American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 74

Peter von
Puttkamer,
director and cocinematographer
of Lost in the
Amazon: The
Enigma of Col.
Percy Fawcett,
captures a shot
of dancing Bakari
Indians with a
Panasonic AJHDX900 camera,
which recorded
to DVCPro media.
Todd Southgate
served as the
production's lead
cinematographer.

I

Preserving the Filmmaker's Legacy
By Peter von Puttkamer

For more than 35 years I've worked as a documentary
producer-director, creating programs both independently and with
such U.S. and global networks as Discovery Channel, Animal Planet,
PBS, BBC, ITV, History Channel, National Geographic and more. In
collaboration with my wife, Sheera, at our company, Gryphon
Productions, I've had the privilege of creating episodic series and
standalone documentaries on a variety of subjects, from descending
into ancient caves used for human sacrifice, to filming and then
eating giant 12" tarantulas with Venezuelan blow-gun hunters, to
recording soul-music classics with legendary singers, to medical intervention for silverback mountain gorillas - and even hunting for
Sasquatch, in the 1990s and again with our current docu-reality
series for Discovery Communications' Destination America, Killing
Bigfoot, which began airing in February. And what's been nearly as
staggering as our range of subject matter is the number of mediaformat changes I've had to contend with over the years - 16mm
film, Sony 3⁄4" U-Matic, Betacam, Betacam SP, 1" analog, digital
Betacam, HDCam, DVCam, HDV, Panasonic DVC-Pro - the result of
which has been a wealth of vintage projects lying dormant, their
potential stunted by the relentless progression of technology.
As producers look to a future beyond television production to
a world of streaming and digital services, many of us are returning to
our productions of yesteryear, to resurrect from old formats the best74

March 2017

quality images and sound we can - and the good news is there are
amazing up-conversion opportunities to bring new life to older
productions. Balancing the best-available image quality with the
most cost-effective solution is a constant challenge, of course, and
though there are limitations to digital restoration - with formats
like 16mm film and 16x9 standard-def digital Betacam up-converting much better to HD than, say, a 4:3 SD Betacam - there are still
many options available. And in some cases of Web-based distribution, especially on personal online channels, image requirements
may be less important than the content itself.
I'll begin my restoration/archiving odyssey with a tale of a film
I produced and directed between 1989 and '91 called The Spirit of
the Mask, featuring author/anthropologist Wade Davis, who wrote
The Serpent and the Rainbow, which was the basis for the Wes
Craven zombie movie of the same name. I'm currently sitting on
about 50,000' of 16mm negative containing some of the rarest, and
never-before-filmed, Native American ceremonies, including unique
Pacific Northwest mask dances. It was produced with the participation of leading hereditary chiefs of the Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwaka'wakw nations. Many of these high-ranking individuals are
now gone, and preservation experts have suggested we archive and
preserve this material for future generations. My two goals are now
to restore the original standard-definition 51-minute television documentary for continued digital distribution, and to transfer to 2K digital files - at minimum - the many hours of native "potlatch" ceremonies.

American Cinematographer

Lost in the Amazon: The Enigma of Col. Percy Fawcett photo by Andy Dittrich. All images courtesy of Gryphon Productions.

Filmmakers' Forum



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 2017

Contents
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - Cover1
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American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 1
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American Cinematographer - March 2017 - Contents
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American Cinematographer - March 2017 - B
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American Cinematographer - March 2017 - I1
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - I2
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