When I say “Front Lines” I’m referring to the Trax line that runs in front of our office. There’s nothing like an ACE Hardware semi vs. Trax train wreck to get us out of the 82 degree office–they haven’t turned on our air conditioning yet and it is HOT! I feel like the next news story will be one of us at Combat Films. I can see the headline now, “CFR Employee Can Dodge Bullets but Not Heatstroke”

Either way, enjoy some of the pictures that freed us from our oven.
Truck tipped with UofU Stadium in Background
Police Line *note to self: NO LEFT
Two men survey the damage

Well, sometimes being so close to the action doesn´t provide all the information one would like. We have had a pretty hectic schedule here in Ecuador looking at the smuggling issues on the southern border. In fact, we have only been able to get a glimpse of the news here and there as to the furthering diplomatic crisis taking place over Columbia´s raid into Ecuador last week.

I am not sure, maybe someone can fill me in–is Venezuela supporting FARC? I saw a blurb here on the spanish language news stating something to that effect. If so, maybe Chavez´s ordering ten battalions to the Columbian Venezuelan border is more than a show of force for Ecuador´s territorial integrety.

Sub-national military movements and organizations, even legitimate armies, using a neighboring country´s territory as a safe haven, is nothing new and in fact, was a major source of contention between Russia and Georgia as Chechens were frequenting Georgia to escape the Russian onslaught in their own republic just a few years ago. In the end Shevardnadze appealed to the international community for help and was given an OSCE border monitoring mission to tone down Russian threats to conduct military missions against the Chechens in Georgia.

The Vietnamese used Loas and Campodia to escape US airstrikes and ground operations during the US Vietnamese war as well. More to date, the Taliban and al Qaeda use western Pakistan as a safe haven against US and NATO missions currently taking place in eastern Afghanistan. The PKK operates in northern Iraq, which has resulted in multiple strikes into Iraq by Turkey.

I know this isn´t a news flash to all you students of military history, but with all the hubub here in Ecuador currently I can´t help recall other historical examples and wonder what, if anything, will become of the current diplomatic crisis here. FARC isn´t gone and you have a very rugged tri-border region here that easily supports cross border operation by both government and non-government military forces.

It seems to be evermore prevalent, as people discover new ways to capture and distribute video content. When we started CFR-TV we decided to put a watermark on every episode in the event that they turned up somewhere other than our website. Well, turns out it was a good idea. We were turned onto this familiar clip, now on LiveLeak.com

If you’re not familiar with the episode it can be found in our CFR-TV Archive. It is Episode 18 - Qala-i Jangi: Final Battle which is the sixth part in a seven part series covering the Battle at Qala-i Jangi filmed by CFR’s Dodge Billingsley in 2002.

This has, in turn, left us discussing wether or not to put a watermark on all outlets including DVDs. As for this most recent discovery, we should be grateful it wasn’t taken out of context or altered. Not to mention an additional 55,117 people have seen it. Thanks AllenWatts of Japan, if that’s your real name.

Well, it is an interesting week to be in Ecuador. The current diplomatic row over Columbia´s military strike near Santa Rosa Ecuador, taking out numerous FARC guerrillas and the number two in command, has led to all kinds of excitement and posturing by Columbia, Ecuador and Venezuela. So, we couldn´t have timed being here better. Unfortunately we are on the wrong border. Instead of being north, we have been on the Ecuadorian-Peruvian border examining gas and diesel smuggling into Peru and the government´s action to fight the smuggling trade. There are some very interesting things going on here in the south even if the current military action in the north trumps all other news.
Anyway, that is where we are this week. It isn´t all work though, we managed to get some surfing in yesterday.
Out for now.

We won an Oscar a couple of nights ago, well not really, but our footage was featured in two documentary nominees, the eventual winner, Taxi to the Dark Side, and Operation Homecoming. Our footage of US Marines running through the smoke during the seige of Baghdad in 2003 was the featured footage on the big screen when Operation Homecoming was being announced. To paraphrase Ron Burgundy, “we are kind of a big deal–people know us.”

Ah, what is life if you cant have a little fun with things once and awhile!

“What if America was invaded?” asks the trailer, over scenes of US soldiers confronting Iraqi citizens. “What would you do?” The trailer ends with an image of two men building what appears to be a bomb, indicating that the action is about to begin in “Meeting Resistance,” a documentary film about the Iraqi insurgency. Unfortunately, despite some intriguing material, the film doesn’t deliver on that promise.

Working in Arabic with English subtitles, the directors of Meeting Resistance–Steve Connors and Molly Bingham–cobble together a series of interviews with insurgents in the early days of the occupation, primarily 2003 and 2004. The interviewees never show their faces, speaking behind kaffiyehs or simply eschewing the camera to avoid getting killed or arrested. Often, the camera focuses on a burning cigarette or a set of prayer beads while the subject rants about the motivation behind his or her actions.

Unfortunately, that’s where the film stops. We’re introduced to the characters by their pseudonyms (The Teacher, The Warrior, etc.), but we learn very little about the role they play in the insurgency, or what types of attacks they’ve been involved in. We’re shown images of explosions, the wounded and the dead, but we never get context as to the bigger picture of the evolving situation in Iraq.

The film doesn’t aspire to high storytelling, rather dividing the interviews thematically. For this reason, it feels more like a visual op-ed piece authored by the subjects themselves. But I spent the whole film wondering how credible these people were. They spoke with great and ominous bluster, but never gave any details about tactics or strategies. Men as a rule tend to overstate their own importance. Nothing in the film compels the viewer to believe these guys aren’t doing the same.

You have to respect the courageous reporting by an American and a Brit among groups that were clearly unhappy with the presence of US and British troops in Iraq. Their interviews cover some interesting themes, including the fear of discovery–the groups exhaustively vette prospective initiates, and come to suspect that the filmmakers are snitching them out. But the film lacks context and credibility, and its details would have been far more interesting three years ago.

Trailer: http://meetingresistance.com/trailer.html

With the release of Sony’s new PMW-EX1 it is starting to look more and more like tapeless is in. This is both exciting and disturbing for us here at CFR. We are so very used to the workflow we have developed over the years. Primarily, put a bunch of batteries in one cargo pocket and a bunch of tape stock in the other cargo pocket and shoot! Often we find ourselves in very tight spaces, bare minimum conditions and not a lot of extra time on our hands.

Being out in the field, in Afghanistan or Iraq for example, we are typically shooting–filming, everything. We’ll let the camera roll and when the tape ends, pop it out and throw in another. With the new tapeless cameras one concern we have is not having enough P2 or SxS cards. With the new 32 GB P2 cards coming in at a stifling $1,600 each it is somewhat difficult to drop 10k on them when we could buy 625 HDV tapes, 909 DVCAM tapes or 2,857 Sony Premium tapes for the same price.

The work flow would require us to off load the cards every chance we get which means more gear to haul around. We like to make a redundant back up of all our footage so that would be two external hard drives to pack, unpack, setup and tear down.

All that aside, the new cameras capture stunning images and bring out the most subtle of details. PairofHands.com just posted some side-by-side footage with the new Sony and Panasonic’s new(er) HVX200. You can see just how nice the footage is with these new cameras.

As for us, we’d like to pick up another camera, and we’re unsure if we want to get another V1U or move to a PMW-EX1 (tapeless). We’ll let you know what we do.

There have been some interesting comments related to Abkhazia, posted at CFR-TV Episode 9. Maybe somebody else has a comment. Here is my last, just to catch you up. You will have to go back to CFR-TV 9 to see all previous input. http://www.combatfilms.com/cfrtv_archive_0009.asp

Again, I am not sure where you are getting your facts but only 300 Abkhaz killed? Not even close. Have you been to the post war cemetaries in Sukhumi, Guadata, Pitsunda…. The real crime is that there hasn’t been any serious academic book on the topic to date, and most people don’t have any real appreciation for what happened.

You are right about the Chechens being involved, both Basaev and Galeav brought their battalions into Abkhazia. Shamil got there first and his 100 or so volunteers, if that many, were critical in the Abkhaz victory in Gagra.

However, before that happened the Georgian’s seized Ochamchira and were on the southern approaches to Sukhumi before being stopped at the Red Bridge. A cease fire was negotiated calling for both the Abkhaz militia and the Georgian forces to pull out the city. The Georgians, however, broke the ceasefire and the Abkhaz militia ended up holding on the north banks of the Gumista River. At that point the war became not much more then the Abkhaz pounding the Georgians in Sukhumi with artillery while the Georgians tried in vain to strike north across the Gumista River. It wasn’t until the following September that another ceasefire was brokered, this time the Abkhaz broke it, and pushed the Georgians out of the capital.

About 80,000 Georgians fled via the Kodori corridor, on foot. Interesting fact, all the heights just to the east of the sole tunnel on the route were covered by Abkhaz who had come down from Shroma. Apparently they sat in overwatch for most of it, from the discussion I have had with both Abkhaz and Georgians.

The fact is, it was, and continues to be, a bad conflict. But genocide it just isn’t–and is a political word meant to galvanize and polarize opinion, hardening resolve to the point that only much greater bloodshed will change the status quo. Moreover both sides have really rewrote their own versions of the whole debacle making it even more difficult for people, and the younger generation, to understand what happened. I guess, sadly, we do that here in the US as well.

For what it is worth, the biggest problem the Georgian’s had was that the militia, army, whatever you call it, that advanced on Sukhumi, was controlled by the Tengiz Kitovani and Jaba Ioseliani, two thirds of the Military Council that brought in Pres Sheverdnadze. These guys, while Georgian patriots, were a pain in Shev’s side and it took Shev more than four years to reduce the power of these two players to a point that he could begin to replace the corrupt national guard and Mkhedrioni with a fledgling professional military.

Had that army been in place in the summer of 1992 we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. Thanks for caring though, awful things happened in the Caucasus all through the 1990s and no body cares.

The purpose of our drive management and digital storage is to organize all media shot for any project into a manageable, organized system. HD has some challenges due to the increased file size. Take the recent film for the Kennedy Center for International Studies at BYU, given the amount of media related to the project, nearly 4,000 GB, and the lack of time as we neared the end of the edit, media is spread across three external hard drives and two internal hard drives.

We are consolidating all media onto four external hard drives of one terabyte or 1,016 gigabytes each for archiving purposes. We are also trying, as much as possible, to divid the footage up between ERS media and other KCTR media. The goal is to have most all ERS footage on two drives (kctr 1 and kctr 2).

We partition each drive into two halves, i.e. kctr_1.1 & kctr_1.2. This is to protect the media on the drive. In the event that some files get corrupt the whole drive isn’t lost. No extra time is needed to place the media files into corresponding folders, it is, however, very worth it and adds to the overall organization and ease of access for future users, again, with no extra work on our end.

While we are moving media between drives we are also placing it into folders (as quicktime files) designated to each specific tape. These folders on the hard drives are concurrent with the folders in Final Cut (see figure 2). This will allow for quick, easy access to future users for any future projects with the media. Imagine having 60-unlabeled tapes in a box or having 60-labeled tapes on a shelf, in order. We are creating the latter of these two scenarios.

There will be a master tape project file on each hard drive and an accompanying paper log. The user will be able to open the master tape project and work from there OR decide what tapes are needed for the project from the paper log, create a new project and then drag only the needed tapes from the hard drive(s) into the new project.

Additional benefits from this organization is the user knows where every media file is and if they wanted an audio clip from a lecture or an interview, they could refer to the paper log, determine what tape it is on, what hard drive the tape is on and access it immediately.

Job Title: Webmaster with Wicked Skills Needed

Company: Combat Films and Research

Combat Films and Research (CFR) is a non-partisan political-military research center that uses photos and video images as a primary research tool. We send camera crews with regional and topical expertise throughout the world to document cultures and conflicts and package that footage and information gathered into analyses in the form of documentary films, educational materials, academic papers, articles, and lectures.

Our office culture is easy going and fun, but highly productive. We dress comfortably around our office, but what we lack in our dress we make up for in our productivity.

We are very team oriented. We ALWAYS communicate with one another as decisions are often made collectively at a moments notice.

Job Descriptions: “The Job”

Website management. Specifically, pulling daily stats for the website and blog, preparing and sending weekly enewsletter, adding new content such as photo galleries, newest DVD release, articles, lectures, art gallery, interviews, CFR-TV episodes… The list goes on.

BASICALLY, the ideal fit would be someone who understands both web design/management and programing (like our the script we had made to send out our enewsletter).

Our workforce is small, but effective so we need a strong arm in the web development arena. The webmaster is an important role for CFR as it is the only channel in which we advertise, promote and reach individuals outside our traditional venues, including PBS, Channel 4 UK, BBC etc.

As we are a small workforce we all fill many shoes. From time to time you may be tasked to transcribe, research, answer a phone call or two, take our the garbage, among other things. We would like this to be a paid internship opportunity for those students who apply so please talk with Career Services and your professors.

If you’re seriously interested you will have looked at the site and know what you need to do. Heck, you may even have ideas of things to do better when we interview you!

Hours: Can You Handle It?

We work your typical 10 to 12 hour day, all holidays and most weekends, BUT for this position it is Part-time and flexible.

Requirements: Your Bag of Tricks

A good knowledge of:
FLASH (blog & website)
DREAMWEAVER
ASP (website)
ASP.NET
PHP (blog)
PHOTOSHOP
MS OFFICE (if you don’t know how to use this software, you probably don’t fulfill our other needs)
Also, creativity and an eye for design and style would be nice. Spelling skills are optional as we use spell check regardless or how many times you won the spelling ‘b’.

How to Apply: Take Your Pick

Your two best options are to email us at info@combatfilms.com or call our office at 801.521.7737. If you don’t have email or know how to use a phone you are probably over-qualified for this position.

You can also call Dodge @ 801.358.7117 or Todd @ 801.450.1806 on their mobile phones.

Keywords: A Few Descriptive Words

Webmaster, website design, website management, photo archivist,