Tuesday, November 13, 2007
In the Turret
Back in late September, there was no way I was going to be able to watch Ken Burns' The War as a television event for the two weeks or so that it was on. I waited for a while to get episode one from Netflix but it seemed to be forever lodged at Very Long Wait status. Eventuallly, a conversation with my friends at the Cannell Library revealed that there was a copy cataloged and ready for check out.
I am treating it as I would a book. It sits in my DVD drive of my computer and I will dip into a sequence or two. It is a good way to work through this work. A window with episode three is playing as I write this. When a battle gets good I will go to full screen. The structure of following our towns that is at the heart of the film's structure works quite well for this approach of consuming this much material. Need to go visit the battle of Tarawa for a while....
Back from the battle of Tarawa. Sound design is key in this film. In supplemental materials Burns says they spent an entire year on the sound after the picture was locked in. Sometimes the level of intensity of battle sounds is distracting and feels artificial, especially in the ground battles. But I found myself totally captivated in one of the film's first air sequences over Schweinfurt. For a few short minutes, I felt I was in the gun turret with a sensation I had not encountered prior in any other depiction of air combat. And being a son of Air Force, I think I saw most every one growing up.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:00 PM
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