Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Stephanie Widemond | Benjamin Patton, founder of the Patton Veteran's Project engages the audience during a...... read more read more
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FORT STEWART, Ga. - I love movies. I think that if it wasn’t for movies, I would be a different person than I am today. The visceral experience cannot be explained because there are so many moving parts. It would be like trying to explain how the Army works…it just does. But, when it doesn't everyone knows it. Case in point, John Travolta and "Battlefield Earth," but I digress.
Sitting in the director's chair, a director orchestrates many areas to bring his vision to life. Like the Army, where it takes more than the commander to make a unit work, a movie takes the sound team, the camera team, wardrobe, make-up and special effects, and stunt people to make it come to life. An excellent example of this orchestration is Kenneth Branagh's interpretation of Cinderella. This movie was pure cinema magic, in my opinion. It highlighted all that makes a movie worth $10. It evoked the same feeling I had when I was watching The Chronicles of Narnia.
Branagh is but one in a long line of my favorite directors.
Others include Katherine Breillat, the Davids: Cronenberg, Lynch and Fincher, and Angela Robinson. And through the generosity of "I Was There" films, I, too, could feel what it was to be a director. Instead of bringing a piece of fiction to life, I had to tear a few pages from my life and use cameras to express what I didn’t know I was feeling.
"I like being able to watch soldiers have something positive in their lives and seeing a change. They are able to collaborate and find friendships and find a new support network", said Angela Blair, Chief of Medical Operations and Nursing, Warrior Transition Battalion, Fort Stewart. She was the liaison between the workshop personnel and the participants, coordinating space for the workshop and providing input during the workshop. She said this was the fourth time the film workshop has come to the installation.
The "I Was There" Films workshop is an initiative of the Patton Veteran's Project and is currently conducting workshops at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Fort Drum, New York; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and Fort Stewart, Georgia, offering veterans the chance to share and express, through film, what could not be expressed verbally. They hoped to help us with unexplored emotions that may be keeping us from enjoying relationships and social situations. When I found out about this, I jumped at the chance to be a filmmaker, if only for a week.
I shared the same sentiment of the workshop director and filmmaker, Jeanette Sears, who likes being able to tell stories.
"I have control over every element of the film. Especially being a director of photography, I get to work alongside the director to bring his or her vision come to life," said Jeanette. The filmmaker was one of five talented instructors who guided us from day one until the end of the workshop.
Through emotions exercises and brainstorming, storyboarding, filming and editing, each of us had complete control over the products we created. The topics of the films we created ranged from domestic violence to female empowerment.
The workshop has been around since 2011, with the first one being at Fort Carson, Colorado. In the beginning, the focus was primarily on veterans in the Warrior Transition Battalions who suffered from post traumatic stress or had traumatic brain injuries, however the participation has evolved to include anyone soldier that has difficulty with stresses that may be compounded by Army life.
This is the fourth time the workshop has come to Fort Stewart, and the first time that the participants have been all female.
"The women in the workshop have are really good at what they do in making these films. The have been some of the best," said Jeanette. She and her team have been wanting to do an all-female workshop for a while because from what they have seen, female soldiers tend to get overshadowed by universal topics that apply to both men and women.
"They can talk about things that are specific to female soldiers. It 's a unique opportunity [for us] to hear what women in the military have to say," she said.
We had quite a bit to say during that week. It felt good to just unload and let out what I hadn't said out loud. Once it was verbalized in a safe space where there was no judgment, I felt relieved.
After the first day, when we had to pick an emotion out of a hat, and then describe it visually on camera without the benefit of sound, it was down to business. For the next three days, we created, and on the fourth night, we screened the eight films that were created during the week. It was an immersive, hands-on experience for all of us. For me, it was wholly relaxing and natural.
"What we have found is that the medium of filmmaking allows the veteran to engage and communicate to a particular group of people in their own terms, and that is the center of this," said Benjamin Patton, founder of Patton's Veteran's Project, before the short films were screened.
Patton, grandson of George S. Patton (yes, that Patton, portrayed by George C. Scott in the 1970 classic of the same name), created the organization as a way of helping soldiers cope with Army life, offering another tool to increase resiliency.
Not that the workshop wasn't exciting enough, but to shake hands with a direct relative of our Army's recent history was just incredible.
Benjamin Patton hopes to expand the workshop to more installations and to more audiences.
"I feel like we are still under the radar. My objective is to get to as many installations as many times a year as we can, " said Patton. Ultimately, he said he would like to have the workshop be a part of a treatment protocol that is used by both military and civilian as a way of coping with whatever stresses they may encounter during the course of their life.
The "I Was There" film workshop was indeed therapeutic for me as I was able to learn and create, being a part of the process and a part of an industry that has guided me through most of my life. It has changed my perspective, and has taught me that non-traditional methods of coping with life's circumstances are beneficial. Each person's challenges manifests in its own way, using film as a creative outlet can help with the burden.
| Date Taken: | 04.17.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 04.23.2015 12:53 |
| Story ID: | 160979 |
| Location: | FORT STEWART, GA, US |
| Web Views: | 75 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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