Bill Petro

I’ve have written an article on the innovative use of micro-blogging technology Twitter as it relates to the Academy Awards show at my “Tech Trends” blog. Come by and visit the article here.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood film historian
www.billpetro.com

THE WAR: TV MINISERIES

In January I wrote about my conversation with Ken Burns, award winning producer of The Civil War documentary, about his upcoming miniseries about World War II called simply The War. This presentation took place at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He was at that time previewing his 7-part, 14.5 hour series — that he has been working on for some 6 years — at military academies around the country. I wrote three articles at that time about:

• Questions I asked Ken Burns
• The making of the new documentary
• The content of this series

Now the series is finally going to be shown. It debuts this Sunday, September 23, 2007 on your local PBS station. Already the companion book is on the market, as is the sound track which I have been listening to for the last week, featuring not only a modern piece by Nora Jones called American Anthem, but also music from the 1940 period before, during, and after The War.

This is television worth watching, and I recommend it to you. Check your local television listing.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

THE WAR: part 3

So what did Ken Burns show in his 1.25 hour preview of his 14.5 hour, 7 part documentary on World War II called The War? The audience included hundreds of Air Force cadets, virtually the same age as the soldier’s were who fought in the story.

Using still photos and film from the National Archives, most of it taken by the U.S. military, much of it never seen before by the general public, through the words of newspaper clippings, letters, and 40 first-person accounts we were told about:

Tarawa: A strategically located Pacific atoll, America lost almost 3,000 Marines in November 1943 in a bloody attack against 4,700 Japanese soldiers defending an air strip. Only 17 Japanese survived.

On March 9, 1945, 354 B-29 bombers dropped jellied gasoline, napalm, on 16 square miles of Tokyo. 100,000 died, over a million were left homeless. And that was just the first raid.

B-29 bombers: In the Pacific theater, the B-29 “Superfortress” bomber was fitted with Norden bombsighting technology. Bombardiers liked to boast that with the “Norden bombsight they could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet.”

In Europe, the Allies would do their bombing runs over Germany at night, to avoid detection in the pre-radar era. Their accuracy, however, showed that only 1 in 5 strikes were within five miles of the target. When the American’s joined the war, they’d fly during the days — more accurate, but much more dangerous.

B-17 belly gunners: One airman told the story of how he had joined at 19 to experience the excitement of flying. Of the 9 guns on a B-17 “Flying Fortress,” he was a belly gunner. They’d fly over Germany with an Allied fighter escort, but the smaller planes would run out of fuel be reaching the drop zone. As the bombers approached their targets, now unescorted, German fighters would climb into the skies. They were fast, and he had a hard time tracking them with his 50 caliber guns. But the German fighters used rockets, and could attach from a much greater distance. “Our guns couldn’t reach them.” On one sortie (shown with an incredible accompanying audio track), he was hit and began to bleed in the belly turret. Using his training as a Boy Scout, he saved his own life by properly applying a tourniquet. It was “minus 30 outside and the blood began to collect and freeze. I had to gather it up, or it would be a mess to clean up when we landed… It was about 4 hours to fly back to base.”

Operation Cobra. Following the Normandy Invasion, the Americans wanted to break out of the area. Hedgerow warfare in August of 1944 closed the “Falaise Gap,” and ultimately drove the Germans out of that area of France.

B-29s would fly bombing raids from Saipan to Tokyo, but there was an airfield on a small island along their route that would send up fighters to harass them. This island was Iwo Jima. Six thousand tons of bombs were dropped on the island. Then another day of naval bombardments. Three waves of Marines went in, and it looked like it would be easier to take than expected… but twenty thousand Japanese were waiting. By February 17, 2050 Americans were dead, and the battle would rage for a month, until 6821 died. Twenty-seven Medals of Honor were awarded, 13 posthumously. They were called the X-ray Company, so many of them were lost.

Flame thrower. One humorous story was told of a soldier using a flame thrower during the attack of Iwo Jima. After several hours of battle, he went to the beach, stripped of his equipment and clothes, and took a swim. He got out, suited up, and continued fighting.

Ken Burns says that we often look back on these years and believe they lived in “simpler times.” But, he pointed out:

The 30s were the time of the greatest economic dislocation in the world, and the 40s saw the world greatest conflagration. In many ways, it is we who live in simpler times.

Much of the narration of documentary was done by the actor Keith David. Ken Burns concluded his preview with a song called American Anthem, written by Gene Scheer, but not for this documentary. However, Nora Jones did a special recording, and he played it with scenes interspersed from the film. It was quite stunning, indeed.

Don’t miss the September 2007 debut of The War.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

THE WAR: part 2

Ken Burns explained to the audience at the Air Force Academy last week why he had spent the last 6 years researching and producing The War, his 7 part, 14.5 hour documentary on World War II which will debut on PBS in September 2007:

Every day, over 1,000 WWII veterans are dying.

WWII was the greatest cataclysm in the history of the human race

We wanted to dispel the myth of the “gallant bloodless war”

There are young people today who think that in WWII the Allies fought against the Russians, and on the side of the Germans

We don’t think of memory as a concrete thing, but we must preserve it before it’s gone. This is the story of WWII told from the bottom up, not by experts. We wanted to tell the whole story, not small parts of it like “Saving Private Ryan.” It is a difficult story to tell.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was wounded 6 times in the Civil War and later became a Supreme Court Justice talked about the “incommunicable experiences of war.”

CBS news journalist Eric Sevareid in 1985 said that “War happens inside a man…and that is why, in a certain sense, you and your sons from the war will be forever strangers. If, by the miracles of art and genius, in later years two or three among them can open their hearts and the right words come, then perhaps we shall all know a little of what it was like–and we shall know then that all the present speakers and writers hardly touched the story.”

Ken Burns continued:

In extraordinary times, there are no ordinary people. We selected first person accounts from 40-50 veterans across four geographical locations across America:

• Mobile, Alabama - which was an important shipyard
• Sacramento, California - a larger, varied town
• Westbury, Connecticut - populated with Southern European immigrants: Italians and Jews
• Luverne, Minnesota - in Rock County

As we watched the 7 or 8 clips during the preview, we heard a newspaper column being narrated from the editor of the Rock County Herald. He described getting a phone call early in the morning on D-Day from a woman acting like a modern day Paul Revere. As the editor described what was different about this day in America, the Air Force Academy cadet next to me did not realize it was being narrated by Tom Hanks. It was riveting.

To be continued…

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com

THE WAR, part 1

Tonight I talked with Ken Burns, who you know for his award winning documentaries including The Civil War, Baseball, and JAZZ. I had the privilege of sharing with him two questions, after he presented a preview of his new documentary coming out in Fall of 2007, about World War II called simply The War. This presentation took place at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. We got to see 7 or 8 clips, or about an hour and a quarter of his 7-part, 14.5 hour series that he has been working on for some 6 years. He’s previewing this documentary at military academies around the country.

I’ll tell you more about it in my next article, but now I’ll share the two questions.

1) I asked:

Mr. Burns, in terms of the power of pictures, the “Ken Burn Effect” is so renowned, that Apple computer includes it in their iPhoto desktop application. Can you share with us where this came from?

Ken Burns’ answer:

I am the son of a photographer, and I started in photography long before I ever hoped to do film making. But photos should not be static, they should move and suggest action. So I used common techniques like inserts, pans, zooms, fades, and dissolves… in my first work on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, and then in The Civil War, which of course, only had still pictures.

Several years ago, Steve Jobs said “Come see what we’re working on.” He showed me a rudimentary application of these techniques in a program he was working on that he wanted to label the “Ken Burns Effect.” He and three other geeks were talking in technological terms way above my head. I said “Steve, I don’t do commercial endorsements.” Eventually we worked out a deal where he donated some gear to a charity that my wife is involved in, and he got to use the term.

2) I continued:

My second question relating to the power of pictures is about a question that was asked of me when I was visiting the Dachau Concentration Camp memorial years ago, and I mentioned to those who worked there that my father had liberated Dachau some 48 years before. They asked me a question, and what is remarkable is that they all asked the same question. The question was “Do you have any pictures?” I shared with them the website I created as a tribute to my father that had the pictures my father had brought back and his story. Since then there have been over 30,000 visitors to the site. And I still get phone calls and email from men who tell me, “I went on leave in Paris with your father,” or “I was with him when we liberated Dachau,” or “I was with him after the war in Austria.” Such is the power of pictures.

Ken Burns replied:

We deal with the holocaust at the end of the series, a particularly difficult section of the documentary.

Ms. Lynn Novick, his co-producer on many of his documentaries, added that when they started the research on the documentary they began at the National Archives with photos of the Holocaust. After having made so many films, it was easy to believe that they were somewhat inured to grueling scenes, but she noted that one of her interns — whose responsibility it was to collect and record the images that would later be used for this documentary — had to stop, as he could no longer take in all these images.

Such is the power of pictures.

To be continued…

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com