Hello everyone! This is my first blog post and I'm pretty excited to be
sharing my experiences as I go about producing our Arkansas history documentary. This project
has been in the works for several years but finally got rolling in early 2009.
The goal is to produce a piece on the history of the state that will inspire
people to explore deeper into the stories and people that built this state.
Luckily for the viewers and myself, Arkansas
has a lot of resources associated with its history. So far I've made use of the
encyclopedia of Arkansas (www.encyclopediaofarkansas.com),
the Historic Arkansas Museum,
the Arkansas Studies Institute, the Arkansas Archeological Survey, the
Department of Parks and Tourism and the Department of Arkansas Heritage. That's
not including all of the individuals who have helped me already in this
process. So if anyone is interested in learning about Arkansas, you have plenty of resources to
explore!
Wednesday we did our re-enactment of pre-contact Native Americans. Putting
this one together was a huge task since I needed to find a Native American
woman and costume her so that she appeared authentic to the time we were
attempting to recreate. My first break came when I found Sunnie Butcher-Keller
to be my re-enactor. I had contacted a number of people in my search and just
wasn't having any luck. I started to think I would have to find a Hispanic
woman to play the part, but then my office mate, Chuck Dovish mentioned Sunnie.
I spoke to Sunnie on the phone and she was game for it, but it wasn't until I
saw her in person that I realized how perfectly she fit the part. I can't
remember the exact break-down, but I think she if half Apache. The costume was
another hurdle to overcome. I thought I could find something in Arkansas through one of
the universities or theatre companies, but I was wrong. After dozens of phone
calls between myself and my intern, John Richter, we found nothing. Then I
started looking in Los Angeles.
I tried the costume departments at both Warner Bros. and Sony but neither of
them could help either. Finally we decided to make it ourselves. Luckily AETN
has a woman on staff, Sara Willis, who is a skilled seamstress. In addition to
her remarkable work in the Development department, Sara recently made costumes
for an opera based on The Scarlet Letter that was staged at Reynolds
Performance Hall. She knows her stuff! And she made me an amazing costume. Kathryn
Harrington who just moved to Arkansas
and is a professional make-up and face painting artist did the tattoos and the
red stripe in Sunnie’s hair. Kathryn was great and you can check out her face
painting skills at www.livingworksofart.com.
So Wednesday was a big day. It was hot and we had a lot to do in a brief
amount of time, but it turned out great! I would love to show you some stills,
but I want you to be a little surprised when the documentary comes out, so I’ll
just include some behind the scenes stills shot by Rowena Parr who also works
in the Production department here at AETN.
Tags: History; Arkansas; documentary; Wilcken
Viewer Comments
Beautiful pics, thanks for sharing!
Comment made by Julie on 07 Jul 2009
Sunnie was my best friend in elementary school. We grew up together, it is so nice to see a picture of her after all of these years. I have been looking for her for a long time.
Comment made by Monica England on 08 Dec 2009
