The Archive Room

Dominic Walker, Global Business Director at BBC Studios, joins The Archive Room to explain how one of the world's largest broadcast archives is run as a business. We cover archive footage licensing through BBC Motion Gallery and its fifteen year partnership with Getty Images, live events built from BBC IP including Planet Earth concert tours and Bluey's World at Disney, and BBC Radio and Music, sp...

What does it actually take to restore a Hollywood classic? In this episode Dominic Dare and Sandra Coelho sit down with Charlotte Barker, Senior Director of Film Restoration and Preservation at Paramount Pictures, where she has worked since 2005 and led the restoration team since 2019. Charlotte oversees one of the most significant film libraries in cinema history, spanning over 114 years of filmm...

Generative AI is producing 34 million synthetic images every day. For archives, documentary producers, and footage researchers, that changes everything about what can be trusted, what can be licensed, and what history will look like on screen. In this episode of The Archive Room, we sit down with Rachel Antell, Co-Founder of the Archival Producers Alliance (APA), and Laura Rooney, Executive Direct...

Matthew Frank has spent over 30 years at the top of television rights and distribution. He built RDF Rights from the ground up, ran Zodiak Rights as CEO generating revenues exceeding $80 million across 200 broadcasters worldwide, and now runs Rocket Rights and Rights Booster, helping content owners exploit their libraries across VOD platforms, FAST channels, and YouTube. In this conversation Matth...

What does archival research really look like on some of the most powerful documentaries of the last decade? Rosemary Rotondi is a New York based archival producer and researcher with over 30 years of experience. Her credits include Attica (Oscar nominated), John & Yoko: One to One (Apple TV+), and American Murder: Gabby Petito (Netflix, 90 million views worldwide). In this episode she takes us...

Fremantle makes Got Talent, X Factor, The Price Is Right and Baywatch. But behind those formats sits one of the most extraordinary broadcast archives ever assembled, stretching back over 100 years and spanning drama, documentaries, news and entertainment across every continent. Gordon Craig has spent nearly two decades at Fremantle overseeing archive licensing, home entertainment and in-flight sal...

Tom Jennings is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of 1895 Films and one of the most decorated documentary filmmakers working today. A Peabody and Emmy Award winner, Tom has written, produced and directed more than 500 hours of programming and pioneered a format that now spans 42 films: no narrator, no modern interviews, pure archive from start to finish. His work includes Diana: In Her Own Wo...

What does it take to build one of the world's great music archives from scratch? David Peck, founder and president of Reelin' In The Years Productions, has spent over three decades tracking down, preserving and licensing performance footage and interview material spanning more than a century of cultural history. In this episode, he takes us through the discovery of previously unknown Doors footage...

Andrea Kalas is one of the leading figures in global film and media preservation. She currently serves as Vice President of Media and Archival Services at Iron Mountain, where she leads large-scale preservation, digitisation, and access projects for studios, museums, and cultural institutions worldwide. Her career spans UCLA Film and Television Archive, the British Film Institute, Discovery Commun...

What does it take to run one of Europe’s biggest movie archives? In this episode, Dominic and Sandra welcome Massimo Moretti, the longtime archive commercial lead at STUDIOCANAL UK, home to over 6,000 titles — from the beloved Paddington films to historic gems like The Ladykillers and Conquest of Everest. Massimo shares fascinating stories from his two decades in the industry, including the legacy...

In this episode of The Archive Room, we sit down with the extraordinary Elizabeth Klinck — one of the most respected archive producers and researchers working today. With decades of experience on award-winning documentaries (Apollo 11, Stories We Tell, The Rescue, Zappa), Elizabeth shares how she blends detective work, historical instinct, and deep industry knowledge to uncover footage gold — from...

In this episode of The Archive Room, Dominic Dare and Sandra Coelho are joined by Berlin-based archive producer and researcher Mona El-Bira, whose work sits at the intersection of history, ethics, and archive-driven storytelling. Mona takes us deep inside two of the most ambitious documentary projects of recent years. First, Riefenstahl (2024), a feature documentary built entirely from archival ma...

In The Archive Room Ep 4, we’re joined by Andy Gavaghan, Head of Archive & Content Library at ITV, to explore what it takes to manage one of the UK’s most significant media collections. From mislabelled film cans to 1.2 million tapes and 800 Rank films, Andy walks us through the technical, editorial, and commercial challenges of preserving British television history — including how ITV is digi...

Jo Griffin, Director of Digital and Restoration at Restore Studios (now part of UV&S), joins us in The Archive Room for a deep dive into the fascinating world of film and tape restoration. From scanning reels in a Kansas salt mine to reviving The Singing Detective in 4K, Jo shares behind-the-scenes insights into workflows, weird finds (yes, including a vintage condom in a can), and the ethical...

🎙️ The Archive Room — Jodi Tripi: From Clearance to Creative Powerhouse Stories behind the footage. In this episode of The Archive Room, we sit down with Jodi Tripi, a top-tier archive producer whose career spans blockbusters (Catch Me If You Can, Elvis, The Eyes of Tammy Faye), biopics, and franchise films. Jodi shares the real work behind the reels — from wrangling footage rights and navigating...

In our very first episode of The Archive Room, we sit down with award-winning archive producer Stephen Slater (Apollo 11, Moonage Daydream) to explore how he brought real NASA mission footage and audio to life on screen. Stephen shares: How he sourced rare NASA footage and synced it with mission audio The thrill of uncovering new moments from the Apollo archive Why authenticity matters in recreati...