‘Finders Keepers’: Graduate Student’s Documentary to Air on AETN

Photo Submitted

Early diamond mining operation — from Finders Keepers

Editor's note: The video above shows the beginning of Brian Petty's documentary film. To see all of it, watch AETN.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – It’s not unusual for a University of Arkansas journalism graduate student to produce a documentary film. It is unusual for a student’s film to be broadcast on AETN, the Arkansas Education Television Network. That unusual event will happen twice: first at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 20, and then again at the same time on Thursday, Nov. 26, Thanksgiving Day.

The film is Finders Keepers: the Arkansas Diamond Legacy, a documentary history of the state’s Crater of Diamonds near Murfreesboro, from the first diamond discovery to the modern day state park. The film was written, shot, edited and directed by Brian Petty as the thesis for his master’s degree in journalism. It is narrated by former Sen. David Pryor.

Petty worked on the film, on and off, for five and a half years, but in a very real way it is a culmination of his personal, academic and professional experience.

“My brother and I were raised in El Dorado, and went on a Cub Scout trip to the state park in Murfreesboro when it first opened,” said Petty. “Our group got a rare chance to meet the geologist Howard Millar, one of the main characters involved in the first early diamond mining operations. We got to see all of Millar’s fascinating crystals and minerals in his private shop and that was the beginning spark of my interest in geology.”

A diamond found at Crater of Diamonds State Park -- from Finders Keepers.

Petty got the academic background he needed to explain Pike County’s volcanic “pipe” in his film when he earned a degree in geology at the University of Arkansas. He then went from rocks to rock music, spending more than a decade playing bass guitar in a variety of Fayetteville bands. That might sound like a detour, but when Petty wanted to prepare a soundtrack for his film, it turned out a sound man he’d worked with, John Willett, had connections at the Jimmy Driftwood Barnhouse in Mountain View. Willett rounded up the musicians, recorded an evening of live bluegrass performances at the Barn and captured the authentic sound of turn of the century Arkansas for the film. Petty also used songs recorded by a few of his old bands in the film’s modern-day sequences.

Petty started to learn the basics of filmmaking while still a working musician. He took a part-time job as a news photographer at local television station KFSM and then moved to a full-time position in the media services department at the School of Continuing Education and Academic Outreach, now the Global Campus.

That second job enabled him to return to school and work toward his master’s degree. While taking professor Larry Foley’s documentary film class, Petty got the idea of making a documentary about the Crater of Diamonds State Park. But then he got sidetracked by a project he helped develop at media services.

“Going through our archives at media services I found a stack of tapes with the name ‘Silas Hunt’ on them. I didn’t know who he was, but the more I learned as I transcribed the tapes and researched the story the more I realized how important this material was,” said Petty. “I thought of making Hunt the subject of my thesis, but as I told my colleagues in media services what I was finding, they got very interested in doing a much bigger project.”

Donnie Dutton, then dean of continuing education, threw the resources of his school and media services into making Silas Hunt: a Documentary, and Petty spent the next two years working as an integral part of the team researching, interviewing and producing the film.

“The experience working on Silas Hunt translated into the quality of making Finders Keepers,” said Petty.

Early Arkansas diamond mining operation - from Finders Keepers.

Soon after he began serious research on his senior project Petty met historian Dean Banks, who had already spent years digging into the historical records in the Pike County Courthouse. Petty credits Banks with helping him understand the complicated story that began in 1906, when a farmer found two diamonds on his property; continued through a series of failed mining enterprises; and ended in the creation of one of the most unique, and uniquely popular, state parks in the country. Arkansas State Parks director Gregg Butts approved the project and gave Petty access to the park’s archival photographs. The story Petty tells is filled with colorful Arkansas characters, brought to life through the archival pictures and quotes from their own writings and reminiscences. He also draws on interviews he conducted with historians, geologists, park rangers and people who visit and enjoy the park today.

Still, Petty’s greatest coup may have been the narrator who tells this story: David Pryor. Again, the filmmaker’s past paid off. A former co-worker at media services, Scott Lunsford, is now associate director of the Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. Lunsford showed the senator Petty’s script, Pryor was impressed and agreed to narrate the film. The Pryor Center recorded the narration in a day when the senator was on campus for Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations.

Petty estimates that he spent about $700 out of his own pocket to make Finders Keepers, and acknowledges that the help of his friends, and the services provided by the Pryor Center, were essentially priceless.

After all the time and effort that went in to making the film, Petty said the hardest part was the final edit.

“My first version was 49 minutes long. Mr. Foley said it needed to be cut down to 26 minutes, 46 seconds – the time of an AETN program. The final editing was a gut-wrenching process. There was some stuff I loved that just didn’t make the final cut.”

He’s delighted that AETN has decided to show the film, and Petty has given them the rights, for as long as they want them. His next goal is to create a state-approved study plan and find funding to make some 2,400 DVD copies of the film, so it can be distributed free to all of the junior high and high school libraries in Arkansas.