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(60s rock music)

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In the warm summer days of August, 1969,

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the defining moment of

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the American counter culture was taking shape,

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a celebration, festival, concert event,

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that became known around the world simply as Woodstock.

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(60's rock music)

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What began as a small music festival,

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originally planned for an audience of about 20,000,

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snowballed into a major production,

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involving 32 of the biggest names in rock and roll

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playing to a crowd of nearly half a million people.

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It came at a time when America

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was desperately in need of hope, change, and peace.

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Couldn't we release the bonds

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that were constricting our society

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at the end of the Vietnam War,

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the freedom for women, the freedom for Civil Rights.

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It was promoted as

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three days of peace and love.

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It was camaraderie, it was communitarianism.

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Our own festival of rock and roll music.

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A team of friends came together,

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including Dale Bell.

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They had an idea.

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They would film it as an innovative documentary.

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45 people to 15 cameras, there's 50 magazines,

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flat bed editing table.

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The new idea they had

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gave the film its iconic look.

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It's brand new technologies,

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but it was the boldness of being able to say, why not.

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The rest is rock and roll history.

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(60's rock music)

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My name is John Wesley Chisholm.

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I'm a producer who just finished a film

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about the iconic Woodstock Light Bus.

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During filming, I was lucky enough

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to meet up with Dale Bell,

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one of the producers on the movie,

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and an unsung hero behind the original Woodstock film.

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He was happy to sit down and talk about his memories

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of that amazing summer festival.

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Thanks so much for meeting with us.

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You're welcome, thanks for finding me.

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When people say they remember Woodstock,

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what I think most of them mean

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is they remember seeing the Woodstock movie.

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It was a huge hit, and it ensured

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the festival's lasting legacy.

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It captured the '60s generation of social change

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in a single moment, but also in a new way.

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But astonishingly, Dale Bell and his team

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only had about a week to plan the film.

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Where did you hear

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that there would be this thing called Woodstock,

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and how did this idea, you know what,

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we should go make a film of this, how did that happen?

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Dale and his friends were creatively inspired

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by Aretha Franklin's new single, Respect,

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and her stage performance,

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which featured three separate images

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projected behind her at the same time.

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You got three projectors

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showing R.E.S.P.E.C.T. on a white wall,

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blown away, totally blown away.

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They thought, how cool would it be

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if we could put multiple images

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on the screen at the same time in a movie?

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That is where the vision for a concert capturing event

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with multiple images came from but

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there was a team of people who

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were working in public television,

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not necessarily only in public television,

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who had been in Civil Rights' trenches,

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in the Vietnam War, in the Women's Rights Movement,

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and they were all hustling around New York.

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That's where the idea started to take shape,

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documentary filmmakers covering a three-day music festival,

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an uncommon approach, but one that could help produce

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a more unique film, and a gold mine if it worked.

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They looked at me and they said,

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but it's a week away.

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With the pressure mounting,

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Dale needed to act fast if he and his team

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were going to pull off the film of a lifetime.

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What are we gonna do, and I said,

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I will put together as many people as we can.

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There was no group gathering until I had 40 people up there.

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And planning the logistics is where

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Dale's contribution and quick thinking came into play.

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They were still building the stage, and I said,

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let's have something where you could,

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if you were a cameraman, you could put your

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elbow on the stage and be like this,

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and he said, what do you want,

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and I said, maybe a four by eight plywood

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the entire length of the front of the stage,

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and then plywood underneath,

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so that the assistants can work.

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With the crew and cameras in place,

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focus turned to another crucial component,

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all of the film stock it would take

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to document around the clock three day festival.

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We had $13,000 in the bank.

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I said, that's enough to buy raw stock,

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several hundred boxes of raw stock,

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each box containing 30 rolls,

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and each roll containing 11 minutes of cinematography time.

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Tuesday, I place the order, and lo and behold,

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they had one-tenth, one-twentieth of what we needed.

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Without stumbling, Dale and his team

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sourced the remaining stock, and in the nick of time.

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The helicopters that are coming in

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are carrying superstars and musicians, and medical supplies,

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and they're also carrying huge boxes of our raw stock

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as I pull it in from Los Angeles, from Chicago,

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from Buffalo, from Rochester, from Washington, from Atlanta.

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That was the most difficult problem.

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It was a series of smart choices,

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ingenuity, and maybe even some minor miracles

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that helped bring the team's vision to life.

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Our film was revolutionary.

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Not only was it revolutionary, I think, in terms of content,

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but it was revolutionary in the way we filmed it.

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It was not music alone.

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Remember, there were 300, 400, 450, 483,000 people up there,

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and I was one who said, to hell with the music,

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it will record itself.

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This is an anthropological musical pilgrimage experience,

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so let's get as much anthropology

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into the film as we possibly can,

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but the documentary team,

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as far as I was concerned, was more important.

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Go out and try to find these kinds of stories

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that we could weave into the music,

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so that the whole

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film itself would be a mixture of both music,

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which was part protest, and people,

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which was mostly anthropology,

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and see if we couldn't glom all of this together

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at some later point in the editing room.

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What Dale and his team captured at Woodstock

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was a glimpse into society's raw emotions in the moment,

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a microcosm of blending cultures,

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stories of humanity, and the yearning

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for the quelling of restlessness at home and abroad.

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You and your team, out of all the people that were there,

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are the few people who were there

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to pay attention to what was happening,

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rather than just experience it.

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What do you think, and were the most

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interesting moments?

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There were over 400,000 stories

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floating in the sea of faces at Woodstock.

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Dale, along with his friend and cinematographer,

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David Miles, came across one of

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the most powerful stories and lasting moments

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from the original Woodstock film.

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I gestured to the Port-O-San man.

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His name is Tom Taggart, and he actually

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put his hose into the latrines and picked it up,

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and I said, this might be an iconic little moment.

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He says, I'm happy to be doing this

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up here for these kids.

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I have a kid here right now,

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and one of my other sons is flying in Vietnam,

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and that

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coming together

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of our protest, our music, our lyrics, our words,

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I could hear it, hear it, in what he was saying,

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that was the epitome, to me, of what our film was about.

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His children have died, one of them died in Vietnam,

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okay?
Yeah.

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Okay, so I had an experience.

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It's as though the heavens spoke when we were there.

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We had rain, we had lightning, we were scared.

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On stage, the towers were blowing like this.

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There was a convergence of circumstances

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that no one ever could have predicted.

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Are we proud of having been involved in this silly movie?

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The answer is, of course, of course.

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It may change lives, it may change the course of

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how we regard our earth, how we respect our earth.

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(60s rock music)