the tour, but it's the last show that we'll ever do." The phrasing was deliberately ambiguous, but most of the audience and many newspapers and magazines took it to mean that Bowie was retiring from music. In fact, he had killed off his Ziggy persona but not his music career. Production Pennebaker had previously directed several well-received music documentaries, including the concert film Monterey Pop (1968) and the Bob Dylan tour documentary Dont Look Back (1967). According to Pennebaker, RCA had sent him to film part of the show as a promo for a new video disc product the company was developing, and he had originally intended to film a few songs for approximately 20 minutes. Pennebaker had only scant knowledge of Bowie's music, apart from Space Oddity, and initially thought he was going to be filming Marc Bolan. After seeing Bowie's 2 July London show and the next morning's rehearsal, Pennebaker was impressed by Bowie's onstage charisma and the range of his songs. He quickly prepared to film the entire 3 July show, realising that "there was a full-length film here asking to be made". MainMan, Bowie's management company, reportedly "paid a small fortune" to finance the film, which they hoped to recoup through a theatrical release soon after the tour. Pennebaker stated in a 2016 interview and on the commentary track for the 2003 DVD film release that he did not have advance knowledge of Bowie's "last show" announcement (called the "Farewell Speech" in the track lists for the film and soundtrack album). However, Dylan Jones in his 2012 book When Ziggy Played Guitar: David Bowie and the Four Minutes That Shook the World quoted Pennebaker as saying that "RCA said, we have this guy and he's going to do a concert, maybe the last one he's going to do, and you've got to go make a film." During the filming, Pennebaker struggled with poor stage lighting and having only three people to shoot the concert (plus a fourth camera that was not used very much because it was too far away from the stage). He attempted to overcome these problems by focusing many shots tightly on Bowie, who was in a spotlight; filming the fans in attendance to capture the "frenzy" of the concert; and requesting that attendees take as many flash photographs as possible during the concert to provide additional light. Recording the sound also presented