David fanning, founder and executive producer of drain,ine. And margaret former executive producer of American Experience. The library of congress cohosted the 45 minute event. How to book balance back in copyright, she coordinates the fair use and free speech project at the center with the professor of the Washington College of law. What a great pleasure it is. I feel like my life is passing before me. Be on a panel with these people is really extraordinary. Each of the people here have merely makeo not great documentary, but create a future for a different kind of documentary than was ever possible on any other kind of television to be made. Has contributed differently to doing that. In some cases, supporting each , which doesnt always happen in Public Television. Ive had the pleasure of working with some of these people, because over the last decade, we have been working with different organizations to make fair use more available, particularly in archival ways to makers and public tv broadcasters, including some of these people. They have been incredibly supportive and early adopters in being able to make better use of materials thirdparty material to tell americas story in so many different ways. I want to start with clayborne carson. Clayborne carson is the founder and director of the Martin Luther king, junior education institute. He was the Senior Advisor for whenon the prize at a time no one thought it could be made. Ask each of you, starting with clayborne, to talk about what did you have in mind for a series . Each of you have this experience of a series that ended up providing a template on how to do things in the future for filmmaking, which had been done. Things that is so interesting to listen to the Previous Panel is just yesterday i was lecturing at stanford to my students who were born after all this had happened. I think they were telling me about a period before i came on the scene. I suddenly felt younger, in the sense that when i was i got a call from henry, who should be here, unfortunately he passed away. The visio the visionary of eyes on the prize. An invitation to edit Martin Luther kings papers. It wasnt like i was looking for work. I realized this was going to take decades, and it has taken decades to edit and publishes papers. Publish his papers. His idea for a series, one of the themes i see running through the discussions this afternoon ofabout democratization information, and the interpretation of history. The way in which, if you think back to the days before pbs, before npr, the modern mostentary style, information about the past came from a few sources. A documentary, it was usually made by they didnt have largescale documentaries made by anything other than large corporations. Where like cbs reports, they were done by the commercial networks. What he was proposing was to do something very radical, that is to get away from the notion of history as a master narrative and by a handful of people written in textbooks, and everyone kind of took that as authoritative. One of the first things he said is there is not going to be what innow call talking heads eyes on the prize. Our job was not to come there and pontificate. The four of us were all really young, i dont think we would have welcomed that in the first place. Was to go and find how history was made during the 1950s and 1960s, and to go to the sources and find those people. We wanted to let them tell the story of how they made history. Wasto interpret it and that a breakthrough. Even now, when you look at documentaries, many of them go back to the notion. Having the authority of authoritative historian give the interpretation that guides you through. But theres this other story of these ordinary people who make history. The real joy of doing it was historians, we were in our own world. My first book was on the student run coordinating committee, it was the counter king story. I welcome that kind of an approach. I think that has influenced the documentaries that have been made since then. Many of them do take up the mantle of allowing ordinary people to tell the story of making history. One characteristic is this is ordinary people telling this story. Also in an oral history weight. There was so much rich oral history that would have escaped us forever. Its interesting now, i can go into my classroom, as they did this week, and use those interviews. Prize,y use eyes on the but i use the energy we did for that. It often works so much better in the sense that it will be in the point if i want to talk about parental stocking, theres this usedrful interview that we at most five minutes of. Find my students are so her talkjust seeing about ordinary things. Was it like talking to the president of the United States when your husband is in jail and you have never spoken to him before . Re calls on the phone, you young son answers the phone and start babbling away. That kind of story is going to get through the minds of students far more than simply me giving a lecture about Martin Luther king and going to jail, writing the letter from birmingham jail. Something else i think was so wasrtant was i think it really arguing that every single image had to be exactly what you claimed it was. It couldnt be something that looked like that, which was very common. There was no reconstruction story that kind of illustrates that. Interviewing Ralph Abernathy about the rise of washing the march of washington. This wonderful story about coming back after the day of the march, i was there. That particular meeting, he talked about coming back after all of the people had departed. Thehe evening, seeing rustling papers, all of the leftover things. He says it was the most Beautiful Day of my entire life. Guerra kind ofd saying that it couldnt have happened that way. Why . Because we know Ralph Abernathy was every moment of that day. About whetherbate to trust his recollection as opposed to our historical reconstruction. History might not have happened that way, maybe it should have. David, if you to dont mind. Member when he was the Young Australian the younger South African. A young South African to bring a new format that was possibly too challenging for Public Television. Creature, im a baby of Public Television. I walked into the station in 1953, Huntington Beach, by way of london and the bbc. I walked in and volunteered. I put my hands on the camera that was there and began working. In 1977 andfound me brought me to boston to start a series called world, an international documentary. A series about the world as others see it. It was a wonderful idea. I came to find a place that was an extraordinary institution dedicated to ideas. I had never been around anything quite like it. Each of the people working in the different genres, times of even julia child in the corner of our offices, they were doing things because they cared about ideas. It was extraordinary privilege, it is to this day. It was an amazing privilege. The reason theres a frontline is because we were trusted with out,h resources to work it to try to figure out how to do the best work. The privilege of being given those resources and how you get to spend it and justify it. You cant make the best film you can make about the size subject, dont make it. It was as simple as that. It was all of the people i can go out and bring to Public Television. I tried that out, we did 60 films along the way. There was a moment when i sat in a meeting at the corporation of public broadcasting with louis friedman, the head of programming. He walked into it and said he was inundated with thousands and couldnt sort through it all. He made the decision to do three big strands. One was quite to be drama, became american playhouse. The second became wonder works. The third was a news and documentary idea. World, withth funding to do eight shows for the next season. He made me sit down at his table and figure out what the budget of a 26 week series would look like. Million inup to 3 1981. Saidme up that figure and we could probably do it for that much money. He said i will put out a request for proposals. He put them out to various people coming including our friends at w et. We got the money. The guarantee was we would have the money for three years. If we could persuade the stations to match the money progressively in three years, it was a visionary idea. It left us the freedom to do that. We made our mistakes, we bumped our heads, we did some good things and we got some smart people. Slowly this idea grew. Mcgee, whowo peter found me in Huntington Beach and brought me to boston, theyre the people i think for frontline. As simple as been that, and is obligated. Although frontline developed almost a brand. You really did put your i dont know. I think there were lots of different styles of films. There were observational films. Investigative films. There were films like the wonderful sixhour they were extraordinarily different films that came about. I thought we needed to make a series that young and older reducers, reporters and filmmakers would look at and say, i can learn from that. The people who came to me and say, how do you make these films . I watch a lot of them and try to deconstruct them and look for the different ones that suit you for who you are and the kind of film you make. Ultimately these are works of authorship. If you encourage authors and encourage them because they do good work i given them another film to make, you begin to build a body of work. Has judy was anchoring the series after establishing the first season. At a certain point we felt like we would take the extra time and we began to use will as a voice. What made the strategic decision that something in the quality of the words or storytelling you would say that the different thing. That show. There was a value to that. There were people who questioned the oldfashioned, patriarchy, all kind of reasons people would say we should use other voices, and we do. Ultimately it needed some kind of connective tissue that would hold the string through the films. If you could have some of these markings features, you could have a lot more freedom, artistic freedom and other areas . Yet given be something other than Anthology Series. It was going to be a work of journalism. It was not going to be an Anthology Series made by independent lawmakers who would come to us with films pretty much made. We would initiate and subject them to the rigors of the editorial process, which meant the journalism had to be transparent. It needed to be deep into it and be able to understand the source materials and side that fell. That was at the heart of it. American experience. I also want to add there is another binding agent in the frontline. When i came to gbh i discovered this because i came from cbs where i worked for cbs reports and a couple of iterations of magazine shows. Because tv shut down guide remember tv guide . They ran a frontpage story. A cover story saying the documentary is dead. This was in 1985. That is my documentary is still a bad word. Everybody went scurrying. I got a great job offer from wg bh, peter mcgee who needs to be mentioned as many times as possible. He set the standard at wgbh. They wanted that peter and jane chrighton wanted to do a history series. The binding agent was good storytelling. It had to have a beginning, the middle and an end. Narrative, narrative of a narrative. We constructed documentaries in acts, something most documentarians had not been doing. On commercial television you had a lot of documentaries that were like nbc white paper, abc i forget with the series is called. They were mostly surveys. They were not Actual Stories really had characters you can follow. Where you had characters you can follow. That was an element that was emphasized at gbh. I know at American Experience because as we were talking before, you want to hear from as many people as possible as close to the subject as possible and construct it very carefully to have a story arc. What happened next . What happened after that . Lets point out then Public Television is a real innovator of this character driven story model that now the standard expectation for documentary. I think so. I dont want to take credit for it as i did not invent the narrative style. It was something that was wgbhced wholeheartedly by and they gave all of us the resources to figure it out. When youre in the process of telling a story you need time to figure out who the main characters are, to the secondary characters are, what is going to happen next, how to conclude it. And without being you dont have to tell the entire story because everybody used to agonize about what is left out. If you did your job properly, no one would notice you left anything out. Our philosophy is just go narrow and go deep. And get characters. I want to comment on something he set about getting firsthand witnesses. I admired that in henry hamptons shop and eyes on the prize. We had a challenge because our mandate was to tell all American History. We had to go back to the 18 and 17 centuries. We avoided anything that was prearchival because we did not know how to deal with it at the beginning. You cant find witnesses. One of our first shows was on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. We barely got a couple of people to make in a parents. As soon as we found them, we shot them immediately and put them in the back. We did not know if we were going to go ahead with this story. It was a real stretch for us. We had to challenge ourselves to go back into the 19th century and back into revolutionary periods. Since we ared on talking about the archives his letters, diaries, firsthand accounts that could be employed in many different ways to recall the donner party. There is no firsthand witnesses to the donner party. They ate each other. One of our most successful films. We relied on diaries and letters. One of the things that is so impressive about what both of your series, and all of your work in documentaries did was to create a sense of trust among the stations for something they dreaded and feared ever since the days of net, which is before there was a pbs and shows like the redlining show that made nixon defined public defund public broadcasting. A sense of equality, dignity, reliability and so on. Something else that is actually really interesting to me is that Public Television and building upon that has been able to ofually foster a kind anthology show for independent voices as well. Impressively, i have to say thank you for david for being so supportive of intelligence shows as well as the executive produced journalism series. Steve, who is here from the center for Asian American media, one of the minority consortia of a veterano independent filmmaker and someone who supports independent filmmakers, and also involved in creating archives we can all draw on. I would love to hear you talk a little bit about the filmmaking that goes to fuel the two big Anthology Series. F. Ard member of itv if i could, i would like to make a reference to the panel earlier. The seeds of the minority consortia independent and diverse filmmakers goes back to the same era of the great society. Many of these entities were founded in the 19 remedies. 1970s. They came out of civil rights. They came out of changing demographics of the country which was starting to be recognized. The immigration act was rewritten in 1965. Even though it would take a generation, did has reshaped america. In this time im talking about from the 1960s until now, the asianamerican community went from 1 of the population and now we are 6 of the population, 20 million and the fastestgrowing. We wont mention statistics for the latino community. Was wheree we had were these voices of other communities . For whom our presence and media overall was an absence, for one of stereotypes. For Asian Americans in Entertainment Media we are only the villains and war movies or house boys or gangsters from chinatown or laundry men. Inspiration ofs the Civil Rights Movement to recognize how important it was for us to be able to participate in society. The mechanism for us in the consortia in the wisdom of the corporation for public broadcasting was a help ensure there was a pipeline of programming by and about minority communities. We have been doing this between 35 and 40 years, the five members of the organization. One of thengs first point i want to make in response to your question was that we have learned something deeper and this construct. It was important to include the perspectives of people of color in telling the verse kinds of stories diverse kinds of stories. Be at history, social issues or cultural history. I think at first we thought we were presenting authentic images our own communities could recognize. Is piece that is important you cant fully participate in society unless in some ways you see yourself and your stories told in society. The second thing we cant understand came to understand is they need to be for all americans and not just for our own communities. The asianamerican community would be a good example because we are so diverse, different in language and cultural backgrounds, that in some ways you are an expert on no other culture in this construct of a beige america construct of asia america. My thoughts on this, i think we now, where we are today in this question of who is an american and what is it that makes america great, it is clear that we took for granted there was acceptance, that diversity was a key factor of the American Experience. But it is vital we stand in for this notion of what this country can be and we are not just about our racial stories. Diversity is within each of our communities. I think that is the larger piece ift the way resh we examine things. I think we are still exploring with these different points of view me. Its a journey we all need to be on because we dont have the whitene of what european maledominated through line history. Thank you very much. The want to jump in . One of the points i would make is all of us in some ways have been beneficiaries of the technological changes and have , summits evenost say the skill make the skill level of filmmaking. It has become much easier to do a film like eyes on the prize today. You could probably do it for much less simply because the equipment is so much less, the editing equipment, all that sort of thing. I think looking forward into the future, what i see coming out of africanamerican filmmaking is that proliferation is kind of pulling us, even within the africanamerican community, now gay filmmakers, black filmmakers that might be trying to describe the experience. You have so many so much diversity in each of these communities that one thing i fear is it is very difficult to now, iense right have been involved in more than two dozen documentary films about black American Life and most of it is 20th century. It seems like the pace of that keeps increasing. I think there is that concern sense ofre losing a the commonality of being black. Much less being american. Maybe that is good because otherwise you would not have a sense that these communities exist. But in terms of trying to get a sense of it, for many of my students i will be teaching next quarter on black independent film. Maybe one student might have seen some of these Fairly Famous films. Charles burnett. People who really make major contributions. They had not even seen early spike lee. X,y might have seen malcolm but that is it. I think one of the problems we are going to have is that there are audiences, but they will be smaller and smaller rather than larger and larger. Let me address the changing marketplace for documentaries. I would love to have any of your responses. Theyis a point at which give 50,000. If watching entire lines, you vice and bolts are doing instant video journalism. Educating an entirely new generation. Cable channels are stuffed with walltowall, something that looks like documentary. You have a legacy built up largely through the hard work of lic television that is that honors the notion of documentary like an authentic, true thing. At the same time you have an enormous liberation. Proliferation. Leading into the marketplace of netflix, amazon and so many more. What is the role of Public Television documentary . It is truly not the only game in town. Godnsive, all my g oh my , compared to any kind of source of documentary. Relatively slow compared to some of the others. What is the role . No pressure. If you can provide is the answer. Its an enormous challenge. One of the great challenges will be, how do you pick your way through all this stuff . What is true and trustworthy . People maybe dont care about that as much. There is an enormous amount of material in the world being produced in all these different areas. It will be manipulated and used because this is the most manipulative of media. We are going to have a harder and harder time trying to figure out what we can trust. The trust brand. The trust brand goes through very expensive, highoctane documentaries made with big budgets for hbo and for netflix and others. It is very easy to put your hand on a scale and documentaries and be able to manipulate this medium towards certain points of view. Easier. N nothing res famous film, fire in height 9 11. Fahrenheit 9 11. It is fish in a barrel, not hard to do. It is easy to manipulate archival material to lay a voiceover. We have a deep worry behind all of this, as to what lies behind when you have trust. Anything we can hold onto when we say you can trust us. And also to make it as transparent as possible. We may one of the great moments in the life of front times was 1995. We had just done a film on waco, the inside story. We did all these interviews with the major fbi guys who were part of negotiating with koresh. We had audiotapes of the actual negotiation. I kept saying, can we put these show . Apes make a radio somebody said he can put it on the web. What is that . For, we build a website waco the inside story. I said can we put the whole film on their . They said not yet. We put the interviews up. All the interviews that website exists today. People still write to us about that website. From then onwards we began publishing all the edited, longer versions of the primary source material behind the front line. Last week, the second film that ran of putins revenge, there were 65 interviews. A body of work, historically important. That will not persuade the average person that is viewing it that they will go often hunt through interview material. But you have made it completely transparent. Somehow that seats into the culture. We raise the bar high in and hold onto the bar, we hold on to who we are and we remained the only place anywhere the media culture that does that. That is our that is your answer. What i want to say is you can take that trust. We all had to learn using new platforms. It was challenging in many ways because we had been so schooled in the delivery of hourlong documentary or in the case of American Experience, sixhourlong dr. Mary documentaries. We had to learn how to use the material on youtube. We had to learn podcasting. We had to learn all the different mobile platforms were we could deliver the same kind of content, shorter, but we hope kerry the same branding and the same scrutiny that goes into an hourlong documentary and deliver it to your students who are not going to be watching hourlong documentaries. Unless somebody leads them to it and shows them what the benefits are. They are giving that. We are getting millions of viewers. They are sitting in an archive. I think for any documentary, one of the most important tasks is what do you do what all the materials you have brought together . Especially video material. One of the most important decisions for eyes on the prize was to put it in an archive or now you can go and watch the entire interview or any interview done during that time. I want to make sure we get your answer. The answer has been partly transparency but also brand. We are pbs, we are American Experience. You are dealing with the Different Community who are independent film makers. In your case specifically Asian American filmmakers. In thensortium does series showcase their work. Anthologized all of this work which is very, very different. How do you address his point about centrifugal universe of information . [laughter] stuff showslly our up in the system and a variety of ways. Not just one particular strand. In recent times we have a project going on next may that makes extensive use of archival materials. We are participating in the archives of public broadcasting. To speak in general, 100 titles a year that collectively come from independent sources. Pov. T our stuff on optimistic moving into the future because this is what we all have to learn. How to incorporate many more points of view and many more voices in public broadcasting. If you stay true to that, it is absolutely mission driven. It is the future. And make use of this incredible education network. I will set up the next panel for you. What we put media, our materials on and make it available to teachers. I feel very confident about the future of this enterprise because there are thousands, tens of thousands of young makers who want to speak authentic stories that dont necessarily have to be in commercial media and be all about selling a product or titillating people, or even just to entertain alone. There are so many issues we share in public broadcasting. We have got a few more minutes and i would like to be able to use them to talk to the issue you addressed, which is archives. In its on the prize somewhere . Yes. Los angeles. There are many wonderful things. Its an online digital archives of the japanese community. We have placed many of our collections, where she interviewed hundreds of hundreds of world war ii veterans, the japaneseamericans. Replace all those americans interviews on that source. Other kinds of works will go to the library of congress. Fantastic. I would recommend seeing the revenge stuff. It was done with duke. Stateoftheart technology. 65 interviews, all video interviews. You can read it and track the video at the same time. You can reach in and click of peace out and share it. It is the most interactive, profamily sort of profoundly sort of impressive archive. Fantastic. In terms of apb, is a from my material . Is it frontline material . It is on its way. Toi want to go back something said about the appetite for documentaries. I am also on the board of the independent documentary series. I am astonished. Every year we have an open call. We get more than 1000 entries from independent producers. Slots. E we have 18 every single year, and even after during in the middle of the year weather is no entry date, they get inundated with phone calls or they get tapes for films that have been produced. There is something going on. It reminds me of the time they announced the death of the documentary. I dont think we can say the documentary is dying. I see quite the opposite. I see this hunger in young people made possible by technology in some cases, and incessant, fervent curiosity they have about their world. They are making these films were passively for practically nothing and some really terrific. I am optimistic. I interrupted you. Uptwo words that adopt them his intellectual property. That have not come up is intellectual property. Documentary film makers have not been aggressive enough in using fair use. I think that in part that comes from when a particular film i was involved in, when it came to being shown on pbs, pbs required certain kinds of coverage for obvious reasons. And forced them to go back have to take out things. At every level intellectual property issues have been crucial. Not so much in terms of cost, but just uncertainty about use. People all being on the same page about what they regard as which is where the best practices have been somewhat helpful. Last comments . We have about 15 seconds left. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] you are watching American History tv on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. Next, Sam Houston State University professor Brian Matthew jordan talks about Union General benjamin butler, who forme known as the beast his start actions as military governor after the fall of new orleans. Professor jordan discusses criticisms of butlers battlefield tactics, as well as questions about some of his financial dealings and those of subordinates under his command. This hourlong talk was part of a symposium called generals we love to hate, looking at more controversial leaders of the civil war