Hi, it's Meli Pennington, the Widow Bothwell, raising funds to get Brian Bothwell's music video catalog converted into proper digital archive. Most of the tapes for his band Manufacture are spoken for, but I need help securing his videos for other bands.

Brian directed and edited music videos, advertisements, and extreme sports movies, mostly during the 1980's and 1990's. Those were exciting years for creativity in the independent video space. And Brian took as many creative risks as the budgets (low) and insurance (high) would allow. Some of his videos, like "Many Machines" for his band Manufacture, were lauded on MTV's 120 Minutes as Cutting Edge Videos.

Here is a (non-complete) list of videos Brian directed/edited that I am looking to archive:

Manufacture "As the End Draws Near" "Armed Forces" "Many Machines" "The Drumbeat of Propaganda"

Moev "Yeah Whatever"

MC 900 Foot Jesus "The Killer Inside Me"

Consolidated "Unity of Oppression"

POWER "Power to the People"

The Drop Nineteens "My Aquarium"

Velvet Crush "Window to my World"

Gontiti "Windy Land"

O-Positive "Save Me" , "Imagine That"

The Neighborhoods "Hangin" (Codirected)

Cliffs of Dooneen "Holy Man"

Blue Print "Hot Block"

Ric Ocasek "What's on TV" "Hard Times" "Help Me Find America" (co-produced, edited, Unreleased)

Ric Ocasek Time Bomb" (Live performance unreleased)

The Cars "Looking for Love" (edited, unreleased)

Ric Ocasek "This Side of Paradise" (edited, unreleased)

Til Tuesday "No More Crying" (edited, demo, unreleased)

Dogs of Winter Series (5 extreme snow movies, edited, sports movie history)

This is a much more involved and technical process than dropping off videos at a chain store. Most of the tapes are 3/4" or 1" broadcast tapes, which have been in storage. They will need to be examined, possibly treated or cleaned, and transferred with no loss at the highest resolution possible. From there they can be upscaled to broadcast or even 4K, though that is an additional service. I will also have "clean" mp4's made for digital sharing. This can run up to several hundred dollars per tape, depending on condition.

While money is an obvious part of this, there are two other important aspects. One is reaching the artists in the videos. Many of these videos are for indie bands, some of whom may not even have their own playable copy of the video.

Another aspect is the preservation of music and video history. Video is a fragile medium, much more temporary than anyone expected (I know Brian was mostly excited to do new things, and didn't have much time to worry about preservation). But if these videos disappear, they are gone forever.

There's a lot of history in these videos: music history, video history, even Boston history. I encourage everyone who gives to this to share which of these bands are their favorites and to share this link with their friends - especially those friends who might have a friend who was in one of these bands.