The Story Behind LOST LA
The History of Lost LA
After the public television station KCET separated from PBS, they decided to hire a new Editor in Chief of Blogs, Zachary Behrens, and expand their online editorial content. This need for informative and enriching editorial content led the station to partner with the University of Southern California Libraries. As part of this partnership, in January 2011, Nathan Masters began a weekly blog on KCET's website called LA as Subject. His articles and photo essays told forgotten stories from the region through an archivist's lens and frequently featured artifacts from LAAS member archives. This article series connected with readers and shed light on the history of Los Angeles. Over time the LAAS blog became one of the stations' most popular editorial series.
Even in the beginning stages of the partnership, there was interest in creating video content about Los Angeles history. KCET leadership discussed creating videos based on Masters' articles, but they needed a proof of concept first. Nathan and Zachary Behrens shot a series of short videos about funiculars in the LA area, including Angel's Flight and the Island Mountain Railway on Santa Catalina. Around the same time, Bill Dottinson and Liza Posas spearheaded Monomania LA, a series of short documentaries profiling five LAAS collectors who turned their obsessions with facets of LA history into public resources. Because of LAAS's relationship with KCET, the videos were packaged together and turned into a special hour-long episode of the KCET show Artbound.
After the success of both of these ventures, Juan Devis, the Chief Creative Officer, greenlite a pilot season for a series based on the LAAS articles with Nathan Masters as the host. Many of the most popular articles had the word "lost" in the title. Since the term lost seemed to capture people's imaginations, they decided to call the series Lost LA. In the first season of Lost LA, each of the three-episodes consisted of three segments based on the most popular articles in the LAAS series. Each segment was directed by a different emerging filmmaker with their own innovative visual style.
The pilot season was a success.The series has aired four seasons and is in preproduction on a fifth. While each season explores a host of new topics and the visual style and storytelling techniques vary from segment to segment, the narrative framework is consistent. The narrative of each episode is built around Nathan Masters’ archival discoveries. This framework foregrounds archives and highlights their importance.
Off shoots of LOST LADuring the preproduction and production of Lost LA, the team often stumble about intriguing tidbits or conduct engaging interviews that ultimately don't make it into the episode. While this material might not fit within the episode's scope, they are still worth sharing. So, Lost LA decided to start publishing their "field notes" on line. Viewers can learn more about their favorite episodes by reading the field notes.
The Lost LA Curriculum Project is a collaboration between KCET (Public Media Group of Southern California), USC Libraries, the UCLA History-Geography Project and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. The Lost LA Curriculum Project uses Lost LA episodes to present culturally relevant teaching materials centered on local history. These materials turn Lost LA's editorial content into educational resources that promote a nuanced understanding of the region's culturally layered communities and an inclusive historical narrative.