay. Dream documentary to work on. I'd love to make a documentary about the band Japan, who I'm slightly obsessed with and who I started listening to in the late 70s, who enjoyed big success in in the early 80s, then split up, just they were really successful. and I did have the fortune of getting being paid by BMG for the re-release of their classic 1979 album, Quiet Life, to find all the archive I could relating to the album. So I went globally to look for archive on my favourite band. That was a nice job. Archive detective or archive producer? Ooh, interesting. I'd I'd probably call myself an archive detective rather than archive producer. Favourite decade for archive? Whoa, that's harsh. That's really harsh. Probably the seventies. I would think. Yeah. Just because I was I was kind of about wow, what I was 10 in 1974, so mid-decode I was, you know, a kid. And I've got a lot of experiences of memories of, you know, pop, pop culture, you know, life. Yeah, whatever. So yeah, I find myself in the 70s. I the 70s is a great decade. Okay, and the final one, if you could rescue one archive collection from being lost forever, what would it be? I would have to be the BBC. I just think that the BBC's archive is just I was very fortunate on the McCartney Lost Bass Doc. Because it was a BBC production, I'd like to be given access to the BBC archive. So it was really difficult to focus on what I was looking for. So I could look for anything at all in the BBC archive. I did find actually it's a fantastic bit of archive. I knew it was there, but I went and had a look. so in when I was growing up in in in Teb where I am now, the Cubs and the Scouts and the guides and the Brownies would do a thing called the gang show where they put on a show. I was at the local cinema, local theatre, and there's a nineteen seventy-three BBC doc called Kenneth Griffith goes to goes to Tembe, I think. And Kenneth Griffith is a local born boy, very successful actor, was in many, many films, big advocate for Irish independence and he yeah. So he goes on the train, they follow him on the train, he comes down and and the the standard of this production's remarkable. For this this woman, Pauline Allen, amazing. Marsh and all these kids to do song and dance routines is quite fantastic. So I made a beeline for that because I knew my brothers and sisters were in it somewhere like really, really are. And then showing it to my brothers and sisters and then just the the nostalgia rush was fantastic. So yeah, the BBC I think just because, as I said before, they're the documentaries they made through the sixties and into the seventies, up as far as the mid eighties, probably, about subjects that they were given. the tri the chance to go and do that. And there was nothing about making a profit and a margin. It was like, this is interesting, this should be on T V. This should be shared. This should be made. There's still so much there that I've never seen. But just yeah, I mean there's a w I was watching of what was that documentary you're watching about the Office Party? it's a mandalier called the office. it's a crazy Christmas party. Absolutely. If you had a chance to see it, it's absolutely fantastic. About the social hierarchy in a advertising agency. You know, from the room up to the the D at the Christmas party and the etiquette, everything battered is fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. So Can I just chip in and answer that question myself as well? Because, well, I mean, I'd love to keep every archive going, but BFI is a massive repository of all kinds of things. And I have been fortunate to rummage around in there and find amazing things. But one of the greatest pieces of archives I personally have is a 1971 film called Men in Hot Pants. It's a local, the local Cornish broadcaster. It's not, it's South East. TSW. think it's TSW. And the reason for that is that my mother appears in it. Yeah. I'd never seen it. And I felt a little bit embarrassed actually that as a professional researcher and archivist, I didn't find this film. But it was found, was on a, a, a, a, a, a, a, I was born in Cornwall, little place called Lordston. And the BFI have this thing called, is it Real Britain? Britain on Right. Film. Britain on Film, which they catalog all their films by geography. So you can go and look at all the films that were shot. Your hometown, Dom, your hometown sounds right. Go and have a look. Yeah, lots of home. Wow. it's amazing. When you are researching for a documentary, that's really useful because you can go, we're in Pinna, what films were shot in Pinna that the BFI have? Anyway, Launceston, Men in Hot Pants, my mum is interviewed and she passed away, sadly she never got to see this, but she did come home. I remember her coming home. I was a little girl at the time and my sister coming home and said, I've just been interviewed for the TV. just came up and talked to me. But we never ever saw it until we discovered it on the Amazing. Amazing. That's a w a a wonderful way to to to wrap up our conversation, I think. the the personal the personal feelings we have towards archive, and we're all in it 'cause we love it. We're very blessed to work here. listen, I mean we don't have all the hours in the world, we could talk for hours. thank you both immensely for your time. getting getting through vast technical issues that our audience will ne will never get I hope it doesn't look too mad when I'm in a hurry. It'll it'll look great. It'll look great. No, we're we're so so grateful. And so grateful for putting those films on our radar and and you know, it's hugely enjoyable. So Mike and Kate Griffiths, thank you very much for joining the archive. Thank you very much guys. Thank you. you. Thank you very much. You've been listening to the Archive Room, presented by Silver Salt Restoration, world-renowned experts in film preservation and digital restoration, and a John Gore Studios company. You can find them at Silversalt Restoration.com. Thanks for listening to The Archive Room, a podcast about the people, process, and power behind archive footage. If you've enjoyed this episode, Please do support us by subscribing, rating us, and sharing this podcast with somebody who cares about documentaries, history, or just how stories are built from the past. And please drop us a comment with guests or archive worlds that you think we should explore next. We're open to ideas. See you next time.