DAte: 2006 - 2008
Client: Netflix
Agency: Peter Bogdanovich
Role: Personal Assistant
Project: Resurrecting a Legend — Orson Welles's "The Other Side of the Wind"
Situation: For over four decades, Orson Welles's final, unfinished film, "The Other Side of the Wind," was a cinematic legend—a holy grail for film lovers, locked away in a Parisian vault and tangled in legal battles. When Netflix greenlit the monumental task of completing it, they turned to one of the few people who could do it justice: legendary director Peter Bogdanovich, a close friend of Welles and one of the original actors in the film. The raw material wasn't a set of digital files; it was a treasure trove of decades-old, physically deteriorating 35mm and 16mm film negative.
Task: As the personal assistant to Peter Bogdanovich, my role on this project expanded far beyond typical support. I was tasked with a critical, hands-on mission of film archaeology and restoration. My primary objective was to help salvage the very fabric of this lost masterpiece, retrieving and physically preparing the footage so that the monumental task of editing could even begin.
Action: I became a frontline soldier in the film's restoration, bridging the gap between its chaotic physical past and its digital future.
Film Salvage and Restoration: I was tasked with retrieving bins filled with tangled, brittle 35mm and 16mm film. I painstakingly untangled thousands of feet of this precious negative by hand, carefully re-splicing broken segments with editing tape in a delicate process of physical reconstruction.
Digitization and Dailies: Working hand-in-hand with the lead editor, I assisted in the crucial process of digitizing the salvaged footage, finally bringing Welles's images into the modern post-production pipeline.
A Masterclass in Interpretation: My role extended into the edit bay, where I had the extraordinary privilege of reviewing dailies with Peter Bogdanovich and legendary executive producer Frank Marshall. Watching them decipher decades-old, handwritten script notes and letters from Orson Welles and John Huston—piecing together a genius's final vision from the clues he left behind—was a masterclass in filmmaking and storytelling unlike any other.
Result: My hands-on work was instrumental in the successful salvage and digitization of the film, directly enabling the post-production process to commence. The ultimate result was the completion and global release of "The Other Side of the Wind" on Netflix, a monumental event in cinema history that brought a lost masterpiece to a new generation. For me, the experience was an unparalleled education, not just in filmmaking, but in film history—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to physically touch the work of a master and help bring his final story to the screen.
