There’s no Vikings game tomorrow.  Instead of watching the first few minutes of that Jacksonville/Green Bay tilt check out how a few Minnesotans helped out a population of people from the other side of the world.  Did you see it already?  Pass this info on to someone you think would enjoy it.

Thanks…

Luke

I gave a few introductory remarks before the premiere screening of Bridging War & Hope

Last night about 250 people gathered at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park, Minnesota to watch the premiere of Bridging War & Hope.  Beth El was a logical place to host the premiere for during the ADT’s Afghan deployment the congregation collected and sent over 60 care packages to the unit.  Though none of the the Soldiers were members Beth El eagerly adopted them as their own.

It was a moving event for me.  It was just over a year ago that I met with the CHS Foundation.  CHS Foundation generously underwrote the entire production.  During that meeting I was asked how I would plan on covering the story of the Minnesota National Guard in Zabul, and as I flash forward to tonight’s television premiere of the program I’m proud to say that the plan I presented is reflected in what you’ll see.

This pretty much wraps things up for this blog.  It’s been a fantastic experience for me to be able to bring you all along as I prepared for the trip, traveled to Afghanistan, made sense of what I saw and finished the documentary.  With that, here’s a link to Bridging War & Hope.

I’ve been booked for a few speaking engagements, if you like what you see and would like to host a screening for your group or organization drop me a line either on this blog, or at lheikkila (at) tpt.org.

Thanks for reading, and watching…

Luke

If firefights and bomb blasts are what you are looking for, tune to G4′s “Bomb Patrol Afghanistan” instead. Heikkila’s 30-minute effort, which has its broadcast premiere Sunday, is more about shovels and seeds than rifles and bullets.

It is a sincere and intelligent look at a daunting effort in a country stung by three decades of war and Taliban rule; where corruption is endemic and the literacy rate in the province hovers around 1 percent for women and 10 percent for men.

The entire review can be read here.

My next post, Friday, will be an exciting one.  In it I will share, in advance of its broadcast, the documentary in its entirety.

Until then some more photos, thanks for reading…Luke

At the same time that I was wrapping up production on Bridging War & Hope I was also putting the finishing touches on Treasures Collected, Treasures Shared.  Treasures Collected was done in collaboration with the Hennepin County Library.  Their downtown Minneapolis branch houses a special collection.  The special collection is vast.  For the purpose of this blog, because I think there may be some military historians amongst the regular readers, I’m going to point out the Library’s collection of WWII-era war posters.

Here are a couple examples.

Posters of World War II includes posters from the Kittleson Collection published from approximately 1939 to 1945. The posters illustrate a variety of themes including patriotism, recruitment, vigilance, conservation of resources, and the value of doing one’s job well. Reproductions of most posters can be ordered online.

My colleague Andi McDaniel produced a short video in which the head of the Special Collection, Ted Hathaway talks about the type of posters they house.  Check it out.

If you’re a WWII historian, or someone who simply likes to look at the design styles of the 40s check out the Special Collection and pour through the thousands of images of war posters they have.

My friends at Beth El Synagogue have graciously offered to host the event.  They have a beautiful sanctuary, the documentary will have to fight for viewers attention, Beth El’s worship space is stunning.  Stunning too is Beth El’s commitment to the Agribusiness Development Team.  During the course of the year the ADT was in Afghanistan Beth El continuously sent care packages.  Are any of the ADT members of the Beth El community?  No.  Beth El is passionate about providing for Troops.

You’re invited

Below is a downloadable link to a PDF of the invitation.

SCREENING Bridging War and Hope Premier 20 OCT 12-1

The collaboration to make this event happen has been as extraordinary as the collaboration required to get the project off-the-ground and ultimately completed.  Time and time again I am impressed not just by our Military community but by how our community supports the Military.  October 20th will be a special night, I hope you can make it.

If you cannot make it, no worries there will be a number of places to catch the full documentary.  You’ll be able to find a link for it on the tpt web site, so you can stream it free-of-charge.  If you’d rather watch it on that monster-sized tv you have and live in Minnesota check out our broadcast schedule.

Thanks for reading, hope you can make it on the 20th.

This segment is the tease.  In it I hope to capture a sense of what viewers will see throughout the rest of the program.

This segment will introduce you to a few of the Soldiers who deployed to Zabul, Afghanistan with the Minnesota National Guard.  The 22 Minnesotans and 36 Soldiers from the Mississippi National Guard make up the Zabul Agribusiness Development Team.  In April I spent two weeks with them to bring you this look at their mission and the work they did while I was embedded with them.

The documentary will premiere in Minnesota on October 21, 2012 at 8pm on tptMN.  I’ll post a few more clips before then.  Thanks for reading.

My view from audio

On the final day of creative work I found myself sitting behind an engineer.  This happens a lot during the post-production schedule.  I should be used to this, but for this program it hit home.  Unlike other projects with this one I totally immersed myself in the topic.  Planning, tickets, traveling, embedding, body armor, interviews, editing, refining, watching, re-watching, sweetening, captioning…it’s done.  Wow, now what?

BTW, if you want to check out the planning process this blog is all-inclusive.  Dating back to the day the show was green-lit, to me sending my passport off to Washington, DC in order to get a VISA, to saying good-bye to my family…if you drill back through the pages you’ll be able to read a whole lot of what traveling to Afghanistan to embed with an Army unit is like.  This link will take you to the first page of the blog.  (The oldest posts are at the bottom of each page)

This morning I had a brief instant message session with 1LT Fischer.  Davin, was my guide through Afghanistan.  He was there to answer my planning questions, provide advice, he lined everything up for me, got to know him well.  The essence of his off-the-cuff comments were “Show’s done, and what, I now don’t exist?” Far from the truth.  Though we’re not exchanging nearly as many messages as we did before and immediately after the embed it’s impossible for me not to count down the days along with them.

The Zabul ADT are wrapping things up in their little corner of Afghanistan.  A new unit from Arkansas is heading in.  Awards are being handed out.  Facebook is abuzz with photos and banter about coming home.  As the calendar hits September the 22 soldiers from Minnesota and 36 from Mississippi will know this is the last first-of-the-month they’ll experience in Afghanistan, away from their family and friends.  The same holds true for their family and friends.  Dad, mom, auntie, uncle, grandpa, husband, wife, friend…they’re all coming home soon.  I plan to be at the Armory to help welcome them home and will share that information as it becomes available.

This blog is not quite done.  During the next few weeks you’ll be able to see photos of the homecoming celebration at the Armory near St. Paul and I’ll begin rolling clips from the show out for you all.  Sneak peaks.  You’ve trudged through thousands of my words; it’s about time I reward you for your patience and support.

YOU’VE BEEN IN AFGHANISTAN FOR NINE MONTHS, WHAT DO YOU MISS?

i miss being able to wash my hands with soap and water instead of layer after layer of gooey hand sanitizer.

hot baths.

days off work.

milk shakes made with milk. ice cream made with cream.

beds i don’t fall off of if i roll over in my sleep.

walking on flat , non rocky surfaces.

Minnesota State Fair and all the other fun summer things that involve food on a stick.

What I miss the most ? My sweet little girl snuggled up next to me in bed

 

Of course, first and foremost I miss my girls. Things I also miss:
decent steak
the smell of cut grass
Scotch (decent or other)
cooking

 

Beer, the beach, significant other, hunting, TREES AND VEGETATION, real food..

 

Things I miss:
1. I miss my family. (Daughter’s choir/horse riding; Son’s school/horse riding)
2. Wife (all the implied husband/wife intimacy-not just the dirty stuff)
3. Liquor – Jack Daniels (No7, Gentleman Jack or Single Barrel) Maker’s Mark or other suitable Southern Liquor
4. Freedom of Movement

For me the absolute, without a doubt, thing I miss is to touch and be touched by someone that really matters.  I mean even the simple act of holding hands or a hug…going without that human bond is the worst type of deprivation, followed closely by the complete lack of freedom of movement.

1. Shopping!  I know, I know that sounds dumb coming from a guy, but I love going to Best Buy, Home Depot, Sam’s Club, etc.  I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, even at home, but nothing beats wandering around the aisles trying to rationalize to myself why I absolutely need the latest gadget.
2. My bed
3. My bathroom
4. Civilian clothes – I would love to be able to wear a pair of jeans!
5. My ‘stuff’ -  my tools I hardly use (but they are mine), my motorcycle and all my other gadgets
6. My Sunday morning visits to my Mom & Dad
7. Just hanging out at home, with Kate & the kids, not doing anything…

 

I’ve never been a Soldier, never will be.  I have pretended to be one for a couple of weeks and I can clearly echo these thoughts.  Go a summer without smelling cut grass; you’ll miss it.  Go a spring, summer and fall without cracking a cold beer on your patio; I cannot go a week without doing this.  Enjoy walks, shopping, wandering.  I miss my kids after one day; one year seems impossible.  I enjoy my weekends, you do too.  Soldiers have no weekends.  I’m not going to jump on my soap box and tell you to thank a Soldier, but at the very least be appreciative for the things you can do after you walk away from your computer.  Hug your kids.  Water your garden.  Cook an omelet for yourself.

To learn more about going without I encourage you to check out LTC Daniel Bohmer’s blog.  Bohmer is one of the 22 Minnesota National Guard soldiers in Zabul.  Back in March of 2012 he wrote about what he missed most.

Are the above paragraphs not exactly what you were looking for?  I have it on decent authority that a number of people searching “What do deployed soldiers miss?” are interested in sending their Soldier a care package.  Based on their experiences the Soldiers of the ADT also provided me with some information to pass on to you.

WHAT WOULD YOU SUGGEST PEOPLE SEND TO THEIR SOLDIERS?:

Beef jerky
magazines that aren’t 1.5 years old
the occasional energy drink
chips of any kind
smoked almonds (I recommend wasabi soy)
goofy props from the dollar store that can be used in ridiculous horseplay (sunglasses, oversized foam fingers)
Pop tarts
NOT clif bars

1. Beef Jerky – (those baby slim jims are the shiznik)
2. Those litle chewy granola bar things (genius)
3. Some kind of gift cards for either Audio books or the kindle/ipad things… I never got my kindle to work, but lots of folks have tablets of one form or another and if they could get gift cards, thy could down load books and stuff.

Continue the list below, share what it is you, as a member of the Military, missed during deployment.  What did you appreciate receiving in care packages?

In Bridging War and Hope the only points in which I felt the need to spell out an acronym in voice over came during an interview with Captain Patrick Foley.  CPT Foley was talking about a specific village and their hesitance to accept advice from the DAIL (Department of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock).  Many villages, he said, are happy with the ANA (Afghan National Army), they like the safety they provide, but on a whole they’re not interested in GIROA (Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) support.

As a spoof, towards the end of my two-week embed with the ZADT (Zabul Agribusiness Development Team), 1LT Davin Fischer wrote a script and recruited three other soldiers to help us illustrate the power of the acronym.

Around the office I’ve tried to incorporate Charlie Mike as a way to wrap meetings…continue mission.  It’s not working.  Yet.

As I type we’re deciding when and where to add in a brief music track.  “How much is too much?”  A lot of the decisions Jerry and I make are based on nothing but experienced hunches.  We’re not performing surgery, much of what we decide is purely subjective.  “Too soon.”  “Not quite right”.  “Got it”.  “You okay with that?”  “Genius, Jerry”  “That’s 12 seconds saved”.  There are hundreds of both right and wrong ways to do this; the goal is to more-often fall on the right side.

The narrator you’ll hear is me.  I’m no Morgan Freeman.   Spending 90 minutes in a recording booth provided an exercise that took me out of my comfort zone.  I’m still getting used to hearing my voice as it gets married to the video, but it fits.  My hope is that having me voice the doc will add to a the personal nature of this story.  By ‘personal’ I don’t mean me.  I mean the personal way I’m telling the story of the Agribusiness Development Team in Zabul. The camera work feels personal.  The interviews feel personal.  Voicing it with someone who wasn’t there would create distance.  Nothing about this piece is distant.  It’s all right there in front of you.

One of the lines of narration reads:

Traveling lightly with a couple of small cameras and the aide of the Minnesota National Guard I spent two weeks embedded with the Unit to experience their mission in Zabul.

This line sets up the premise that I’m the guy behind-the-camera, I’m the narrator, this is what I saw.  This is what I want you to see.

Jerry continues trimming sound bites to get the show in at 26:40 (a tpt half-hour).  After a few more days and Bridging War & Hope will be done.  It’ll be both bitter and sweet.  More on that later.

Thanks for reading.