Frederic Lumiere (WWII in HD)

Frederic Lumiere is an award-winning filmmaker and an industry recognized leader in the fields of HD production and post-production.  He is one of the producers and directors of the 10-hour mini-series WWII in HD, airing on the History Channel beginning November 15, 2009 at 9PM ET.  His first feature film, Tomorrow is Today starring Scout Taylor Compton (Rob Zombie's Halloween) has received 11 awards to day.  He has also produced, directed and edited award-winning programming for Cinemax, A&E, History Channel and Biography Channel.

I sat down with the director to discuss his latest project, among other things.

AJ GARCIA: You’ve been a pioneer in the HD platform helping to create a viable platform for HDV editing on Mac as well as having a hand in the creation of the Red Digital Camera. What kind of new techniques did you have in mind in your approach towards the making of WII In HD?

FREDERIC LUMIERE: From the very start, WWII in HD was a huge technical challenge. First, we wanted to derive the best quality possible from films shot in the line of combat sixty plus years ago. We knew that we had to deliver striking quality when possible -- after all the show is called WWII in HD! The good news is that Lou Reda Productions (producers of WWII in HD) is a world leader in war footage archives, so the knowledge of how to work with very old damaged footage was already in house. For the footage coming from the National Archives, we used very expensive digital file scanners.  Essentially, each frame of film is digitally scanned and cleaned and as a result, we get an HD quality digital file that we can edit right in our timeline. For other types of footage, we actually used the RED camera in a telecine configuration. What that means is that we shoot the film projected at 4K resolution which is 4 to 5 times the resolution of HD.  Jim Jannard (founder of RED) and his team helped us a lot with equipment and technical expertise.  That was the first technical challenge.

The next goal was to categorize, log and make the footage available to the producers, writers, researchers and editors.  A very large team. With almost 3,000 hours of footage - how do you find a Marine with a grenade launcher in Tarawa? There is no way to get around that one, it just took a lot of time and a lot of eyeballs. We created an exhaustive database with searchable keywords for every frame of every hour of almost 3,000 hours of footage! That project alone took virtually a year. But as a result, when your query is done, you can watch the clips while reading the description. It is my understanding that Lou Reda Production now has one of the most comprehensive, if not the single most comprehensive, databases of color WWII footage in the world! No corners were cut in accomplishing this colossal feat and mainly it is because Lou and Scott Reda both have a deep passion and respect for the subject matter. I think that for them, WWII in HD was not only a show but a mission: categorizing and preserving these lost treasures. What legacy that is for a man like Lou Reda, who has dedicated his life to telling the stories of our war heroes. I must add that there also is a great benefit in going the distance in that project. Many more seasons of WWII in HD can be made from that 3,000 hours (we used less than 10!).  So much incredible footage was never used…

Finally, because of my history with Jim and the RED camera, I really wanted to shoot the contemporary footage with the RED ONE. If it's good enough for Steven Soderbergh and Peter Jackson, it was certainly good enough for us. The whole tone of the series is very much like a feature film and the RED ONE also had a very big part to play in accomplishing this. It's like shooting 35mm. The contemporary 'interviews' were shot more like scenes in a feature. When we pitched the approach to History, we kept on bringing up the scene in Titanic, when the old lady looks at the wreck of the Titanic from the sub and it throws her back in time. We did similar things with our vets. As Jack Werner starts talking about arriving in NY in 1939, his voice merges into Justin Bartha's voice and the shot of the NY street today transforms into the same street sixty plus years ago.
 
AJ: It would seem that some of the footage located would be extremely delicate. Was there ever any worry that you would lose some in the process of cleaning them up for the series?

FL: Yes! at times, after taking a film out of the canister for the first time 60 years after it was shot, Tom Schinstine (our engineer and projectionist extraordinaire) would tell us that he thought we could only project the film once. So we did and made sure all the settings were correct on the RED!  Sometimes, the film was not recoverable.

AJ: With new footage of the war and the opportunity to retell the war using images from a new generation's perspective, with this much information at your fingertips, what did you hope to accomplish as far as a new message to this up and coming generation?

FL: What a great question, AJ. I think that for most of us, and I know that it was the case for Scott, Lou and Liz Reph, my co-producer, we considered this series as the most important thing we've ever worked on, and probably will for a while. It had to be that way for the type of sacrifice in hours and energy that was required to pull this off. I have two little girls under the age of 3 and I was able to put them to bed 5 times in one year! We would frequently sleep just a few hours and get right back to work. Sammy Jackson, the lead editor actually slept next to his editing bay on a blowup mattress many times!  But I think that all of us always felt that it was a small sacrifice compared to the very real sacrifice a whole generation of Americans made in order to save the world. Can you really complain about how tired you are when you're telling the story of the Battle of the Bulge? Anyway, that's the frame of mind we were all in when we did this thing and we wanted to translate that passion to the new generation by speaking their language. What is the new generation's language? Video games, special FX, stuff blowing up. So we went all out and made the battles as loud, intense, horrifying and, most importantly, as real as possible. But that's just the beginning. That brings them in. Then we told personal stories of families broken apart. Men weeping when they see the horrors of war. Civilians and little kids suffering beyond words. I don't necessarily have an issue with realistic war video games where kids shoot each other on screen. I just wish the other side of war was just as present in those games. I wish that the game forced you to attend a funeral for the fallen comrades after each level. wish that the gamer would have to give water to a 2 year old Japanese girl who is shaking uncontrollably before he can move on to the next level. With WWII in HD, they'll get to see that in a very real and visceral way. War isn't glamorous, it's horrible.
 
AJ: What sparked the search for 16mm color footage from the war and how much red tape did you have to go through in order to obtain the material?

FL: I think that for most people this would've been a very difficult if not impossible task. You have to understand who Lou Reda is in order to fully appreciate my answer to your question. He is the Grandfather of war documentaries. It is his life's work.  He has produced hundreds and hundreds of hours of war doc programing. Name a war, a battle, he's done it.  He also happens to be an incredibly charming man. And Lou used every contact he had and brought the goods home! When Lou calls a high ranking General in the Marine Corps on his cell phone, a truck shows up in the morning at our doorstep with hundreds of color reels from the Marines Corps. And that is just one example. He is probably the most respected documentarian in the military world by military people.  And there are reasons for this. Let me give you an example. Lou walked by an editing bay while we were working on the end of the Guadalcanal bloody ridge battle and he happened to watch the titles on screens that said "While 1,200 Japanese soldiers were killed, only 40 Marines died". He pulled me aside and said "Frederic, I love what you did but do me a favor, never use 'only' when you quote how many Marines died. One Marine is way too many."  That's why Lou is great. By the way, we all call him Mr. Reda around the office.
 
AJ: During the series there are very graphic, almost heartbreaking to watch, moments. Seeing as how it would have been the first time for many, especially the editors of the film footage, to see these images what kind of psychological struggles were endured while looking through the footage? I felt overwhelmed at times viewing only a small fraction of footage that was used so I have to wonder.

FL: I cringed and shuddered and even cried some. So did everyone else. War is horrible.
 
AJ: Did the new footage and stories of WWII bring any new realizations to what we’ve come to know about that particular war for you in general?

FL: Yes - many things. I never realized just how young and inexperienced the soldiers were. We call them The Greatest Generation but as Jack Werner, one of our characters who is now 92 years old says so well - they didn't start as the greatest generation. War made them great. But they were young 18 and 19 year olds, just like the young men today. This generation had a destiny with History and they rose up to the occasion.

Also the ferocity of the Japanese was a surprise to me. They did not give up.  Even when they knew it was all over for them. Interestingly enough, that attitude toward country and honor served us very well with the 442nd, which was made up of Japanese American soldiers.  Jimmie Kanaya explains it so well when he says, "You don't dishonor your country," might it be Japan or the USA. The 442nd is one of the most decorated regiments in the army.

Finally, the big surprise for me was how unprepared and inferior of a fighting force we were when we were attacked in Pearl Harbor. We were about to fight a world war on both sides. To the East and to the West. Against the well trained Nazi machine and against the Empire of Japan and we had only the 13th largest military in the world, ranked after Romania! Needless to say, within just a few months we ramped up our capabilities and that was the result of a whole country pitching in.

AJ: Six of the interviewees were available to recollect their experiences in the war. What motivated you to use voice over narration for all twelve instead of allowing those six to tell their own stories and using voice over narration for th others?

FL: Because hearing the voices in the present makes the person much more real and that's what we wanted to put across. Every one of these guys aren't just a black and white soldier fighting a distant war. They are real men and women with real families, hopes and aspirations and some, lives that ended too early. This isn't the story of WWII as much as it is the story of twelve Americans who you will grow to love and appreciate. When you really break down the approach, it's more of a drama series like Band of Brothers than it is a docu series. You meet characters throughout the episodes and you periodically revisit them, sometimes not for a few episodes.
 
AJ: Was the casting of Ron Livingston intentional after his work on the much praised HBO series Band of Brothers?

FL: Not necessarily intentional as much as when his name was presented to us it made sense. Ron was really into it. He studied Charles Scheffel's mannerisms and accent and really wanted to become him. I think he did a really good job.

AJ: The process and ingenuity for creating this documentary puts WWII In HD on a pedestal that I don't see being touched by any other series for awhile. How far, after the series airs, do you think the technology that made it possible will evolve and how soon?

FL: Thanks for saying that. It's good to hear the praises after so much work but I'm sure that you know that pulling something like that off has to be an incredible team work effort. It's a colossal task really.  It just takess many dedicated and talented people to accomplish what we were able to accomplish. To name a few, Liz Reph is my co-producer and I can't even start to think of how we could've done it without her. To this day I'm still convinced that she has 3 identical looking sisters running around because it isn't humanly possible to accomplish as much as she does in 20 hours a day (she doesn't sleep much). In editorial, we were so lucky to have some of the best editors in the business. Sammy Jackson, whom I mentioned earlier, really shaped the tone of the show and the fresh approach to treating battles the way we did.  Sammy has done hundreds of war docs and he really embraced the vision because it had never been done like that before. Liz, Sammy and I would sit in a room and explore how to treat the bombing of Pearl harbor for instance. Sammy had treated Pearl Harbor in a dozen films before! How could we do it in a way that had never been done? I'll let your readers discover how we did it Sunday night! ;) We had great editors like Alex Hall who edits The Wire, Jackie Cambas Mermaids and incredible new talent like Sal Levin, Lucas Abel, Steve Heffner, too many editors to mention them all…Our writer, Bruce Kennedy shaped the stories in a masterful way. He was able to intertwine the complexity of the story of WWII with personal stories in a seamless way.  We also had an incredible asset "our secret weapon" and his name is Marty Morgan. Marty was the curator of the WWII museum. He's young, but is an absolute authority on WWII. He can look at a rough cut and point out exactly why a piece of footage is inappropriate. And the reason often amazed me! "This Marine's boots were issued 5 months after the initial landing of North Africa." or "Can't use him, he has an M1 riffle and they didn't have them in Guadal." I called him the Rainman of WWII, only more eloquent. Anyway, projects like that don't come along often. It was the perfect storm (in a good way). It started with Nancy Dubuc (Head of History) innovative vision on how to make History entertaining and fresh, David McKillop's (Head of programming at History) goal of creating the new standard for WWII and continued with an incredible company like Lou Reda Productions and incredibly talented and passionate people and inspiring Veterans like Jack Werner, Jack Yusen, Rocky Blunt, Shelby Westbrook, Jimmie Kanaya and Charles Scheffel.

As far as the technology, interestingly enough - I think it played only a small part in the final product. Dedication played a much much bigger role. Plus the novelty of watching WWII in HD can only last for a while. Good stories with compelling characters keep viewers interested.

AJ: What's next for you now that you've wrapped up this project?

FL: Where do you go from here? It's difficult. I think the key is to find something that fuels your passion because filmmaking is a heck of a lot of work with little sleep for a long time! I'm exploring working on different projects at the moment, but am also developing a series on Vietnam which is another incredibly visual war with amazing stories. I also have another WWII idea in mind that I'm developing - but it has to offer something fresh and mind-blowing, something no one's ever done before.

WWII in HD airs on History Channel Sunday, November 15 2009 @ 9PM ET.  You can checkout our review here.