One week, they may find themselves repelling from a mountain peak in arctic-like temperatures; the next, contending with camera equipment and scuba gear deep underwater. It's business as usual for the video professionals who are tasked with capturing the activities of the National Guard in action.
"I have shot from inside of helicopters, from under helicopters, from tanks and Humvees, and a lot of other exciting places in the eight months that I've been here," said Jason Coleman, a videographer for the Advertising and Recruitment Branch of the National Guard Bureau-Army Strength Maintenance in Smyrna, TN. Coleman, along with a small team of videographers, photographers, and producers led by Operations Officer, Chief O'Neil Williams, travel around the country to capture images of National Guardsmen and the activities with which they are involved.
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A Variety Of Activity
These activities -- and the accompanying experiences -- are often out of the ordinary. A recent adventure was no exception. Williams and Coleman ventured to the heights of the Colorado mountains, where they shot footage for the National Guard Outstanding Guard Athlete Program. The footage featured National Guard athletes participating in bobsledding, luging, snowboarding, and other winter sports.
Not only did the experience challenge the team's physical fortitude (as they climbed to 12,000 feet and temperatures plunged to six degrees), but also their professional aptitude. "The speed at which the athletes were coming at us was unbelievable, sometimes as much as 80 miles per hour," recalled Coleman. "The challenge was trying to catch usable images in what seemed to be a blink."
Occasionally, it isn't capturing what can be seen that bears the biggest challenge, but rather recreating what needs to be shown. In many instances, the team must recreate combat operations and other real-life situations, and they must do it as authentically as possible.
"From a photographer's standpoint, it's fun, but also very challenging because we have to make the images look real," said Williams. "The pictures we produce are no good unless they make people believe and experience what they are seeing."
Whether they're shooting genuine or fabricated scenarios, Williams' team typically works on at least one project a month. Each is used to support recruiting and retention efforts at the state and national level, and range from television commercials to promotional videos, Web site material to magazine ads, banners to flyers.
While the team is involved with some projects from start to finish, a majority of the footage it collects is shot for B-roll purposes. All of the B-roll collected is stored in an ever-expanding stock footage library, which Williams hopes will one day contain enough footage to cover every branch of the Army National Guard.
"We have a long way to go," he said, "but my goal for the library is that it will contain footage that will be able to meet the needs of anyone who comes to us with a request." That, however, will be quite a tall order, as the National Guard recently updated its uniforms, effectively outdating any previous B-roll used for marketing purposes.
Share The Glory
In addition to shoring up the library, footage taken by the team is often provided to advertising agencies and a variety of other interior and outside sources. One of those outside sources is Glory Cubed Productions, an independent production company based in Tennessee that was recently hired on a contract-basis to work with the NGB.
After almost a year under contract, Glory Cubed's Brian Reisdorf and Scott Matthews have already been involved with some exhilarating adventures of their own. Reisdorf, a former Civil Air Patrol cadet, has not only produced several videos, including one that depicts a year in the life of a brand new National Guard officer, but has also taken to the air in four different helicopters, repelled from a tower, and witnessed demolition exercises -- all in pursuit of that perfect shot.
"The goal of the products we produce is to inform, motivate, pique the interest of, and ultimately gain recruits," explained Reisdorf, who refers to his experience thus far as a crash course in everything National Guard. While he said that recruitment is a huge part of the job, the best part of the job for him is the pure enjoyment he gets from the experiences. "As a kid raised on G.I. Joe, being able to do things like shoot an Apache helicopter as it does what I've told it to do via radio is unbelievably cool."
It was a video inspired by Scott Matthews that proved not only cool, but ultimately quite profitable for the company. In 2003, Matthews, a member of the Army National Guard (who is currently transferring to the Air National Guard) was in the midst of a 10-month deployment to Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF-IV). When he wasn't repairing helicopters with his aviation unit, he was taping and taking still photographs around his base.
Soon, an opportunity arose for Matthews to shoot footage at other bases, as he was able to fly and shoot with fellow National Guards aviators as they delivered mail and troops via helicopters to various bases in Afghanistan. This footage, which not only captured the daily lives of deployed Guardsmen but also events rarely associated with wartime scenarios, was then turned into a one-hour documentary and posted on www.warriorswithwrenches.com, a Web site created for unit members and their family members.
"I took a more cinematic approach to shooting the footage by providing interesting angles and unique shots," explained Matthews, who had been pursuing a degree in digital motion pictures at the time. "That said, I was also shooting from a military perspective, which I believe made the footage unique."
On the other side of the world, in Washington, DC, a National Guard official caught sight of Matthew's images (edited with the help of Reisdorf's 3-D graphic talents back in the United States) on the Web site. He was so impressed with the images that he requested that Matthews devote the remainder of his deployment strictly to shooting. Not long after, Glory Cubed was offered a contract with the NGB.
The Move To HD
At the time of his deployment, Matthews was shooting with a Cannon XL1; that is, until it slammed into a bunker and broke into pieces. Fortunately, he and Residorf had been following the development of another camera.
"We thought the Panasonic HVX200 would be a good choice for two main reasons: It would give us the ability to shoot 60 frames per second and it offered us a tapeless format," said Matthews. "We also felt like the camera would enable us to pull off the dynamic flair to our pieces."
This dynamic flair, according to Reisdorf, is realized in many cases by using the camera's slow motion capabilities. "We can shoot 30 percent below normal speed, which produces a really nice effect that takes us beyond the traditional video look," Reisdorf explained. "This feature provides us a great means for creating drama and keeping the audience's attention."
For Reisdorf and Matthews, the camera's ability to produce a tapeless workflow via a P2 card, was another enticement. "It's awesome to not have to carry around a bunch of tapes," explained Matthews. "All I have to do is carry a drive with me, cycle the cards, and I have unlimited filming capacity."
In addition to convenience, the purchase has also proved cost effective. "Not only are we able to review shots in the camera right at the shoot, which helps us to eliminate what we don't need and be more efficient in the field, but we were spared from having to spend $16,000 on equipment we would have needed to support tapes," added Reisdorf.
That said, Reisdorf admitted that one of the major considerations to working with P2 is the amount of storage space required, because information is being served up in terabytes. According to Matthews, the NGB is in the process of setting up a centralized media storage server, so it will soon be able to download the footage in QuickTime or other formats.
Williams and his team also recently made the switch to HD with the Panasonic VariCam, and though they haven't yet had the opportunity to enjoy its tapeless capabilities, they have taken advantage of the quality of the images it produces.
"Going to HD was a really big deal for us, particularly from a resolution standpoint," said Coleman. "I consider myself an average cameraman, but this camera makes me look really good. The images look fantastic."
For Williams and Coleman, there was no better example of this than the images captured during a recent winter sports shoot. Low-light levels were a prevailing factor, but that issue proved inconsequential.
"Our footage of the luge was shot at night and our only lighting was the lights on the track itself," explained Williams. "Even with this insignificant amount of light, we were able to generate nice looking images."
Both groups have also found that the small form factor of their new equipment is particularly helpful, especially when they find themselves having to squeeze into military helicopters and other small spaces for a shoot.
For Williams, who is responsible for the set up and logistics of shoots, not to mention identifying National Guard models, the addition of a production manager would prove particularly helpful. "I spend hours and hours on the phone to set up one shoot," said Williams. "The most fun I have is when I have a camera in my hand and I'm out taking pictures. That's what I love; that's when I feel at home."
MORE INFO
Glory Cubed Productions glorycubed.com
National Guard Bureau ngb.army.mil
Panasonic panasonic.com/broadcast
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