|
Small camera, small crew, Oscar nomination: "We were in the middle of a climb up to Restrepo with bags, with gear. Within a few hundred yards, I realized I was actually tremendously straining my right leg, and I was like, “Shit, something else is going on.” And it was a really horrible, horrible walk, to get to Restrepo. And there was shooting in the valley, and I just didn't want to slow people down. I was just thinking about the mountains and climbing, and how many other films have been made where you carry the equipment on your backs? You now have these new lightweight cameras to film with, but I'm talking about, like, you know, everything. So if you actually put together a film kit, normally, it's quite a lot: You've got a tripod, and chargers, and stuff -- but everything that we had to make the film, we had to carry on our backs. Along with our bullet-proof vests. I mean, it was a lot of gear. I would occasionally get questions from people about our film crew. So it was what we could carry, along with the rest of the stuff we needed to carry, to just be with those soldiers.”

Filmmakers Sebastian Junger (left, author of "The Perfect Strom", "Fire", "A Death in Belmont" and the bestseller "WAR") and Tim Hetherington (recipient of four World Press Photo awards, including the World Press Photo of the Year) during the shooting of Restrepo. Hetherington: "I’ve been filming since about 2000 and what happened was I did the two things separately because, until now, there hasn’t been room for crossover. The technology in the past just wasn’t there. And now you have technology like the 5D that do crossover."¹ Junger: "We weren't always there together. But when we were there together, if there was a scene unfolding that would benefit by two cameras - I mean, sometimes I had to take notes, and Tim would shoot, or sometimes Tim had to shoot, or take stills, and I would shoot - but if there was a scene, like when they were negotiating about the cow, Tim and I would sort of whisper to each other a lot about, okay, who covers what, because we knew this was going to be a kind of interesting scene."
|