While artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s decades-long quest to line 23 miles of Central Park pedestrian paths with 7,500 saffron-colored fabric panels is certainly worthy story material, the making of the documentary that captures that journey is a notable achievement in its own right.

“I wanted to kill myself,” says producer-cameraman-director Antonio Ferrera, who led the enormous task of pouring through and restoring a degraded hodgepodge of film reels, some of them shot as far back as 1978, when Christo and Jeanne-Claude began petitioning New York City officials to begin exhibition of a project called The Gates.

As for the film, The Gates isn’t just any documentary—it’s a “Maysles” documentary. Its roots span into the tail end of the Maysles Brothers dynasty—the late 1970s, when the fraternal team of Albert and David spent months filming Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s endeavors.

“They weren’t able to get any of New York’s mayors over the years to give them permission to do the exhibit,” says the 81-year-old Albert Maysles, phone chatting with DV from the New York offices of Maysles Films in May. “It took them over 20 years.”

Along with his brother, who died in 1987, Maysles made the artists the subject of 1978’s Running Fence, which chronicled Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s dream to span a 24-mile silk fence through the heart of California’s wine country.

The film turned out to be a key component to a Maysles legacy that also includes such esteemed works as Salesman, Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens.

While filming Running Fence on their modified 16mm Auricon camera, the Maysles laid the groundwork for The Gates.

Click To Enlarge Albert Maysles (right) shoots 1975’s Grey Gardens with his brother and longtime production partner, David.

“The actual filming took place over one year, during which Albert and David followed Christo and Jeanne-Claude all over Europe and the U.S., as they tried to get the okay for various projects,” says Ferrera, who has been Maysles’ principal collaborator since 2002. “All those other projects became films, but The Gates just lay dormant until Michael Bloomberg gave the okay.”

Following the New York Mayor’s greenlight to Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 2003, Maysles decided to resurrect The Gates.

“As with all Christo films, this challenges our notion of art, but it’s also the story of two people who are determined to express their artistic individuality, if you want to call it that, and go all the way to paying for it themselves,” Maysles says.

The aforementioned recognition could also apply to Ferrera, who was called upon to fold some of the old Maysles Brothers’ footage from 1980 into a brand-new digital documentary of the February 2005 Gates exhibition.

The two-year-long editing process—completed with Gates co-director Matthew Prinzing—started with Ferrera sifting through a mass of brown and brandy-colored 16mm film, which had to be carefully organized before it could be restored and transferred to digital video.

“It was like an archaeological job; everything was in fragments,” says Ferrera. “We had to figure out what to do with all of these scenes that were chopped up and missing frames. We had to reconstruct the actual chronological order of each scene so we could tell the story.”

Once this archival footage was sorted, restored and transferred, Ferrera had to do some fancy math in Final Cut Pro to sync everything up properly. “It was recorded at 25 frames per second (instead of the 24fps projection rate), he explains. “We had to figure out the right algorithms (in Final Cut) to sync it up right.”

Click To Enlarge The Gates chronicles artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s quest to line 23 miles of pedestrian paths in New York’s Central Park with saffron-colored fabric panels.

Meanwhile, Ferrera and Maysles—who was serving as cinematographer—had to coordinate the digital shooting of the actual Gates exhibition in Central Park, which took place over 16 days of varying climates, in everything from sunshine to snow.

“We primarily used a Sony DSR-PD170 camcorder in PAL—thinking that would give us the best quality, especially for blowing it up real big,” says Maysles, who plied the hour-and-a-half-long film to the festival circuit this year (it closed out Tribeca in early May).

Like most Maysles offerings these days, The Gates will also have a run on HBO, premiering early next year. Maysles has strong ties with the pay cable channel, with his former key collaborator, Susan Froemke, having overseen production of the multi-part docu Addiction for the network; in fact, Maysles last year co-directed one of the segments, “A Mother’s Desperation.”

Ferrera adds that about 400 hours of The Gates exhibition footage was captured with a Panasonic VariCam. A good 30 percent of the final film is in high-def. “You have these beautiful, realized landscapes of the transformed Central Park—that’s what we primarily used the Panasonic for,” he explains.

He says that the blending of very different capture mediums actually works for the film, “adding to the feeling of the time it took to get The Gates started.

“We embraced those differences,” Ferrera says. For example, you have mono sound from the early 1980s that is later updated to stereo; then by the time the project is realized, it goes to surround sound.”

As for Maysles, there is some satisfaction in seeing his own 27-year Gates quest finished. “It’s a beautiful sight,” he says. “It’s quite a joy to see ordinary people develop an understanding of (The Gates) as art.”