True Crime Series - USA TV style - With Archival Sleuthing and Quality Challenges
When you discover that archival producer, Laura Lucas , Big Picture Research, is the current president of the Visual Researchers’ Society in Canada, you probably realise she knows, as her info says, how to identify high quality, visually compelling images. She’s also a rights clearance officer, and still works with stills and music, as well as footage.
She worked for almost two decades for TVO (TVOntario), before going solo, now long term located in the scenic mountain town of Blue Mountains, Ontario. That background in television journalism, with its awareness of the urgency of news, has given her expert grounding in, as she accurately describes it: “the story telling business.”
She’s now been working for a few years on an extended project of a True Crime series for Oxygen Network, an American TV pay channel (owned by NBC). The production company is Our House Media. With titles to scare and intrigue like: Killer Affair, and Unexpected Killer, Laura describes them as docu-drama, which uses real archival footage and news, but differs from the average documentary.
Now working on the third series, Laura says:
“Each episode is a different story, so, each time it will be different government officials and courts, plus police, for your main archive sources. Some archives may be very small, a lot of times it can be a rural news station, sometimes just one person in them, and they don’t even have access to their materials. It’s a timely process to get archive for this series."
When it comes to getting permissions in the USA, where the crime series originates, it’s easier than it would be in Canada, as the States has different freedom of information access restrictions on what can be released from the courts. However, as each State in the USA has different regulations, it’s often challenging.
“The initial onset of starting that kind of research is to fill out the public records’ request, and each State operates a different set of rules. You could wait six weeks for an answer, or you may get a turnaround quickly, or they may want some funding to help them go back to their documents. In the worst case scenario they’ve been destroyed, as the Statute of Limitations as to how long material can be kept differs from State to State. There are even two States which simply don’t allow for freedom of information, as they’re not required to.
“I found all sorts of little tricks and had to learn a lot about the American policing system, using media monitoring while libraries had started to take on these collections, as well as finding where images are held is step 1. There’s also ‘fair use’ possibilities when you’re dealing with a factual production so clearances may not be necessary."
Lawyers are provided and Laura’s not involved with the early legwork of the story, with as many as 13-20 episodes there is a lot of pre-work before she comes on board. There are interviews and research, talking to families who have been involved in the frequently shocking real life crime dramas. She’s often in touch with the families later. With storylines which say things like: ’Pastor’s Behaviour Deepened Detectives’ Suspicions’, or - ‘Deadly Double Life Murder in the Suburbs’ - it must all be handled with sensitivity.
“I’m often in touch with families afterwards to confirm things, like family moments in the case of a photograph where I don’t have the context of what I’m looking at. Sometimes I’m back in touch to say ‘ tell me more about this photo’, and I may have the opportunity, where I can sense the camera crew are interviewing, when people bring things to the interview.
“ A lot of times, as the archival producer, I’m dealing with archives I did not , myself, procure. That happens a lot and I’m ok with that and then I find the director or camera crew on set to ask questions. As you can imagine, it’s a careful and tricky situation. Sometimes, you may want just one person to be the main contact, an officer, a prosecutor, or a family member of the victim, you need to be very careful, and that there is a rapport.”
Police co-operation varies from State to State, Laura found.
“As you can imagine, police have a job to do and it’s not necessarily to help me! It depends on the day you’ve caught them on. In one State, when we were trying to reach officers, they had been dealing with a massive storm, with tornadoes and snow. After five days they called back - and said they’d been busy!”
The quality of images may be a problem with true crime.
“Things are changing. The ’booking shot’ of those who had been arrested were traditionally shot on film, often a horrible image, then stuffed in a folder. These days shooting digital there’s better stuff. In the last decade a lot of evidence is from wall security camera videos, or just taken out of a picture frame.
“ For sure, lots of scenes where we need fillers, we’ve gone for generic stuff where we weren’t able to get film. Newspapers, small town local papers, can be really useful and local libraries. Libraries closed due to Covid is another problem.
“Once things are in edit I try to get delivery once a week and my job, at that stage, is editing cuts and making sure we know what’s in and can be cleared to keep it all on schedule in this time of Covid, I’m surprised it’s going so well, when last Spring no filming was allowed, until we got that worked out.”
True crime has definitely met its match in Laura Lucas…..
Archival Producer
Laura Lucas
Archival Producer and Rights Clearance Officer
Big Picture Research
e: laura@bigpictureresearch.com
t: 416-518-4945
Credits:
Killer Affair
Oxygen Network
w: Oxygen Network
Production company:
w: Our House Media
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