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Soldiers' Stories
Released on July 28, 2014, Soldiers’ Stories was the only WW1 movie released theatrically for the 100th anniversary of the war. It is the “oldest” 3D film made as it utilized original 3D images from WW1 that were often animated to create motion.

The film centers on the battle of the first battle of the Somme and explores the theme of “what it was and is to be a soldier” with the goal of creating a “grunt eye view” of battle. As of the start of the film’s production all living WW1 veterans had died and rather than using actors to read from diary accounts the director Jonathan Kitzen elected to use actual current combat veterans who spoke of their own combat experiences. The narrative idea was that WW1 being the first industrialized war being shot at in 1914 in France was not that different to being shot at in 2014 in Afghanistan. All references to current events were edited from the recorded interviews and the actual battle commentary was instead used to illustrate the battle of the Somme nearly 100 years earlier.

It was made by Oscar® winner, Nick Reed and directed by Jonathan Kitzen and was narrated by Oscar® winner and veteran Mickey Rooney in one of his last screen appearances.

Production
The film was at the time of its creation the largest digital documentary ever made utilizing a 6000 by 6000 pixel per eye master or a total 12000 by 6000 combined master. At 72 mp it was more than 36 times larger than a standard HD image and required extensive work and mastering. The format was chosen so as to create the best possible transfer to 15/70mm IMAX format film.

Initial production began in 2011 when images and interviews for the film began. Initially the filmmakers went to museums such as the Imperial War Museum, Library of Congress, and the Keystone archive in Riverside California, but found the materials on hand mostly in poor condition and not well organized for their purposes. In 2012 the producers started acquiring original 3D images from collectors around the world and eventually either purchased or borrowed more than six thousand images for the films production.

Of the final selected images most were in dire need of cleaning and retouching as in many cases the original prints and negatives were in quite poor condition having been taken in war conditions. The process of cleaning the remastered the 3D images proved to be far more costly and time consuming than originally envisioned, and the film production company applied for and received a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada which was used to develop a methodology, algorithms, and tool set to clean and restore the imagery. The film was edited and restored on a Quantel Pablo at Emily Carr University and repeatedly crashed the machine requiring the company to debug and improve the software.

Interviews with combat veterans were conducted in the USA, UK, and Russia. Originally the filmmakers hoped to make various versions using local veterans to voice the story but in the final release the film was mostly composed of interview recorded of veterans from UC Berkeley and Fort Benning, GA. All the veterans used were from the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and many veterans had served in both theaters.

Originally the film was to address the mechanization and industrialization of war and issues related to traumatic brain injury, which was often called “shell shock” in WW1. However, as the interviews progressed it became apparent to the director, Kitzen that almost all of the veterans wanted to share a larger story of moral philosophy and feelings of regret or remorse at the things seen and done and how they had been forever altered by it. At no times during the interviews were any veterans asked questions of morality yet almost all volunteered their thoughts on the subject. While the producers knew that this was a difficult and at times politically charged subject they decided to side with the veterans and tell the story they wanted told and so the films ending was altered to reflect this “soldiers’ story” from which the title of the film was derived.

Sound
Sound was mixed in Dolby 7.2 and Imax 6.0 for distribution also in Vancouver, BC. Matt Stephenson, the film’s sound engineer, diligently worked with the director for months to try to recreate accurate battlefield -- sounds that were virtually nonexistent at sound libraries at the time. Stephenson located recordings of the specific weapons present in 1916 and recorded and remastered them at his studio. Gun shots and machinegun fire was then digitally layered to create the correct volume of fire during the actual attack which no film till then had ever attempted to accurately replicate. Veterans’ sometimes complained that the sound track brought on unwanted battlefield memories when screened in the Dolby format.

In 2016, the film’s copyright and negatives were transferred to Last Studio Standing Inc. of Vancouver, Canada and a Virtual Reality version of the film was made for iOS and Android which took advantage of the full 6K images and allowed for head tilt and panning.

Reception
The film reviewed positive press reviews in Deadline Hollywood and mention in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and other publications. The film was accepted to numerous film festivals and won three film festival awards. It scored 4.25 out of 5 stars at the Traverse City film festival by the audience.

Many times in test screenings the producers noted that many veterans in the audience were often quite emotionally moved and exit polling and post screening interviews revealed that many veterans thought the content, and more specifically the combat veteran narration, spoke to thoughts they had themselves had and never heard voiced before in public. Similarly at a test screening for National Geographic’s museum distribution group in New York, Mark Katz, the organization’s buyer, stated that he believed the film was “too honest for American audiences.”

While at first dismissing the warning of National Geographic the producers acknowledged later in a press release that Katz was in fact correct and the majority of the independent large format theaters (often called IMAX based on the projection technology) were in fact afraid to screen the film lest they seem unpatriotic or get complaints from parents. The irony was that the theaters were willing to show a war film as long as none of the consequences of war were actually displayed. Parents of veterans, and veterans groups the American Legion, and VFW offered to help support the film with and to their members to help persuade theaters but were most often rebuffed. A recut version was offered and the producers pointed out that the film was playing well internationally and their were no known complaints yet the film remained mostly out of rotation until 2018 when views on the PTSD nature of the content, and the role of museums as educators rather than entertainers inc