skip to main content

You Are Here: Home / Learning / History & the Arts / Blog / Category: Bloody Omaha
 
History and the Arts

History & the Arts Blog on Bloody Omaha

Subscribe to "Bloody Omaha" category posts

Bloody Omaha (week of 23 September)

Posted on 24/09/07 by Timewatch

 

Blogging about

TimewatchTimewatch

From Young Victoria to The Boxer Rebellion, Stonehenge to the Ten Pound Poms, explore the past with Timewatch.

24 September

Bloody Omaha is finally finished after a six week edit. Richard is brought in to voice over the commentary and then the programme is dubbed and graded ready for broadcast. The programme didn’t quite end up where we expected. The newly found battery at Maisy did not take the central role we thought it might. In the end the programme turned into an examination of the recent and ongoing research about Omaha and why so many died there. But in documentary making, stories often don’t quite turn out the way you think they will – and I think that’s exactly what makes our job so exciting. Above all, I am proud of our re-telling of the incredible story of the Rangers on D-Day. What touched me most was hearing firsthand the very moving testimony of the veterans like Ray Tollefson – they are an inspiration to us all.

 
Timewatch Team

About the author

Timewatch is the world's longest-running history series, having started in 1981, and is the BBC's flagship history series. Here, members of the production team share the highs, and lows, during the production process as they make some of the next series of programmes.

Subscribe to Timewatch's posts

 

The BBC and The Open University are not responsible for the content of external websites.

 

Permalink: Bloody Omaha (week of 23 September) - Bloody Omaha (week of 23 September) 0 Comments
Categories: Timewatch, History, Bloody Omaha Tags: d-day, maisy, normandy, omaha, rangers, timewatch, world war ii

Bookmark with:

  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Newsvine
  • NowPublic
  • Reddit
  • Stumbleupon
Please wait while loading. You must have JavaScript enabled to view star ratings.
 

Bloody Omaha (week of 19 August)

Posted on 20/08/07 by Timewatch

 

Blogging about

TimewatchTimewatch

From Young Victoria to The Boxer Rebellion, Stonehenge to the Ten Pound Poms, explore the past with Timewatch.

20 August

James has been in the edit for a couple of weeks with John Wilkinson [Editor] putting together a rough assembly of the material we have shot thus far. But yesterday the crew returned to Normandy for an extra day of filming with Top Gear’s Richard Hammond, our presenter. Today we were at the observation post at Pointe du Hoc, from which you get an incredible 180 degree view out to sea to where the massive landing fleet would have been waiting on D-Day. Pointe du Hoc itself is rather extraordinary, like the face of the moon pock marked with huge bomb craters. James has written the PTCs [‘Pieces to Camera’] for Richard prior to filming, but we spend time rewriting some of these with Richard so he feels comfortable with the wording and delivery. This afternoon we do a ‘two-way’ between Richard and Simon, and James is particularly pleased with how this goes. Simon has bought with him a giant blow up aerial reconnaissance photograph taken at midday on D-Day of a section of Omaha beach. He shows this to Richard, pointing out hundreds of small black specks on the beach which he explains are individual American soldiers. He explains that those lying perpendicular, near the top-end of the beach are the wounded – like Ray – who have been dragged up the beach, but those lying horizontal are the dead, washed in on the tide. It is very sobering.

 
Timewatch Team

About the author

Timewatch is the world's longest-running history series, having started in 1981, and is the BBC's flagship history series. Here, members of the production team share the highs, and lows, during the production process as they make some of the next series of programmes.

Subscribe to Timewatch's posts

 

The BBC and The Open University are not responsible for the content of external websites.

 

Permalink: Bloody Omaha (week of 19 August) - Bloody Omaha (week of 19 August) 0 Comments
Categories: Timewatch, History, Bloody Omaha Tags: dead, gun battery, normandy, omaha, photograph, pointe du hoc, richard hammond, timewatch, world war ii, wounded

Bookmark with:

  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Newsvine
  • NowPublic
  • Reddit
  • Stumbleupon
Please wait while loading. You must have JavaScript enabled to view star ratings.
 

Bloody Omaha (week of 22nd July)

Posted on 23/07/07 by Timewatch

 

Blogging about

TimewatchTimewatch

From Young Victoria to The Boxer Rebellion, Stonehenge to the Ten Pound Poms, explore the past with Timewatch.

23 July 

One of the most fun parts of filming is for the computer graphics (CGI) sequences. Timewatch has its own team dedicated to CGI (Neil Wilson, Steve Flynn and Colin Thornton) who have come out to Normandy with a car laden with Rangers’ uniforms and fake plastic guns. They are here for two days to film some basic drama reconstruction sequences that will form the basis of their D-Day landing scene. In order to catch low tide when the beach is at its widest, we head for the beach at dawn whereupon the three boys spent several exhausting hours dress up in the uniforms and run up and down the sand, as I operate the Z1 camera. They carefully plan it so that each run is in a different part of the frame. That way, when they are back in the office, they can layer these frames up in the computer until it looks like there are hundreds of men landing on the beach – rather than just three. Later they will drop in beach obstacles and landing crafts, based on images they have gathered from books – and also small explosions, filmed separately again. As well as the beach landing scene, they have to film a sequence of cliff climbing at Pointe du Hoc – to illustrate what Ike and his fellow Rangers had to do on D-Day. We find a small 10ft sand dune which the boys clamber up head-on into the camera. I help hold up the green screen making sure it fills the frame behind the boys. The green screen means that when it comes to the edit, they can drop in a different background – in this case, the sea and Pointe du Hoc cliff-line.

 
Timewatch Team

About the author

Timewatch is the world's longest-running history series, having started in 1981, and is the BBC's flagship history series. Here, members of the production team share the highs, and lows, during the production process as they make some of the next series of programmes.

Subscribe to Timewatch's posts

 

The BBC and The Open University are not responsible for the content of external websites.

 

Permalink: Bloody Omaha (week of 22nd July) - Bloody Omaha (week of 22nd July) 0 Comments
Categories: Timewatch, History, Bloody Omaha Tags: cgi, computer graphics, d-day, gun battery, normandy, omaha, pointe du hoc, timewatch, world war ii, z1 camera

Bookmark with:

  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Newsvine
  • NowPublic
  • Reddit
  • Stumbleupon
Please wait while loading. You must have JavaScript enabled to view star ratings.
 

1 2 3 Next Page >