The general public traditionally has received its history lessons from the hands of historians, usually with a loss of the human side of the experience and focusing more on facts and data. “History is a vast storehouse from which we take what we need. But we must choose wisely; we must select” (Film History 2000, 131). First-hand accounts, usually written decades after the event, dull facts, committing traumatic experiences to long-term memory. These events, for those who actually experienced them, are memories that often lie subverted, away from the conscience of the general public. Crew 19 is a personal World War II history told through interviews with two veterans (one of whom is a relative of mine) with support from archival facts and supplemental information. The resulting narrative video documentary is illustrated by merging specific archival film and images, physical re-enactments, and digital compositing, utilizing various Multimedia applications.

Crew 19 is meant to be an immersive experience, reminiscent of my close relationships with those involved. The process has been personally evolutionary. The research continues to lead to new discoveries. My introduction to the Master of Fine Arts program in Electronic Visualization had me wondering how I could combine the functionality of the programs that I would learn with my passion for history. The challenge was to find a way of portraying narrative events through an artist’s eye by focusing on the human element and content, yet adhering to the facts of the story. However, the emergence of the facts as well as the procurement of supplemental material was made possible through the use of the Internet, not only as a research tool, but as a visual interface. “In an era that has become practically defined not only by the effects of ‘mass media’ but by the interweaving of many media, films today rarely stand alone” (Telotte 2001, 32). Such is the case with Crew 19, a project made successful through the interaction of the web.

My previous art background involved illustrating historical events in the traditional method of paint and canvas. Not only was the subject being depicted, but accuracy in the background elements was just as important, and a particular mood had to be evoked through the use of color scheme and composition. The notion of portraying these events based on fact is one that demands thoroughness in preparation (Ferris 1978, 4). All of the assimilated information is compressed into a specific moment in time, with the intent of the artist being to evoke the maximum amount of drama out of the situation while maintaining a strong aesthetic sense. One of the benefits of the newer medium of electronic visualization is the element of action through time. Much like a director can choreograph a motion picture, the tools of the computer artist allow one to create a true multimedia experience. The concept of trompe l’oleil, to trick the eye, becomes a facet of bringing to life an event which previously had been relegated to the mute pages of a black and white historical text.

My personal experiments and experiences with electronic visualization left me with a confidence that this method is a viable way for historians, artists, and storytellers to educate their audience in a very strong, poignant, and effective way, more so than traditional books, illustrations, or paintings. As I became more proficient with the various software applications, a common thread within the content of what I had created emerged, but several pieces of the puzzle still were missing. The creation of a website for my work served as a structure for the collection of material that was being gathered. In addition, it put me in contact with other veterans who were directly and indirectly involved with my relative’s experience. This first-hand communication prompted me to encourage these individuals to write their memoirs, and supplement them with as much relevant media as they could offer. The subsequent archiving of these newer findings on the internet led me to search out how other oral histories had been recorded. “The study of World War II combat soldiers has undergone a rebirth in recent years, and, as the generation that fought the ‘Good War’ disappears, historians have reconsidered our received notions about the men that did the fighting” (Fagelson 2001, 96). I realized that my window of opportunity was very narrow. I referenced several authors and screen directors for examples. Among the most influential were the books The Greatest Generation and The Greatest Generation Speaks by Tom Brokaw, Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose, the movie Saving Private Ryan by Stephen Spielberg, the movie 12 O’Clock High! based on the novel by Sy Bartlett and Beirne Lay, the PBS documentary They Drew Fire directed by Brian Lanker, and the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War.

What makes the recreation of a historical event a novel concept? Hasn’t Hollywood been doing this for years? The History Channel is currently championing this very concept, and is leaving the customary Hollywood tradition of embellishing fact for the sake of a good story by the wayside. I believe the use of the internet for archiving historical data, including written and oral narratives, supplemental visual information, and Quick Time movies enhances the learning experience for students of history. This allows for a much more immersive method of historical story-telling that can be created and presented from a level much less lofty than that of a Hollywood screen director. This opens the door for the creation and visualization of a whole realm of untold stories by historians, educators, and artists.

Through the centuries, fine artists have utilized their skills as painters and sculptors to capture in time a specific moment or event. Kingdoms, empires, churches, dictatorships and democracies have commissioned the services of their best visual artists to document their greatest achievements as a visual record for posterity. This visual method was the most expedient in terms of relating events to the general public, in that until recent times, only scholars or those well educated had access to written histories or texts. It was left to the artists to educate the masses in a way that could easily imprint the content of the depiction on the widest cross-section of the populace. This has, however, limited the perspective of specific events to rather one-sided interpretations. In Darwinian fashion, survival of the fittest dictates that the winner is left to write the histories.

The purpose of art is something that also remains dynamic. Today’s educated society finds high art a means of personal and social expression, constantly challenging the perception of what is acceptable and pushing the envelope of avant-garde. Within that context, many of what are considered the Masters of Antiquity could be defined as mere illustrators! Of course, this would be a very narrow-minded view that begs to address issues of content. It remains that one of the greatest qualities of these artists was their ability to convey a narrative, in their own unique, artistic voice. Perhaps the greatest example of a specifically-commissioned narrative work is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Italian Renaissance master Michelangelo, after being commissioned by Pope Julius II della Rovere in 1508. Visitors are exposed to Michelangelo’s artistic depiction of the three epochs of world history accepted by the church: the era before the Ten Commandments; the era between Moses and the birth of Jesus; and the Christian era. As a commissioned artist hired to illustrate given scenes, Michelangelo used his own artistic license to create and evoke the emotion and drama essential to visualize such a wide pantheon of theological history, and to appeal to the largest cross-section of the masses.

Variations in styles of art are boundless. Artistic personality often can be identified through several examples of history’s most famous works. Francisco de Goya’s May 3, 1808 showcases an extraordinary use of a limited color palette, effective lighting, and composition to emphasize the horrors of the execution of several Spanish citizens of Madrid defying Napoleon’s troops. The center of attention focuses on the illuminated face of a citizen with his arms upraised, while the faceless soldiers, colored with grays and browns, appear as automatons. The most famous example from the 20th century is undoubtably Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, inspired by the massive German air raid on the Spanish town on April 26, 1937, in which scores of civilians were killed. Picasso used his own form of symbolism and imagery which, to this day, remains unexplained, yet has provided an unending flow of questions and speculation. The very notion of portraying a specific event in time forces the artist to interject the work with speculation and artistic elements which are then combined with the significant and distinguishing aspects of the event. The end result, which is the compression of all of these elements, can tinge the actual event with a touch of theatrical melodrama. An example of this is the famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware by German-borne artist Emanuel Leutze in 1851. Although the image has become imprinted on the minds of millions, Leutze used more than a touch of imagination and artistic license when looking at the facts that the river crossing was made in the dark of night, during an intense snow storm, in much smaller, flat-bottomed boats, in which Washington surely would have had the presence of mind not to stand. It does, however, make for quite a dramatic work. It is the power of suggestion at work, conveyed through a sense of reality, atmosphere, and energy (Smith 1999, 31).

Another method of documenting events emerged in the mid-19th century. It was then that the camera was used to document the horrors of war. Roger Fenton first used it during The Crimean War (1854-1856) and Matthew Brady documented the American Civil War (1861-1865). The camera immediately stripped away any pretensions of glamour and romance of the spectacle of the battlefield, and for the first time it could bring to the general public an awareness of what could be so boldly dramatized and glorified so boldly. “Truth to detail was a large issue in the mid-century, and the camera, it seemed, would go far toward what was called realism in art” (Ponsold 1988, 5). Fenton’s photo The Valley of the Shadow of Death became one of the first uses of the photograph as propaganda. It showed the barren battlefield strewn with cannonballs that was immortalized in Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade. Upon viewing an exhibition of Matthew Brady’s photographs in a show entitled Antietam Dead, a correspondent in New York reported the effect of the photographs upon its viewers: “Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it....” (www.learner.org)

Much in the way that a painting froze a moment in time, the photograph seemed to capture and embody much more than just what was being documented, bearing out the popular cliche “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Yet unlike a painting, photographs were relatively quick and cheap in comparison to commissioning a specific painting. With this, historical illustration would find itself forever taking a backseat in favor of film. Photography became the domain of artists and intellectuals who, although highly ambivalent in their responses, were not indifferent to the “magical properties” of the photograph (Ponsold 1988, 5).

The utilization of the motion picture camera in the 20th century opened the door for visual storytelling, in the form of dramatic re-enactments and also in the form of journalistic reporting. “People are hungry worldwide for information, opinion, analysis, and commentary” (Allen 1991, 233). In terms of historical events, these re-creations again relied on compression of fact with melodrama in conveying the content. Documentary footage rarely captured the key points of the events being told, due to the fact that survival and self-preservation would usually override any immediacy being documented, and most footage was used merely to supplement the storyline. A prime example of how an artist could blaze new trails within the constructs of artistic, technological, and cultural importance is the animation The Sinking of The Lusitania by Winsor McCay (1918). In this landmark animation, McCay introduced the world to an embryonic form of war correspondence, as well as refining new techniques to the equally embryonic world of animation. The technique of narrating the story with separate text shots is used throughout the piece. McCay’s animated characters were less caricaturized than traditional cartoons, and attention was paid to protagonist/antagonist roles. Much in the same way we view news reports today, McCay gives us the details of the story intermingled with B-roll, or supplemental footage, illustrating actual people with photographs. McCay’s work also serves as an early form of propaganda, inflaming the American public opinion against the German’s deliberate attack on a seemingly harmless passenger ship, while ignoring the fact that the ship was laden with war munitions being sent to England, making it a legitimate target.

The vast majority of oral histories find themselves being relegated to pages in history books, or microfilmed in the vast depositories of the national archives in the country of its origin. Evidence of record keeping goes back to the Sumerians, before 2000 BC (Film History 2000, 131). Those stories that do see the visual light of day most likely do so on the budgets of deep-pocketed production facilities. Hollywood, like many of the previous examples of artists, has traditionally interjected its own brand of storytelling with artistic license. However, this habit quickly becomes a “collection of reused parts that amounts to far more than the politically correct whole...concerned with the alienation brought on by the simultaneously positive and negative modernism of the twentieth century” (von Dassanowsky 2001, 18). Visual devices become readily identifiable and expected, making such movies predictable to a fault, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Recently, there have been several examples of major motion pictures that focus more intently on accurately portraying the realities of a historical situation, even if the storyline itself is a fictitious account. In this recent rebirth of public interest, the shift can be attributed to the fact that “men who had seen real combat were more likely to recognize and resent false portrayals of it- the continued use of call and response and its application to nearly all Hollywood films suggests that a deeper process was at work...something more than simply ‘showing off’ ” (Fagelson 2001, 95). As an artistic device, this focus falls in line with the tenets of naturalism, as opposed to the more dramatic style of romanticism.

Background

As a student of history, I have felt challenged to illustrate the stories or scenes that have emerged in my mind’s eye. As a child, I was constantly attempting to illustrate the stories I read about in the books that I had, but now, with the benefit of hindsight, I find it interesting to go back and see how far my imagination strayed from the facts. This deviation was something I hoped to avoid in illustrating the story I chose for my project. How can one be sure not to taint the accuracy of the event being depicted by interjecting it with too much artistic license? Before I attempted to begin, I had to decide how wide the scope of the story should be.

The story began in the spring of 1998 when my grandmother gave me a copy of a memoir recently written by her first cousin, Johnny Butler. At that time, I had not met Johnny. The account detailed Johnny’s experience as the pilot of a B-17 Flying Fortress, commanding a 10-man crew on bombing missions over German-held Europe in 1943 during World War II. Johnny’s crew successfully flew 13 harrowing missions before being shot down over France on September 16, 1943. Three of his crew were killed, five were taken as prisoners by the Germans, one crewman escaped to Spain, and Johnny escaped to Switzerland. The account read like a Hollywood screenplay, and I was captivated by the drama of it. I was so captivated that it motivated me to meet Johnny, who lived in Shreveport, Louisiana, and attempt to learn more of the details first-hand. Over the next year, I made several trips to his home and gradually established a relationship with Johnny that allowed me to extract stories and information that most veterans choose to keep buried, due to a lack of understanding on the part of those they with whom they share them. This is something I have experienced with the majority of the veterans I have come to know, and I have learned the necessity of establishing trust prior to asking personal information. Johnny’s story was made more interesting in that he had recently been contacted by the citizens of the small town in France where his plane had crashed. They wished to return parts of his plane to America. This prompted Johnny to track down the surviving members of the crew. He successfully found all but one. I was aware of several of the loose ends that yet had to be taken care of. I was determined to help in any way I could.

Research and Application

As I entered into graduate study, I kept Johnny’s story at the forefront of my attention, and elements of this found its way into several of my early projects. One of the first was a 30-second pencil-test animation I created entitled Reflections, based on the delicate and fragile stories he recently told me. They were not something one could just sit down and discuss off-the-cuff, but conversations which had to be nurtured and evolve, taking one to a different place in time, with all the immediacy of the event as if it had just happened. I chose to illustrate this by depicting an old man raking leaves in his yard, whose attention is diverted by a flock of birds passing overhead in formation. As he glances up at them, he visualizes them as a formation of planes, one of which is struck and begins to plummet to earth on fire. As the plane descends, it changes into a leaf, which lands on a larger pile of leaves. For me, I wanted to imbue as much symbolism as I could in 30 seconds. The Glenn Miller song Sentimental Journey plays over the piece, alluding to the memory/flashback significance of what is happening. The descending leaf is representative of Johnny’s particular crew. The pile of leaves that the leaf ultimately lands on signifies the thousands of others that had previously fallen.

This was the theme I would ultimately keep as the signpost of my thesis as it evolved. Over the next year, I began to post Johnny’s story on the Internet, and gradually learned more and more about the bigger picture. I was able to locate the missing man of the crew, and organized a reunion for all seven survivors in Savannah, Georgia, in May 1999. This allowed me to meet the other crew members in person, and coax them into sharing their versions of the story in the same way that I had done with Johnny. With these latest accounts, I was able to expand the content of the website, and it was not very long before people in cyberspace began contacting me with all sort of information to add. This came mostly from veterans and family members of veterans of Johnny’s unit, the 384th Bomb Group. Other queries came from fellow researchers, citizens in England who lived near the group’s original airfield, as well as citizens in France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, and Denmark who had information to share regarding the group. This came in the form of personal histories and accounts, photos, and information regarding crash-site locations, aircrew who escaped, aircrew who were captured, as well as information on and from the German pilots that flew against them.

The website (www.384thbombgroup.com) has continued to evolve, and to date now contains more than 200 individual HTML pages, as well as more than 400 original, unpublished photographs. The site has been officially adopted by the 384th Bomb Group, Inc., and has earned me an Honorary Membership, of which I am very proud. It also has been linked to several prominent historical archive, research, and museum websites, giving my research an unqualified credibility. It is my intent to earn the proper credit over the next several years as I consolidate the information I have accumulated and publish the work as an official history of the group.

The Video

As I learned the software applications introduced in graduate study, I realized that they were directly applicable to the medium of video. In terms of telling a rather lengthy, detailed story, I found I could best illustrate it with the most attention and accuracy through the use of video, in the form of a documentary. The fact that video is time-based in contrast to a single still image, as in a painting, gave me the opportunity to delve deeper into the story, illustrating as much as I chose. Although I knew the story through the account Johnny had written, I felt it would be more significant to have it told by the members of the crew. The storyline would ultimately be pieced together from elements of two separate interviews: one with Johnny, and one with his flight engineer, Joe Turlington, from St. Louis, Missouri. The initial plan was to interview all of the crew members, but lack of a budget, as well as time considerations, quickly dictated that I work with what I could get. I ended up with more than five hours worth of video footage to edit, consisting of Beta SP quality and standard VHS tape. The interviews were typical question/answer interviews, yet were done on a personal level in a relaxed atmosphere. All questions were geared to prompt an answer that could be used without actually hearing the question, once edited out. The reason for this was that I did not want to appear, as the interviewer, as an outside party prompting the discussion. My goal was to have the subjects present their stories as if they were speaking directly to the viewer. My approach to this came from an outline that I had written detailing what I knew of their story, providing a framework of what I could expect to hear. Of course, I would not know what I would have to work with until I viewed what was on the tape. Upon completion of the interviews, I then began to edit key segments down into a workable piece. The five hours of tape was whittled down into a very engaging 30-minute account told by both Johnny and Joe. As the story evolved, I was able to break it into chapters that elicited the feel of a visual book.

During the early stages of this process, I viewed Ken Burns’ documentary, The Civil War. I was moved by the way in which he illustrated and encapsulated the various cameos which make up the piece. I chose to emulate this style, and felt lucky that I was at least able to have my particular story told first-person by those who lived it. This worked well, up to a certain point. Although the story seemed fairly cohesive, it became obvious that there were gaps that could use a bit more description, or areas that needed better transition from one chapter to the next. I resolved this by providing a third-party narrative, which provided necessary information in the aforementioned areas. It also allowed me to create introduction and epilogue sections that otherwise would have been much more difficult to integrate without being obtrusive. Once these audible bridges were in place, I could then begin to visualize the story that was now in front of me.

Supplemental Elements

Now that the framework for the story was in place, how should I go about illustrating it? The time I had invested researching the 384th Bomb Group yielded me a treasure trove of original photographs which were relevant to the story. It also turned up several sources of original and archived home movies that had originally been shot on 8mm film, and were later transferred to VHS format. The chance to use this for the first time was too much to resist. The supplemental video and photographs came from members of the 384th Bomb Group, the 305th Bomb Group, the German veterans of Jagdgeshwader 71, and portions of the 1943 William Wyler documentary The Memphis Belle from the National Archives and Records Administration. The vast majority of all the World War II documentary footage has become public domain, as well as the relevant military records, which facilitate research provided one has the persistence to search for proverbial needles in haystacks. All of this footage was fine for depicting generic scenes, but I wished to illustrate the actual scenes that Johnny and Joe were describing. My solution was to stage re-enactments. This necessitated the purchase of authentic World War II flight gear, and the intent of staging the scenes from an actual Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, of which there are only 12 flyable examples left in the world.

The opportunity to do this came in the form of an air show which I organized in the city of Starkville, Mississippi, on May 26, 2001. With the help of several corporate sponsors and volunteers, I was able to arrange for a B-17, as well as 20 other World War II-vintage aircraft, to participate in the event. By doing so, I was able to obtain shots of the re-enactments from the interior of the plane as well as shooting air-to-air video of the B-17 in flight.

With this additional footage edited in place, the challenge then became to coalesce all the elements from their obvious differences in quality into a final version that felt fluid and cohesive. My approach to this came from my original animation, Reflections. The notions of “flashbacks” or recollections of memories found me looking for ways to make the footage appear as if it was a glimpse of the storyteller’s own view of the story, fading in and out of collective memory. This was done primarily through the use of digitized segments of illustrative material, layered and edited with Adobe AfterEffects 5.0. Recreations were slowed down and blurred slightly, as if appearing in a dream. Areas that required third-party narration were illustrated with original artwork in the form of drawings, oil paintings, and digital imagery.

The final compliment to the project was the use of sound. Just as the visual elements elicited an ephemeral quality, the sound elements would have to follow suit. The recreations were shot without sound, and meant to serve only as a visual element under the narrative. The sound effects that do appear are meant to be macroscopic and immersive instead of overtly direct. They are in the form of atmospheric noise, voice chatter, natural elements, and droning, repetitive engine sounds, much as what one would recall in a dream. The other major sound element is the use of music. This comes primarily from my acquaintance with singer/songwriter Dwayne O’Brien, formerly of the Grammy-nominated music group Little Texas. Dwayne’s own passion for flight and its history prompted him to produce a CD of original songs that he wrote and recorded, and complemented what I was attempting to do visually. Dwayne also participated in several of the re-creations. In addition there are several 1940’s era swing pieces that impart a feel of the time in which the story took place.

The use of all of these various elements allowed me to realize a much more immersive means of storytelling not found in traditional documentaries, but found only in the most ambitious of projects. It is this combination, utilized with the first-person narrative, that breathes authenticity and believability to the completed piece.

It has not been my intention with this thesis to focus primarily on historical fact as much as it has been to highlight the poignant moments that become by-products of the human experience. It is particularly significant to me in that it pertains to a member of my family, and thus becomes a part of documenting my own family history. There has been a recent rise in interest surrounding the stories from World War II. In some way this documentary may help bring the experiences of the veterans a bit closer to having their stories known and understood by others. From a historical standpoint, I feel fortunate to have obtained the stories first-hand. Once the generation that lived the experience passes on, it will be impossible to retrieve these previously untold stories and preserve them for posterity.

There have been many personal diversions that have resulted from this thesis that have made it a gratifying endeavor to undertake. First and foremost has been my direct involvement with the veterans, and being accepted into their inner circle, usually reserved for their fellow veterans only. To me, it has meant a great deal to be looked upon as a resource as well as a confidant. I feel that it has been therapeutic for several of them to share their personal experiences and gain a bit of personal satisfaction and sense of appreciation in what, for the majority of them, are their twilight years. The different facets of this thesis have brought about functions and events that have served as ways of honoring them, as well as sharing them with the public. It is due to this that not only the research, but the events brought about by it, will continue for me as well as others who participated. The Eagles Over Mississippi air show held in Starkville on May 26, 2001, was deemed such a success that it will become an annual event, bringing the sights, sounds, and experiences of World War II to the general public for years to come.

As a member of the Mississippi Chapter of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, I have already discussed creating a similar video documentary about the group, based on their recently published book which records their history. There also have been discussions of similar applications for University sponsored projects that may evolve out of the video. My artwork will continue along the lines of recreating pivotal moments in aviation history, and through my accumulation of the 384th Bomb Group members’ personal histories, I will ultimately publish their official group history.