The War Tapes

Synopsis

Straight from the front lines in Iraq, THE WAR TAPES is the first war movie filmed by soldiers themselves.

While thousands have died or have been injured in Iraq, hundreds of thousands have returned alive. THE WAR TAPES is the untold story of the soldiers that never make the evening news or the morning paper. It is the story shared by every surviving warrior in history—about how they stumbled, how they triumphed, how they became something greater than they imagined possible, and how they lost (and strengthened) a part of themselves in the process.

THE WAR TAPES is Operation Iraqi Freedom as filmed by Sergeant Steve Pink, Sergeant Zack Bazzi and Specialist Mike Moriarty.

Steve is a wisecracking carpenter who aspires to be a writer. Zack is a Lebanese-American university student who loves to travel and is fluent in Arabic. Mike is a father who seeks honor and redemption. Each leaves a woman behind—a girlfriend, a mother, and a wife.

Through their candid footage, these men open their hearts and take us on an unforgettable journey, capturing camaraderie and humor along with the brutal and terrifying experiences they face.

The film, directed by Deborah Scranton, and produced by Robert May (THE FOG OF WAR) and Steve James (HOOP DREAMS), recently won the award for Best Documentary at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

About the Film

In March 2004, just as the insurgent movement strengthened, several members of one National Guard unit arrived in Iraq, with cameras.

THE WAR TAPES is the movie they made with Director Deborah Scranton and a team that includes Producer Robert May (THE FOG OF WAR) and Producer/Editor Steve James (HOOP DREAMS).

Straight from the front lines in Iraq, THE WAR TAPES is the first war movie filmed by soldiers themselves.

While thousands have died or have been injured in Iraq, hundreds of thousands have returned alive. THE WAR TAPES is the untold story of the soldiers that never make the evening news or the morning paper. It is the story shared by every surviving warrior in history—about how they stumbled, how they triumphed, how they became something greater than they imagined possible, and how they lost (and strengthened) a part of themselves in the process.

It is Operation Iraqi Freedom as filmed by Sergeant Steve Pink, Sergeant Zack Bazzi and Specialist Mike Moriarty.

Zack is a Lebanese-American university student who loves politics and traveling. Steve is a young carpenter with an incredible sense of humor, who signed up for college money and lives a double life as a tough jock and poetic writer. Mike is a father of two who is wracked by desire for honor and redemption. All of them leave women at home—a mother, a girlfriend, and a wife.

While they battled unconventional forces, they recorded events that conventional journalists have been unable to capture. They mounted tripods on gun turrets, inside dashboards and used POV mounts on their Kevlar helmets and vests. They filmed all of the footage in Iraq, over 800 hours of tape. They became cameramen and journalists and recorded their own experiences as soldiers, as they happened.

Zack, Steve, and Mike's unit, Charlie Company, 3rd of the 172nd Infantry (MOUNTAIN) Regiment, was based at LSA Anaconda in the deadly Sunni Triangle, under constant threat of ambush and deadly IED attacks. They traveled, as a unit, 1.4 million miles during their tour, and lived through over twelve hundred combat operations and two hundred and fifty direct enemy engagements. That's almost one a day.

The soldiers were not picked by casting agents or movie producers. They selected themselves. One hundred and eighty soldiers in Charlie Company were given the opportunity. Ten chose to take it on, and thus open up their hearts, and reveal their middle-of-the-night thoughts and fears—sharing their eyes with America, aware they did not know where this experiment in citizen-soldier, citizen journalism would take them.

Director Deborah Scranton worked with the guardsmen from her farm house in New Hampshire, guiding their filming through instant messaging and e-mail. Through this correspondence, the soldiers would discuss incidents of that day, and be prompted to conducted self interviews, once they were back inside the wire. And they would talk about how best to tell the story, THEIR story. "These soldiers were doubly courageous—as soldiers at war, and as 'citizen journalists' willing to share that experience in an honest, powerful and personal way," said producer Robert May.

During this time, the filmmaking team shot an additional 200 hours of tape documenting the unfolding lives of the soldiers' families at home, both during deployment and after the soldiers returned home. The families and girlfriends and mothers had also signed on, ensuring that THE WAR TAPES—like any true story about war—is not just about life inside the war, but the life left at home, and the always difficult and sometimes beautiful way the relationships develop and change.

Finally, the prodigious task of distilling over 1,000 hours of tape into the finished 97-minute film took an entire year. "We had to figure out how to preserve the complexity and rawness of their experience in the course of telling their story—a story we truly believe has not been told before," said producer and editor Steve James.

Although five soldiers filmed their entire year's deployment with one-chip Sony miniDV video cameras, in the end, the film follows the lives of three soldiers. "We wanted to tell a compelling, cohesive story—to focus on just a few soldiers so that, most importantly, audiences will truly get to know the soldiers seen in the film," said producer Robert May. "After watching this film, we want people who don't know soldiers in their personal lives to feel as if they know Zack, Mike, and Steve. And to accomplish that, we all had to cut scenes and soldiers that we loved."

In the end, THE WAR TAPES is a magical, heartbreaking, and completely unique opportunity for the millions of Americans to witness first-person experiences of war—a modern-day Odyssey—and the experience of homecoming.