History's 'WWII in HD' puts viewers on front lines
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An archival still shows a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot on his P.51 B Mustang. Soldiers' stories comprise a portion of History's 10-part series "World War II in HD."
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For viewers uninterested in "UFO Hunters," "Gangland" and "Pawn Stars," TV watchers who long for the day when History was known as "the Hitler Channel," your time has come again.
The network, formerly known as History Channel (they've now dropped "Channel" from the network name), returns to its roots with "World War II in HD," a five-night, 10-hour series (9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday) that chronicles WWII with little-seen, almost exclusively color footage that tracks the battles through the stories of 12 people who were there.
So how do you make a WWII program in HD when the technology to film in HD didn't exist until decades after the war?
"The old footage has a lot of clarity to begin with," said Michael Stiller, an executive producer for History. "Most of this footage was 16mm shot in color during the war. We scanned it in frame by frame and converted it to HD, and it gives you an image quality that is basically like the original, whereas if you just transferred it to video you'd get a much degraded image."
Gary Sinese ("Forrest Gump," "CSI: NY") narrates the program, which follows a dozen Americans who served. For the living veterans, History made an unusual choice: Their voices segue into the voices of actors who relate their wartime experiences.
"One of the goals of 'World War II in HD' was to put people in the moment of the war," Stiller said. "We felt the combination of showing the veterans and hearing their memories, which is very powerful, but also combining that with actors who play their younger voices transported you into that moment. The actors are channeling the younger versions of [the veterans]."
Dialogue for the voice actors was culled from diaries, journals and sometimes books written by the vets. In addition, new interviews were conducted with living veterans that also helped generate some of that dialogue.
"What we never do is invent events or anything like that," Stiller said.
Some video footage used is "representational," meaning that "every once in a while you're talking about a naval battle and it might include one shot of a destroyer sailing along that didn't take place in that battle," Stiller said, noting that historians looked at footage and advised when an image did not fit. "It's hyper-accurate. Let's say we're telling the story of a battle in 1943. We have a team of historians look at it and they might say, 'You can't use this shot because he's carrying a rifle that was not introduced until 1944.' "
"World War II in HD" was two years in the making and Stiller said much of the footage hasn't been seen publicly in decades, if ever.
"A lot of stuff was shot in color during the war, but black-and-white prints were made of the color material. In some cases, the color material was lost. In other cases, it was in safe keeping but wasn't readily available," Stiller said. "We hired producers who knew where to look and they looked very hard, going into basements, blowing dust off boxes, looking in smaller museums and finding cans of film that hadn't been opened since the 1950s."
In addition to transferring the film to HD, Stiller said History has worked to preserve the footage, returning digital copies of logged footage to its owners.
Although the history of World War II has been told many times before, including in PBS's Ken Burns 2007 documentary "The War," Stiller said "World War II in HD" takes a different approach.
"I liken it more to 'Band of Brothers,' " he said, referring to the 2001 HBO miniseries set in WWII. "This is very emotional, very immersive. It very much transports you into the war through lost footage. It began for us with the notion that there's a lot more color footage out there than we've ever seen before. As we were [finding that footage], we decided that the type of film we wanted to do would have to be very experiential and that's how we got to the veterans telling their stories."
Despite a multiplicity of entertainment choices, Americans are watching more TV than ever before.
The Nielsen Co. reported this week that during the 2008-09 TV season, Americans spent an average four hours and 49 minutes a day in front of the TV, up four minutes from the previous year and a 20 percent increase from a decade ago.
Nielsen attributed the increase to more TV sets in homes, more channel choices and the creation of DVRs, which make TV viewing more convenient.
We reported back in August that Rachel Rothenberg, a 17-year-old student at Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, would compete in the "Jeopardy!" 2009 teen tournament, which began airing last week. She's still in it, and the finale airs tonight at 7 on WPXI.
Rothenberg plans to give a large portion of her winnings to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and Squirrel Hill's Sixth Presbyterian Church, where she is a member.
Fox has canceled the Joss Whedon drama "Dollhouse," but the remaining produced episodes are expected to air. ... ABC has canceled "Hank" and "Eastwick" but ordered five more episodes of "The Forgotten." ... Disney Channel has opted to produce a second season of "JONAS." ... Greensburg native Sheila Kelley ("L.A. Law") has landed a role in the final season of "Lost," per Entertainment Weekly. ... As we reported last week in Tuned In Journal, former WPXI news director Corrie Harding has landed the same job at WCNC, the NBC affiliate in Charlotte, N.C.
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This week's TV Q&A responds to questions about "The Jay Leno Show," "CSI: Miami" and "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader?" Tuned In Journal includes blog posts about "Glee," the "Mad Men" season finale and a "Real World" star returning to Iraq. Read online TV coverage at post-gazette.com/tv. The Tuned In podcast took a break this week.
First Published November 13, 2009 12:00 am
