Documentary Archive Research: Finding Footage for McCartney and Elton John

Dominic Dare and Sandra Coelho sit down with Kate and Mike Griffiths of Clearance Matters, the husband and wife team behind the archive research on documentaries including Broken English with Marianne Faithfull, Paul McCartney's The Hunt for the Lost Bass, a Culture Club documentary, and Elton John's Never Too Late. Kate and Mike talk through how they trace missing footage, build trust with private collectors and contributors, and pull together photographs, audio, and film from archives around the world to help shape a film's story from the earliest stages of production. They share stories of tracking down long lost footage of The Clash, David Bowie, and Elton John, and discuss the challenges of clearing music, working across UK and US productions, and why credits for archive contributors matter so much in their work. The episode closes with a Quickfire round covering some of the biggest myths in archive research.