FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES

Transcription

1 Making and Restoring FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES THE UNITED FARM WORKERS 1973 GRAPE STRIKE Directorʼs Notes by Glen Pearcy Historical Context : The First Grape Strike and Contracts " In 1962 Cesar Chavez founded the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). On September 8, 1965 the UFW joined mostly Filipino farm workers in the Delano, California area in a strike against table grape growers, who had refused a wage increase from $1.20 to $1.40 per hour. However, soon the harvest was over and the strike rendered ineffectual. If it were to bring the growers to the bargaining table, the UFW had to come up with new tactics. " The UFW sent a small group of protesters to the docks in Oakland, CA where they succeeded in persuading the union longshoremen not to load the grapes for shipment. Ten thousand tons of grapes rotted on the docks. In March of 1966 Chavez led a three hundred mile pilgrimage from Delano to the state capital in Sacramento to draw public attention to the plight of farm workers. Then the UFW hit upon a winning tactic, the consumer boycott. The union sent farm workers and organizers into major cities all across the country and Canada to urge consumers not to buy table grapes. Grape sales were crippled. On July 29, 1970 first contracts in the grape industry were signed by Chavez and the growers at the UFW headquarters in Delano.

2 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p : Growers Sign Sweetheart Deals with the Teamsters " Between 1970 and 1973 the UFW expanded its organizing efforts to iceberg lettuce workers in Californiaʼs Salinas Valley, and farm workers in other crops in Oregon, Washington and Florida. Worried about a boycott of its highly recognizable soft drink, the Coca Cola Company signed a contract covering its Minute Maid citrus workers in Florida. The union was expanding rapidly. " In 1973 the original table grape contracts, the cornerstone of the union, were up for renegotiation. Instead the growers signed sweetheart deals with the Teamsters Union. The growers simply handed over their workers to the Teamsters without any representation elections. If this tactic succeeded, the very existence of the UFW would be imperiled. Chavez called a new grape strike, which raged from April to August, from the Mexican border north to the Sacramento Valley. 3,500 strikers were arrested, dozens were shot at, and two were killed. At the end of the harvest, Chavez renewed the boycott. Making the Film " My wife Susan and I joined the UFW staff in April of 1972, moving with our son Noah into two rooms in what had been a tuberculosis sanatorium, remade into the unionʼs headquarters and renamed La Paz, in the foothills of the Tehachapi mountains south of Bakersfield, California. I became the staff photographer for the unionʼs newspaper, El Malcriado, which loosely translates as The Brat, and Susan did graphic art for the newspaper and other UFW materials. We were soon dispatched to Phoenix, Arizona, where Cesar held a 25-day fast protesting that stateʼs newly passed law limiting the rights of farm workers to organize, boycott or strike. " I had made a couple of films while working with the Southwest Georgia Project, a descendent of the civil rights movement Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and told Cesar I was interested in doing something similar with the UFW. By early 1973 Cesar knew a major struggle for the survival of the union was coming, and gave me the assignment of documenting it on film. " It would be fair to say I was unqualified for the job. My two previous films were in many ways amateurish. Thankfully Cesar had not seen them. However, I was an experienced documentary still photographer, which served me well in shooting the film. But I was untrained and inexperienced in editing, which would cause delays in finishing the project. Production " The film was produced in 16mm motion picture film, a common documentary format at the time. In part because I had no camera assistant who could have juggled different film stocks in different magazines, I decided to go with one film stock, Eastman

3 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p. 3 Kodak 7242, because it was relatively fast (ASA 125) and could be used in both dim and bright light. It was a reversal film, and relatively contrasty, widely used in news applications. ECO, a less contrasty and finer-grained film stock, was widely used at the time, but I didnʼt want to get caught in a low light situation with that stock in my camera, as it was very slow. Consolidated Film Industries (CFI) in Hollywood was sympathetic to the union and, as I recall, gave us free processing and work printing 1. " At first I rented equipment out of Los Angeles, Eclair NPRs mostly, as I recall. My first sound recordist was Gayanne Feitinghoff, also a staff member of the union, who had previous film experience. Later Cresson Fraley took over audio recording, and did so for most of the film 2. I had no assistant camera person for the entire production. Unfamiliar with motion picture film practices, I was a poor camera assistant. During the five months of production I donʼt think I ever cleaned the gate, a common practice in filmmaking but not in still photography. That shortcoming shows up in several scenes in the film where emulsion build up is visible (see p. 10). " Not long into the film Cesar decided to invest in our own camera and audio equipment. I chose the Eclair ACL 3, a new model, designed for hand held shooting. We also got the newly designed Angenieux mm zoom lens, which had a nice wide angle at the short end, also made for hand held production. And the UFW bought a Nagra 4.2 quarter inch audio deck, matched with a Sennheiser 815 shotgun microphone. Eclair ACL camera with 400-ft magazine and small motor 1 A work print is a copy of the original film. The work print is used in editing, to avoid damaging the original; the original is put aside until the film is ready for finishing. 2 Fraleyʼs experience as a sound recordist was less than mine as a cinematographer, namely none. Yet he did excellent field recording. When Robert Dalva (see p. 5) screened the restored film on DVD he commented on the excellent quality of the original audio. 3 In keeping with its small size and light weight, this camera was originally designed to work with 200-ft film magazines. 400-ft magazines were much more common, and soon Eclair also made those for the ACL. That created a problem. The motor on the camera was designed for 200-ft rolls of film, and sometimes would strain to pull the heavier 400-ft rolls, especially at the beginning of the roll. Sometimes this would result in a strobing effect: as the motor labored to get up to 24 frames per second, it would actually run at a slower speed for some frames, yielding longer exposure and brighter images. Then it would get up to speed, producing properly exposed frames. Sometimes it would oscillate between the two, producing the strobing effect. There are some scenes in the film where this is evident.

4 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p. 4 " Grape harvesting moved from south to north with the advancing warm weather. So the strike began in mid-april in Coachella, east of Los Angeles near Palm Springs and not far from the Mexican border. By mid-summer the strike had moved into the great San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, which occupy most of the middle of the state. By September the harvest was coming to a close, so the strike ended, and the UFW turned back to the boycott to continue the struggle. Post Production " As the strike ended I turned to editing the film. My memory is that I shot about 30,000 feet of film, about fifteen hours, a reasonable ratio for an hour film, but a mountain of material for someone with virtually no editing experience. I had finished two previous 16mm films while working in the Civil Rights Movement with the Southwest Georgia Project, but I was completely untrained as a film editor, and my understanding was primitive. Coming from still photography I envisioned each scene like a still photograph, complete from camera start to stop, to be strung together in some order, thematic or chronological. I had no sense of rhythm, pacing or structure. Inserting a cutaway was a new concept. " As I started work my equipment was equally primitive: a four gang synchronizer with a squawk box for audio and a small viewer. This was the kind of equipment I had used on my two previous films. The poor quality of the picture was surpassed only by the awful audio. Playing four gang synchronizer rewinds with viewer the film and sound was done by manually turning the rewinds. Attempting to approximate 24 frames per second was a challenge to dexterity which left little attention to watch the picture or monitor the sound. If you wanted to hear more than one audio track (narration? music?) things got really complicated. Keeping everything in sync was very cumbersome. It occurred to me Iʼd better start putting marks on the film and sound

5 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p. 5 so I could re-establish sync the next time I worked on a roll, a primitive version of edge numbering 4. " I soon realized Iʼd never be able to edit the film this way. Luckily I had been approached on a picket line during production by Frank Greer, who headed Public Interest Communications in San Francisco. He volunteered to connect me with his friend Robert Dalva, a seasoned film editor. 5 I gratefully accepted the offer, and my family (now four of us with the addition of Rebecca, born just before the strike started) accepted the gracious invitation of Frank and his partner Karen Ohmans to move into their home on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, and I went to work with Dalva. " Dalva was the head of the Commercial Division at American Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppolaʼs production company, then housed on Folsom Street in San Franciscoʼs warehouse district. At first he put me on an upright Moviola, a classic piece of film Upright Moviola!!! Four-Plate Steenbeck editing equipment ubiquitous since the thirties. A big step up from the four gang synchronizer, it was nonetheless a noisy, clattering machine, and certainly not state of the art. But soon Dalva promoted me to a four-plate Steenbeck, a Ferrari by comparison. I edited the film on that machine. " Without Dalvaʼs help Fighting For Our Lives probably never would have been finished - at least not by me. He taught me how to edit, explaining everything from structure to scene-to-scene cutting. Every filmmaker knows that editing is where a film 4 After the picture and sound are put in sync by the editor, the lab applies identical numbers to the edges of each, so as they are handled they can easily be kept in sync. The video equivalent is time code. 5 Dalva edited The Black Stallion, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, and directed the sequel, The Black Stallion Returns. He also edited Jurassic Park III, October Sky and Jumanji.

6 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p. 6 is created, and this is especially true for documentaries, where there is no script to guide the editor. Robert Dalva taught me to edit, and enabled me to make this film. Finishing the Film " When I started editing the film back in La Paz, in my naivete I had told Cesar the film would be complete in a matter of weeks. A week or two of winding the footage through the synchronizer disabused me of that idea. Even after hooking up with Dalva I continued to give Cesar optimistic projections - after all, I was now working on professional equipment. But months passed. I was working hard, but it was a big task, and I was engaged in on-the-job training as an editor. " Periodically I would return to La Paz with a dual system projector 6 to screen the film for Cesar and the unionʼs Board of Directors. Each screening left my audience unimpressed. The limitations of the equipment and my still-developing skills as an editor yielded cuts that were incomplete and unpolished. " Until the final cut. When I screened the final cut for Cesar and the unionʼs Board, as the lights came up Cesar approached me and, clearly moved, said You did it, brother. Of course that endorsement was very gratifying. But in retrospect I think it also reflected Cesarʼs protection of me during the editing process. Originally promised in weeks, the film had taken a year to edit. I imagine Cesar must have insulated me from other union leaders who were advising him to call off this misguided project, or take it out of my hands and give it to someone who knew what they were doing. For his support I will always be grateful. " Every great social movement has its music, and the filmʼs soundtrack is blessed with performances by Luis and Daniel Valdez and El Teatro Campesino. Luis also edited my script, and it is his voice that narrates the film. And what a gift to be able to end the film with the great voice of Joan Baez. " I sent the final cut of the film back to CFI where the camera original, kept safely vaulted during the editing process, was now matched to my edited work print. And I did the sound mix. The various sound elements - live dialogue, narration, music and sound effects - were split out into multiple reels for mixing down to one track. Thanks to Dalva, I had a state of the art facility to do that, Francis Ford Coppolaʼs sound studio at American Zoetrope, where I had edited the film. I was finishing my film around the time the sound mix for The Godfather Part II was being done by Walter Murch, a legend in 6 During editing the picture and sound are on separate reels - indeed, the four plates on the Steenbeck editing machine are arranged to handle one roll of picture (one feed and one take up plate) and one of sound. So to project the film you use a similar projector, with separate but synchronized picture and audio playback. Having only one audio reel means you are very limited, usually to just dialogue, with no narration, music or sound effects. I would try to compensate for this limitation by reading narration aloud from a written script as the film was projected. At best the process gives the audience a very crude approximation of what the finished film will be like.

7 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p. 7 film editing and sound design. I can still recall standing in the equipment room at the back of the mixing studio watching him work on scenes from that film. " Of course Murch did not mix Fighting For Our Lives. That was done by Todd Boekelheide, a young sound designer in the Zoetrope family, and his work was excellent 7. He mixed the film to a professional Hollywood format, a 35mm three-track magnetic master 8, rather than the more common 16mm one track format. Finding that 35mm master in the Wayne State Archives was critical to the full restoration of the film, because it was as well preserved as the images, and yielded an excellent digital transfer. Distribution " The film was used by the union to highlight its struggle for survival and generate support for the UFW boycott, which had been renewed in cities across the United States and Canada. Cesar used his influence in the Hollywood community to arrange a big fundraising screening. The film was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award in 1975 in the Feature Length Documentary category. The Man Who Skied Down Everest won the prize. Restoring the Film " In March of 2007 I received this from Ed Carter: I am writing to you about your film FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES. I am the Documentary Curator of the Academy of Motion Pictures, and one of my duties is acquiring the best possible film prints of Academy Award Nominated films for our permanent collection. We do have a print of FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES, but its condition is not so good -- the color is pretty faded, it has bad scratches, and there are many splices. Do you have, or know the whereabouts, of either the original negative or any printing elements? We would be interesting in having a new print made, to add to our collection. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing from you. 7 Boekelheide won an Academy Award in 1984 for his work on Amadeus. 8 In the technology of the day, by the time a film was ready to be finished the editor had compiled multiple rolls of audio: dialogue, sound effects, music, narration, etc. Because each of these various elements often overlapped (dialogue, music and narration running at the same time, for example), each of these elements usually had multiple reels. Thus for a simple documentary there could be eight or ten or twelve rolls of audio to be mixed down to one (only one, because 16mm film was monophonic). For feature films there were often dozens of sound rolls assembled for a mix. 16mm films were usually mixed down to a single 16mm master sound track. 35mm feature films were usually mixed down to a three stripe 35mm master track - a magnetic track 35mm wide with three separate sound tracks, usually dialogue, effects and music. Fighting For Our Lives was mixed to this more robust feature format, with separate music, narration and dialogue+effects tracks.

8 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p. 8 I wrote Carter back saying It is propitious that you should write at this time, because I have recently begun an effort to locate the original materials with the hope of preserving them. " Around the same time I began to get inquiries from other filmmakers interested in incorporating clips from my film into new films they were producing about Cesar or the farm worker movement. Some of them had located pieces of my film at Wayne State University, and were asking about securing the rights to use them. I referred them to the Cesar Chavez Foundation, established to preserve and protect the legacy of Cesar and the UFW. But these inquiries were a reminder that, while at the UFW, I was aware that the union was establishing an archive at Wayne State to preserve its historic records. " So I contacted Wayne State. Indeed, they said, they had a sizable collection of film materials from the UFW. When I started inquiring about specifics, (like the A and B rolls of camera original from which the final film was produced; or the magnetic track master audio mix), the silence from the other end of the phone reminded me that no one born after the film was made would have any idea what I was talking about. The technology had changed completely, migrating from film to video to digital, and my questions were like asking a newspaper reporter about how the Guttenberg Bible was made. It was clear I would have to go out there in person. " The UFW film was stored at the Walter Reuther Labor Archive at Wayne State University in Detroit. I made my first visit there on April 23, I was thrilled to find that the film materials had been kept in cold storage, necessary to prevent deterioration. The archive has a large cold room, whose temperature is maintained at about 50degrees. The UFW film materials were a small but significant part of the collection stored there. CFI storage can with my original film " The archive staff at Wayne State was as friendly and helpful as I could have hoped for. They had pulled a dozen or two cans from the vaults that they thought might be what I was searching for. Eastman Kodak sold its film in round cans, and filmmakers and labs often reused the same cans for storage. However, Consolidated Film Industries (CFI), the Hollywood lab where I had the film processed, used square cans to store their materials. So I was thrilled to find among those the archivists had pulled several CFI cans. " My excitement only grew when I opened them and examined the contents. The leaders on the rolls of film inside bore information indicating that these were indeed the

9 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p. 9 camera original A and B rolls. 9 And I was thrilled to find my personal notes to the CFI color timer, typed up in November of 1974, with instructions on how I wanted specific scenes timed. 10 I thought I had found what I came for. " Not only that, I also found in the Archive the 35mm 3-track magnetic master sound mix. " Mary Joann Wallace and Elizabeth Myers and the staff at the Reuther Center were beyond accommodating, they were gracious. After explaining that I wanted to restore my film to a modern, digital format, they were very cooperative about allowing me to remove the materials and take them to a lab for that purpose. " The lab I chose for that job was Colorlab in Rockville, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC. Susan and I had moved to that area in 1979, and in 1981 I started my own film production company, and from then on Colorlab was where I (and most of the other filmmakers in the Washington area) had lab work done. By 2013 analog film technology was dying, but Colorlab had done a good job of adapting, and was heavily devoted to the conversion of film materials into modern digital formats for restoration and preservation. One of their biggest clients was the United States Government, archivist of vast amounts of film from the preceding century. Russ Suniewick, president of Colorlab, had guided the lab through film and video and digital transitions for all its years, and I took Fighting For Our Lives directly to him. 11 " Russ and I spooled a few feet of the original film off the CFI rolls and we were both very pleased with what we saw. This looks like it was shot yesterday, he said. The exposure was good and the colors true, a testament to the excellent conditions for preservation at Wayne State. " The only disappointment was discovery that one element was missing. Because of its hour length the film had been divided in two, each half of which had an A and a B roll of picture. I had found three of the four rolls; one was missing. I was both mystified and worried, because I had examined all of the square CFI storage cans. " So I made a return trip to Wayne State. Going through the UFW archives again I noticed one of those round Eastman Kodak cans with an odd label. I opened it and 9 I was not able to view the images on the film itself. The archive did not have the equipment to permit that - not even rewinds and a viewing table (see p. 4 above). They did have an old Steenbeck editing table (see p. 5 above), but it was broken. Its condition was irrelevant, because I would not have risked damaging the original film by running it through an editing machine. 10 Film timing is the equivalent of todayʼs color grading in video, or manipulating color and contrast of stills or graphics in Photoshop or similar programs. However, the old film tools were more primitive, limited to changes in exposure, hue or saturation over the entire image through a series of color filters. 11 I was fearful that the AMPAS would want the film sent to Hollywood for restoration, but when I informed them of my wish to work with Colorlab they accepted immediately. Colorlabʼs work in restoration and preservation had given them a national reputation, even in Hollywood.

10 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p. 10 there was the missing roll of camera original film. I was lucky to find it. Not only had it been stored incorrectly (not in the the square CFI can), the label on the can gave no indication of its true contents. " I brought the final roll to Russ, who had his technicians do a digital transfer from all four camera original A and B rolls. I used these files to digitally restore the film. " I did the restoration work in Final Cut Pro Colorlab had done a one light transfer, so each scene needed color correction (or grading as it has come to be called). And each scene needed to be matched to those surrounding it - a sequence of shots at the same or similar location and time of day needs to look similar. This work took several months. " My guiding principal was to restore the film, not improve it. Todayʼs digital technology enables images to be manipulated in ways not possible at the time the film was made. I was determined to avoid that. A simple test: would a viewer find the experience of watching the restored version on a good HD monitor comparable to viewing a projected 16mm print? The upper right corner of this frame exhibits a fine example of emulsion buildup. " I decided to extend this restore, not improve principle even to obvious flaws. For example, you may recall (p. 3) my ignorance of the practice of cleaning the gate in the camera. The result can be scratches in the original film, or emulsion buildup as the film is pulled across the gate opening where it is exposed, and the edges of the gate scrape off some emulsion. At a few places the film exhibits each problem, especially significant emulsion debris in the corner of some images. This kind of problem could be fixed with todayʼs Photoshop techniques. I decided to leave these flaws in place, just as they appeared in the original film. " I made two small exceptions. On the picture side I inserted new titles digitally. I did this for several reasons. Firstly, while I had recovered the A and B rolls of camera original film, I had not found the title rolls ( C and D rolls from which the titles in the 16mm film are superimposed photographically on the images). As part of restoring the film to its original 16mm analog format for the AMPAS, Colorlab planned to rebuild the title rolls and produce a new internegative of the film, from which a new print would be made. Russ suggested that I do my digital restoration from that internegative. But I

11 Making and Restoring Fighting For Our Lives! p. 11 didnʼt want to wait for that lengthy process to be completed. Also I wanted to restore the film from the camera original and not a second generation internegative. And I knew digital titles would look cleaner and be more legible 12. Nonetheless I stuck to my restore, not improve principle in other important ways: I tried to approximate the original font and size, and I also kept the duration consistent - a significant concession, since I had long felt that many titles are displayed too briefly. Lastly, I added the people and organizations who had made the digital restoration possible to the filmʼs ending credits. " On the audio side, having three separate tracks enabled me to make two or three very small adjustments where I thought some dialogue was buried under music or effects, allowing me to boost the dialogue and lower the competing audio. Otherwise the soundtrack is as originally mixed. These violations of my restore, not improve principle were very minor, affecting no more than a few seconds of the sound mix, and do not reflect a criticism of Boekelheideʼs excellent work, for which I remain grateful. " When I authored the DVD and Blu-ray versions of the restored film I made another concession to modern technology: I added the option of screening segments of the film, or Chapters. I wanted the give viewers the option of reviewing parts of the film without having to search the disk manually, a worthwhile feature of DVD technology. - " Without otherwise comparing myself to the master, like Orson Welles I probably made my best film on my first attempt. While arguably not my first, since I had done two previous films in Georgia, Fighting For Our Lives was the first film I produced professionally, using industry standard equipment and techniques. Forty years later I feel it holds up well, both technically and cinematically. I hope you find the same to be true. " Of course the film would have no power without its subject and its story, people struggling for justice. The farm worker and civil rights movements are two of the great stories of twentieth century America. I am grateful to have been able to witness and record some of that history. Glen Pearcy Barnesville, Maryland February, In another small violation of the restore, not improve principle, I also added a subtle drop shadow to the titles for better legibility. This was especially important in scenes where the white titles appear over a bright background.