Memory House provides vintage film clips to American Motors documentary on PBS

The secret sauce to any documentary is vintage visuals.

When producer Joe Ligo started to make his ambitious documentary about American Motors (1954-1987), he had a lot of video covering the years 1976-1984. But he was missing a LOT of material from the first two decades of AMC's corporate life.

So he called me. I'm Todd Ruel, the owner and a partner here at Memory House. I've been collecting films by and about American Motors since 1998 when I bought a small collection from longtime Nash/AMC employee and historian John Conde.

It took a long time and more than a few coins to come up with those rare shots of Nash president George Mason.

I also had to be in the right place at the right time when some 16mm AMC negatives became available on eBay. (As it turned out, the film companies that had stored these films and film elements for decades had decided to go out of business. Since they couldn't track down many of their original clients, they simply sold the films on eBay.)

Some treasures collected from over the years

As Joe mentioned in his article on The Autopian web site from June 2, 2025, many of my films suffer from dye fade or vinegar syndrome. So we digitize the films using the same equipment at Memory House that we use for our normal customers: a Filmfabriek HDS+ and a Lasergraphics Archivist. Both of these machines are top-notch gear.

Then, my partner Gary Templeton uses a highly-specialized piece of software called the Diamant Film Restoration Suite to reduce dust and vertical lines. After that, he takes the digital files into another piece of software called Davinci Resolve to do color correction.

All of this work is often very laborious and time consuming. I often have to decide what the original color of the car was in the film, because the color has faded badly. Blue skies are often a dull gray or green. Dirt is pink, and everything else is red.

We often have to go through these films frame by frame to clean them up and restore and make them vibrant again. Gary and I don't restore old cars. We restore old car films.

AMC films from the 1970s

It was fun for me to watch the episodes that Joe and his team produced, and say, "That's my clip. That's another one from the 1973 AMC Dealer Introduction film. And yep, that's mine, too."

If you're an AMC fan like Joe and me, check out his documentary now airing on PBS. It's also streaming on YouTube and pbs.org.