In an interview with Amy (2015) director, Asif Kapadia, and producer, James Gay-Rees, described the difficulties they encountered in finding never-before-seen footage of Amy Winehouse. They first researched all of the obvious archives at the BBC and any other country that might have footage of Amy Winehouse performances. Kapadia stated that when making his last film Senna (2010), everyone they interviewed wanted to participate, but in making Amy (2015), “nobody wanted to be involved at all.”

Kapadia and Rees spent months piecing together Amy’s timeline and vast social circle trying to figure all the individuals in her life, how each person impacted her at given points in time, how they influenced her, and so on. In those months, Kapadia and Rees found it hard to find real evidence of anything apart from some bad performances in her later years and a couple of TV spots. Their big breakthrough came from Amy’s first manager Nick Schamansky. When they first contacted Nick his immediate reaction was “it’s too soon, I don’t want anything to do with it…..there’s one annoying thing, I really liked Senna.” Nick goes on to tell them a story of when he first saw Senna with his girlfriend on a rainy day in Notting Hill. They both came out loving it and Nick said “Wouldn’t it be great if someone made a film like that about Amy, but in ten years time.” A year later is when Kapadia and Rees first contacted Nick. They brought a still-skeptical Nick to their edit suite where he saw the timeline they had made and he could tell how much time and effort they’d already put in to this project. After Nick saw that, he decided to share all the early footage he had of Amy: her early shows, writing songs at home, the poetry she wrote before she every wanted to sing.

After this Kapadia and Rees found more and more people who were close to Amy to speak to. They would say “I’ll give you 5 minutes, 10 minutes, a half an hour, and it would turn into 2 hours, 3 hour, 4 hours, 5 hours of talking.” On the other hand there were some people who they had to keep contacting for 18 months becasue everytime they’d only speak for 5 minutes then leave. Some issues, Kapadia and Rees said, were that there were a lot of different accounts of the same things and a lot of blame being thrown around. “Amy would present in different ways to different social groups. Some people said she was literally the most caring maternal person I’ve ever met. Somebody else would say she’s the most intelligent person they’ve ever met. Pete Doherty (The Libertines) said Amy was a hardcore gangster sometimes.”

Rees and Kapadia have said that some of the most interesting material they found were the vidoes of Amy simply being funny with her friends as well as her diaries containing her lyrics and general thoughts. Some of the most difficult material to use were the photos of Amy at her worst in the throws of her addiction looking sick and malnourished.

The inital meeting Kapadia and Rees had when first making the film was with Amy’s record label Universal Music, her publishing company, and her estate, all of whom Kapadia and Rees spoke to in detail. They talked to Blake (husband), her boyfriends, her friends, her parents, her band, first manager, second manager, and everyone they really could. The two of them have stated that the meetings were uncomfortable at times but always very cordial, no one every stormed out or anything. “Quite a few people have said off the record that they may not be comfortable with what’s in the film but it’s all a very honest representation of what was going on.”

Kapadia, Asif, and James Gay-Rees. “Amy: Q&A with the Director.” Amy. SVA Theater, New York City. 10 June 2015. Lecture.