An incredible story, captured brilliantly by Danfung Dennis with the Canon 5D MKII
Back in May I posted some footage from Danfung Dennis, a photojournalist and videographer embedded in Afghanistan. He was one of the first to use the Canon 5D MKII in military action, and was filming a documentary on the Battle for Hearts and Minds in the region. Well just the other day the official trailer for the film came out, and it looks simply amazing. You can watch it below, as well as check out the tools he’s used to create this film.
On July 2nd, 2009, four thousand US Marines of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade launched a major helicopter assault into a Taliban stronghold in the Helmand River Valley in southern Afghanistan in order to break a military stalemate with the insurgent group.
Independent filmmaker Danfung Dennis was embedded with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Company, as they were dropped 18 km behind enemy lines to seize a key bridge. Within a few hours of landing, fierce fighting erupted and continued for the next three days, during which Lance Corporal Charles Sharp, from Adairsville, Georgia was shot and killed by a Taliban fighter.
After the initial fighting, the Marines searched for the insurgents who had killed Lance Corporal Sharp. Frustration set in as the Marines tried to fight the elusive enemy whose IED’s cut off their supply lines. The Marines’ objective was to secure and protect the population, but the Afghan villagers complained that the fighting has driven them into the desert, and the bombing destroyed their homes. Can the Marines balance their contradictory roles as warriors and statesmen, as they struggle to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people?
The footage was shot on a custom built rig, using a Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70 f/2.8 L lens, Sennheiser ME-66 and G2 wireless system, Singh-Ray variable ND filter, and Beachtek 2XAs mounted on a Glidecam 2000 HD with custom made aluminum ‘wings.’
As noted above, Danfung uses a variety of tools and custom-configured gear to capture footage with the 5D MKII in the field. You can read more about the technical on his website. There’s also a nice long interview with Danfung in this audio podcast (interview starts at around 19min in).
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Well, here I come, I’m gonna have to be a buzz kill on this one. It pains me to see talented artists prostituting themselves in order to sell this human tradgedy and farce to young boys who are the most likely audience for this. I suppose it’s the only possible way to get to even an inkling of the truth. But reading how our honorable statesmen with automatic weopons and gernade launcher have dropped behind “enemy lines” also known as somebody else’s country, village and home to seize a key bridge. I’m sickened. War is wrong period. No grey area. If we were honestly trying to win hearts and minds we would be dispatching the best set builders Hollywood has to offer to manufacture homes, hospitals and roads instead of blowing up what little they have and saying “ooops?!” Send in the best of our brave statesmen to remove the hidden, buried land mines left over from the last war. Do we really care about making friends?
I’m certain this talented camera man did a spectacular job of capturing what he saw but to what end? Glorifying this evil charade? What would we find if we followed the money on this film.
In the seventies during Vietnam the slogan was I hate the war but support the troops. The difference is back then soldiers were being drafted. Just following orders is in my world never a viable excuse but it is particularly true in this instance. It is naive to the point of retardation to believe that it is an effective strategy against violent terrorims in this country to be rooting around their country door to door with machine guns drawn looking for the bad guys. Wake up Obama.
Not having seen the whole film, It’s not completely fair to judge it. But I think the way it’s shot brings up issues of what is a documentary and what is voyeuristic or entertainment.
I am not entirely sure it is fair to the subject matter, shooting a serious subject like this so that it “looks like a movie” with the deep focus and all.
What’s going on there is very serious. I think at best, making the imagery “pretty” contributes to an atmosphere not unlike Michael Moore’s films.
Michael Moore’s hand is always obvious in the content of his films. This may be like that except that Danfung’s hand is on the visual style more than story.
Is he just making it pretty because he can?
Is he trying to make it look performed rather than real to create a surreal feeling?
The style brings up a lot of interesting questions about the content. New documentary styles have always brought up questions regarding how the “style” changes the content.
Posted by on 10/24 at 02:55 PM
The Frontline PBS episode from two weeks ago, “Obama’s War” used Danfung’s footage in the first five minutes to set up a story that was both very sympathetic with the troops, and very seriously questioning of the war at the same time. This proves that the style of his shooting can be used by an editor or producer in a sophisticated and critical way.
The episode can be seen for free at PBS.og in Flash or for $2 in nicer h.264 on iTunes.
