There’s a lot that drives this project: A passion for an amazing story, a sense of nostalgia, and the desire to deliver a complete, compelling feature-length documentary.
But there’s also the literal drives. Hard drives are the modern equivalent of film canisters – but more fragile. That’s why for this project, there’s four sets of drives: The online drives that are always connected to the editing computer, two backup sets that are stored in different parts of the house, and a third backup set that is kept off-site. (In fact, the above photo is a partial composite – it is never the case that all the drives are in the same place at the same time.)
While one may think of documentaries as being inherently lower-budget than a scripted, narrative feature – one thing that is often overlooked is that the amount of footage produced can be way, way higher, because interviews can go on for hours, while most scripted scenes are only a couple of minutes in length. Even if you record sixty takes of a one minute scene, that’s only 1/6th the amount of data as a 3hr, 2-camera interview!
Thus far, the film has utilized eight backup sets of three drives, each 5TB in size, as well as three 16TB editing drives (two of which are now full). That’s over 160TB of data!
This post isn’t just meant to impress, it’s also a call for assistance: Over half of these drives have been contributed by backers of the project, while the rest have been directly purchased. And, as we enter set #9 ahead of the Denver trip (the lone drive on the right will be going to Denver to serve as one backup set, while camera SSDs and memory cards will be mailed home), two more 5TB drives will be needed to complete Set #9. The final phase of principal photography comes this summer, with a California/Arizona trip, which will consume three more drives.
But unsettlingly, the first four backup drives, made by Western Digital, share a common flaw – their connectors become increasingly unreliable and eventually come loose from the circuit boards inside. The actual data on the drives is still intact, but cannot be reliably accessed. Eventually, those drives will need to be replaced. Subsequent drives have been made by Seagate, and have thus far held up fine. (The Western Digitals are out of warranty, and I wouldn’t want to replace them with the same flawed design anyway.)
That means, in the coming weeks, we’ll need nine new 5TB drives, which adds up to over $1,150. If you’d like to help, you can make a direct contribution – or you can purchase drives for the production directly from our Amazon wish list. We don’t need all nine right away, but two are needed immediately, as the Denver trip is May 3-13.
Thanks to all of you for your backing for the past 16 months. As we enter the home stretch of principal photography, your continued help is very much needed and appreciated.
You can help support the project by purchasing from the Crowdfunding Shop.
