Right now, I am struggling to find the words. I wish I knew what to say.
A lot of you are scared. You have every right to be. A lot of you are angry. You have every right to be. A lot of you are disappointed. You have every right to be.
The best I can offer right now is to let yourselves be sad, scared, angry, disappointed. Let yourself feel what you are feeling. Your feelings are very valid and important.
In the next few weeks, years, months, be together. Be kind to one another, who need the kindness. You do not owe kindness and understanding and tolerance to those who think you less than human. Do not allow others to trample you, but your safety always comes first. Boost each other up when you can. Take a break when you have to. Do what you can, and don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t turn out to be enough.
I am so proud of each and every one of you for the hard work and resilience you have shown. I will do what I can to make things better for you. I am always here for you, if you ever need to express your frustration, sadness, or you need a boost.
I wish I could make it better, darling. I love you and you deserve so much better than this.
“β¦compassion and companionship are the enemies of depression, the best ways to fight it. Compassion for myself because I know Iβm struggling. Companionship because I canβt fight it alone.”
Have you ever been watching a movie, television show, documentary, or the evening news and wondered where that great looking footage or photograph came from? Did they shoot it and make it look old?
Oftentimes, this footage or photograph comes from an archive. It is not uncommon for an archivist to work hand in hand with a producer to search for the right bit of footage to move a story forward. Here at the Archives Service Center, Miriam Meislik, the media curator, helps facilitate this type of research by combing through inventories, index card files, and actual video, film footage, or photography to locate the material that is needed. Local documentarian extraordinaire Rick Sebak, local producers such as Ken Love and Billy Jackson, sports media outlets at NFL Films and the Pittsburgh Penguins, and national production companies such as Little Moving Pictures are just some of the folks that we’ve provided footage for. We’ve even supplied footage and other photographic items to serve as set dressing for films like Denzel Washington’s production of August Wilson’s “Fences,” and shows like “Hemlock Grove”and the forthcoming series, “MindHunter,” both for Netflix.
When a producer contacts the archives, the initial search can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.Sometimes it takes hours of reviewing film to locate the significant clips as it did with the Robert Morris University-produced film “What Does Trouble Mean?” It took over 20 hours of footage review looking for activist Nate Smith to utter the words that would become the title. We knew he said them- but where were they? We finally found the clip on the last reel at 4:30 in the afternoon on a Friday- figures! You can see the result of this search in the film’s trailer. All of the historical footage came from the KDKA-TV Eyewitness News collection.
The ASC archives were also an instrumental part of the award-winning Steeltown Entertainment film, “Polio: The Shot Felt ‘Round the World,” as seen in this trailer featuring some of our photographs.
Finally, just because we are looking at film or video doesn’t
mean that what we are interested in is visual. We have worked with NPR,
American Public Media, and other independent radio producers to select audio
clips from film and video.
