Documentary films had been produced well before Woodstock happened but in 1969, a new crop of filmmakers were just starting to come on the scene. In fact, there were a bunch of filmmakers fighting for the chance to document the festival. Michael Wadleigh, The Maysles Brothers, Thelma Shoonmaker and a young man by the name of Marty Scorsese were all up for the job. Ultimately, the promoters of the concert decided to go with the more unknown team of Wadleigh, Scorsese and Shoonmaker as opposed to going with the Maysles Brothers because Wadleigh and his crew were willing to work for free. Woodstock Ventures was out of money and told Wadleigh that they could not pay for the film two days before the concert started. Wadleigh, ever ambitious and starving anyway, had nothing to lose. They decided that the festival and the opportunity was too great to pass up so they went to the concert and fronted the costs themselves.

For three days, Wadleigh, Scorsese and their small crew shot the festival around the clock. They were there when Richie Havens was unexpectedly pushed on stage to start the show and they were there when Jimmy Hendrix hauntingly closed the festival with the Star Spangled Banner. Having unlimited access, they sat back and observed what was happening around them. Like good documentarians do, they let the camera, the music and the people be the instruments for the storytelling.

As the first day went on, it became very clear to the event organizers that the documentary was their ticket out of the 1.6 millions dollar hole they had put themselves in due to the loss of ticket sales . While Jefferson Airplane played, the four men of Woodstock Ventures stood on stage negotiating the film rights with Wadleigh and Ahmet Ertegun of Warner Brothers. They sold the film to Warner Brothers for a $1 million dollar flat fee with a small percentage of the back end. Wadleigh estimated later that the film cost about $100,000 to produce and to date, the film has grossed over $100 million dollars. It also went on to win the 1970 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, solidifying itself as one of the most successful documentaries of all time.

After Woodstock, the Maysles Brother’s, probably motivated by the fact they lost out on Woodstock, produced a string of successful films including, “Gimme Shelter.” The documentary chronicles The Rolling Stones “west coast answer” to Woodstock, Altamonte.  In “Grey Gardens” they introduced us to big Edie and Little Edie Beale and the film became a critical smash that was later made into a hit Broadway play as well as an EMMY nominated feature film for HBO in 2009. Lifelong collaborators, Scorsese and Shoonmaker met musicians Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm of The Band at the festival, and the filmmakers teamed up with The Band to film their last ever concert together. “The Last Waltz” was filmed in San Francisco in 1976 and the documentary is highly regarded as the best concert film of all time. As for Michael Wadleigh, taking a chance paid off. He saved Woodstock, won an Academy Award, motivated the Maysles Brothers to make more films and launched the careers of Martin Scorsese and Thelma Shoonmaker. The festival itself was something that can never happen again. For a moment in time, the last gasp of the sixties, people came together to promote peace, love and music. In the process and without manufacturing it, a new wave of film making was born. For that, we documentarians and total film geeks are eternally grateful.

Cynically, we attribute the move to cost cutting, but let’s remember that MTV basically invented a generation (mine) and has since been smartly attentive to the zeitgeist. This is the network that gave us “The Real World” 10 years before reality TV hit the mainstream, that gave us “Unplugged” and “Yo! MTV Raps” long before Grunge and Hip-Hop became dominant musical and cultural influences, and that, sure, gave us “Laguna Beach” and “My Super Sweet 16″ at least a little before the moment of materialism swept through youth culture.  So, when MTV Head of Programming Tony DiSanto claims that this was purely a creative decision, a response to a downtick in ratings, I’m inclined to listen. What’s interesting to me, and pertinent to what we do, is the rational behind the change.  DiSanto claims

“the slippage can be attributed to the generational shift of MTV viewers, with the channel’s brass focusing on the new teens and twentysomethings, “the millennials.”

DiSanto called them “the transparent generation” and said MTV’s development is being altered to appeal to them. “They don’t want to see a reality show that feels produced or is film-like,” he said. “It’s got to be real, authentic.”

He points to the recently premiered “16 and Pregnant” as an example of the type of unscripted fare that MTV is now after and touts it as one series that could fuel a turnaround.

We’ve long held Authenticity and Transparency as key tenets of Social Media strategy. It’s interesting that those ideals are beginning to now effect the strategies of broadcast media when targeting a generation that’s been growing up in Facebook – a generation that has, through just the sheer quantity of information it has easy access to, become somewhat resistant to manipulation.  Fifteen years ago, when the internet was first influencing my generation, there was alot of conversation about our “Digital Lives,” about what happens, what we choose to become when afforded the anonymity of online communication. A generation later, that idea has become basically irrelevant. When we engage with electronic media, with social media, and, yes, apparently with mass media we expect that what we see is what we get.