This assignment was much different from the assignments we’ve had previously. It was less art intensive than the others as this had a little more grounding in logistics and reality than did the Tiny Stories or the Music Mosaic which could be much more abstract. Though different, it was something with which we are more familiar. The collaborative aspect of this project was very helpful. When writing the story, we all had different ideas about how to craft it and what direction the plot should follow. This allowed for many more ideas to be passed around and a lot of decisions to consider. Though at times it was tough to decide whose idea to go with, it was beneficial overall because of this collaboration.
When Josh first thought of this idea, he was inspired by two different and unrelated sources. A few years ago he watched the HBO series Band of Brothers which made him find an interest in WWII. He began to learn more about it in school as well and he watched more war movies and documentaries simply because he found the stories incredible. When given this assignment, straight off he knew he wanted to create a story that was somehow involved in the second World War. However, he wanted to do something a little different that he had not seen before. First he thought of a pilot in one of the B-25s and the perspective that pilot had during the Doolittle raid in 1942. While this idea was formulating, a friend of Josh’s went to the theatre to watch the film Prisoners. Just the name of the film changed his idea for the story to something about POWs and he didn’t want the perspective to be one of a prisoner but rather of the guard over them.
Though we know relatively little about the Hell of war, we felt that the perspective of this piece is one that many don’t consider, especially from the point of view of the enemy. Most of the time people view the enemy as evil and inhuman but this is not true. The enemy is usually just a normal person who doesn’t want to be doing what they are doing. He is complex and so are we. This story has aspects of a psychological narrative. There isn’t a clear bad guy or good guy. This is what we wanted to show. We felt that it would be most interesting to look at an unwilling Japanese guard dealing with the horrible things that he’s had to witness. We didn’t want the effect investigated in the Fort Barnwell story to be part of this story. The script shouldn’t be romanticized and it shouldn’t be seen through a modern lens. A story such as this should be viewed in the same light as the time. It should be, what you see is what you get. We feel this is much more powerful than showing it in a different and manipulated way.
To acquire a better understanding of the time period and what happened during the Doolittle raid, we read basic historical accounts of the raid by third parties. This simply gave us more of an idea why it happened and what happened. In the process of researching the bombing, we found that some planes never made it to the landing fields in friendly China and eight men were captured in Japanese-occupied China with only four of them making it home. We were lead to interviews and stories told by the men who participated in the raid and also some of men who were captured. Originally, Josh thought the script would have both Americans die but the fact that half of the captured men lived gave us the idea to kill only one and let the other escape.
To write this script, we utilized the power of the internet with Google Drive. Before writing, we got together to discuss what we thought the story should do and just to flesh it out a bit. We then went to our respective homes and began writing on the same document on Google. We found this to be very effective because we could all write at the same time and we could observe the others writing without having to be looking over their shoulder. It allowed us to change things very quickly. The chat function also made it possible to discuss aspects about the story that we thought were good or possibly unnecessary.
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