He sits, alone, in a dimly-lit room for hours and hours, poring over pictures, words and music. Days, night, weekends, photojournalist Boots Kennedye is making OETA’s Oklahoma World War II Stories come alive.
Boots and I began our journey together in July – making phone calls, meeting veterans, setting up photo shoots, taping their stories, logging interviews, gathering photographs and video, previewing music and sound effects, writing the stories, and finally, editing. Once the script is finished and the voiceover is recorded, Boots heads to our new, state-of-the-art Nitris editing suite to put all the elements together. It is a tedious, time-consuming process that requires the patience and skill of a craftsman. Boots is an artist with audio and video, and the portraits he paints reflect the passion with which he works.
Boots was born in Midwest City, but considers Jones, Oklahoma his hometown. He graduated from high school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and attended the University of Oklahoma, where he received degrees in English Literature, Native American Studies, and Film and Video in 2003. He started producing documentaries while at OU and has worked in OETA’s Documentary Unit for about two and a half years.
(above) Boots Kennedye ponders an edit before entering a command on the keyboard of our High Definition, non-linear editing computer.
He has a special appreciation for our World War II project because practically everyone in his family is military. Boots’ mother and father were in the Navy; his step-dad is a Marine who served in Vietnam. He has a brother who is a Navy doctor, an uncle who is a Marine, a grandmother who was a military nurse, and grandfathers who served in the Army and Army Air Corps.
“I’ve been interested in war stories because of my step-dad,” Boots said. “He carried himself like a drill sergeant and served four tours in Vietnam.” Clearly, family and heritage are important to Boots. And, he’s appreciated the feeling of family that he (and I) have developed with the veterans we’ve profiled.
“Hearing these stories makes you feel like part of their family,” Boots said. “We are hearing stories that a lot of these people don’t share with anyone except their immediate family. It is very personal, and that’s what I like about television. Talking to people makes it more real. You often think of World War II passively, but listening to the stories and watching the footage for weeks in preparing the stories has made World War II come alive.”
As journalism professionals, we must do our work rather dispassionately, but we have become emotionally invested in this project. Each person we’ve interviewed has touched us, and we want to do right by them in telling their story. The work, however, is not always easy. “The story involving the Holocaust and liberation of a Nazi concentration camp was the hardest visually,” Boots told me. “Watching those pictures, those emaciated faces, over and over again was hard. I needed to take a couple of days off after that one.”
(above) Boots Kennedye positions the microphone during the interview with World War II veteran Pendleton Woods.
We began shooting interviews in the searing heat of the sweaty Oklahoma summer and are still working as the leaves begin to turn colors and fall. Each story took at least a half-day to shoot. Generally it’s taken 3-4 days to research, log and write a story. Then, it takes Boots 3-4 days to do his magic in the editing suite. He connects sounds and pictures, views and reviews each shot, each word, each note, tweaking the elements over and over and over again until they fit just right.
Boots and I have worked on a tight, but well-thought out schedule. And, he has done all of this while juggling time demands and thoughts of another event - his own marriage, earlier this month.
There are still more stories to complete, but Boots and I are grateful to have the opportunity to honor “the Greatest Generation” by working on this project, and producing OETA’s second High Definition documentary, a compilation of the stories we’ve gathered. That documentary has a premiere airdate of December 6, 2007.
We’ve met so many great, new friends during our work – outstanding individuals who pulled together more than 60 autumns ago to win The War. We hope you are enjoying the Oklahoma World War II Stories that are airing on the Oklahoma News Report, and will stop for a moment to appreciate the sacrifice of the people we’ve profiled and the thousands more like them.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
October 30th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
What a great story!