Greetings!
How great to be back on the film festival circuit (five years have passed since I traveled with our award-winning feature doc PAPER CLIPS) and to be heading to Sonoma!
My new film -- BEDFORD: THE TOWN THEY LEFT BEHIND -- examines the costs of war and why we serve, but in a much different way than you might expect. It doesn't tell you what to think, but it certainly provokes thought -- and emotion. Our early audiences across the country tell us they've been stimulated and moved in new ways. They've found themselves debating the questions about war with a fresh perspective -- and with a renewed human concern, rather than the cable news polarization they've grown so tired of.
There's something about Bedford, Virginia. Maybe it's going to remind you of where you grew up, or maybe it will represent the town you've never lived in but wish you had. But, one way or another, it's a place audiences relate to.
The film tells Bedford's then-and-now story -- what happened once, and what's happening today.
Looking to the past, we relive Bedford's truly remarkable service during World War II, when young men who joined the local national guard unit mostly for a little spending money and a snazzy uniform to please the ladies were suddenly swept up in the call to arms that followed Pearl Harbor. Their innocence died forever the morning they first saw battle. And what a battle it was: they were the first to hit the beach at Normandy on D-Day.
The cost to the community was terrible -- it lost more men per capita on June 6, 1944 than any other community in America. The national guard unit was never again called for service until the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Looking at the present, we see Bedford families left behind once more as soldiers head out to fight. Viewed against the backdrop of an earlier generation's experiences, things that are different and things that are the same seem to carry more meaning.
Have we learned anything? What should we have learned? Maybe the folks in Bedford can point us toward some answers.
I'll be attending both Sonoma screenings of BEDFORD: THE TOWN THEY LEFT BEHIND, and I hope to see you there!
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(March 24)
3D Motion Control...
...that's the name of the effect we used in BEDFORD to enhance our still photos. I first saw it in the 2002 doc, "The Kid Stays In The Picture." Even if you don't know the term, you've probably seen it used in TV commercials or in docs like Jeffrey Schwartz' very entertaining film "Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story."
You'll certainly know what I'm talking about when you see BEDFORD's opening title sequence.
We knew that portions of our film would be dependent upon still images and, no matter how wonderful they may each seem by themselves, a lot of stills in a movie can foster the same kind of viewer detachment as too many shots of talking heads. It was important to us to have these photos help deliver the sentiments being expressed by the characters in our film. 3D MoCo (the shorthand term) offered that possibility, and our good friends at RHED Pixel, a cutting edge graphics house here in Virginia, did a great job of realizing that potential.
Audiences are very pleased with the impact of 3D MoCo, and have told me things like "it really pulled me in emotionally" and "it made me feel about the photographs like the people who took them probably feel."
Isn't it nice to know that technology can add tenderness and intimacy to a film, not just explosions, monsters and impossible stunts?
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(March 27)
Vera Luckham, Gin and Tonic, and a Telegram from the Queen
When you see BEDFORD, you'll meet a delightful British lady named Vera Luckham. During WW2, she ran the pub in the little English village where the boys from Bedford trained for 18 months prior to D-Day. I had the pleasure of chatting with Vera again this morning on the phone...
Two years have passed since the day we set up our gear in her former barroom to interview her. She'd been reluctant to have anything to do with "those film people," but on that October afternoon she was full of charm and memories of more than sixty years before. Still aglow from the cocktail she'd enjoyed at lunch (as Eliza Doolittle said, "Gin is mother's milk to her!"), she made all of us in the crew feel the terrors of the German attacks on the area around Ivybridge. She pointed out the dumbwaiter shaft behind the bar that sheltered her infant son, and told of watching the brutal bombings of Plymouth from the hill just outside the window.
Vera was about to turn 98 years old when we met her, but she was still perky and flirtatious. Last December 13 she turned 100, and this morning I was amazed all over again at the zest for living I hear in her voice. "Got my telegram from the queen on my birthday," she boasted, referring to the tradition of royal recognition of those who reach the century mark. "Got a very dear note and a photograph as well," she went on.
Eventually we got to the reason for my call: an invitation to join me when I travel back to Ivybridge in late April to show BEDFORD in the town theatre -- a thank you for the endless hospitality and support shown us when we were there filming. Vera uses a "frame" now (a walker), she needs the assistance of her "carer" (caregiver), and she doesn't go out at night (her day is from 11 am to 8 pm). "BUT," said she, "I really must be there!"
So, come April 21st, we'll have a car taking Ms Vera Luckham and her carer to the little Watermark Theatre in Ivybridge, which is just around the corner from her old pub, The Sportsmans. And when the screening is done, Vera and I plan to raise a gin and tonic to the Bedford boys.
Ah, the blessings of filmmaking.
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