Recon Commando

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  Recon Commando digital key art

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  Recon Commando key art movie poster (9x16)

Inspiration

Inspiration for this project was generated decades ago when I inherited a 90 minute analogue audio tape that my father gave me from his brother's (my uncle Dave) time as an elite Recon Commando in the U.S. Army 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War. I found the audio tape to be riveting and intriguing how he explained the entire perspective of the Vietnam War from a Soldier's point of view, with remarkable composure and lack of vulgarity, for the treacherous nature of fighting the North Vietnamese army deep in the jungles of Vietnam in 1967. Dave's "attraction of the opposites" held many buried themes that held the zeitgeist of the time. I was determined to produce a film based on his exploits, adventures and life threatening encounters. However, I had only fifty 35mm Kodachrome slides and a 90 minute audio tape to work with. During COVID lock-down I accessed copious amounts of U.S. National Archives content and proceeded to generate a documentary from what I could access, and attempted to fake accuracy for this Recon Commando platoon in action. Unfortunately, there was little to no film footage or stills from these elite Long Range Patrol programs to work with. When A.I. video generation became a commercial reality, it was time to take the project to the next level and accomplish what I originally envisioned.

What it does

Recon Commando is an immersive feature-length hybrid documentary that resurrects the voice of a young soldier caught in the crucible of one of America’s most divisive wars. In November 1967, Specialist 5 David Barmettler (aka. "Shane") of the 101st Airborne recorded a reel-to-reel audio letter home to his family for Christmas. What begins as a heartfelt message soon unfolds into a raw, unfiltered chronicle of jungle warfare, near-death encounters, and the unbreakable bond of brotherhood forged among his reconnaissance unit—nicknamed “The Dirty Dozen.” His words, preserved for over half a century, form the emotional spine of this film.

How we built it

This hybrid docu-drama was originally constructed as a archive image and video based project. After completing an 83 minute run time, and with the advent of A.I. image creation tools, the decision was made to re-invent the approach and replace conventional images and video sourced from public domain and the U.S. national archives, with original A.I. generations for video and music to create a spectacular war environment these U.S. Army Recondo soldiers endured in 1967 during the peak of the Vietnam War. While retaining the original analog audio "letter" recorded to send home to his loved ones, the soldiers and entire Vietnam jungle environment and intense war action was generated using Hailuo.ai V1 and the main character's likeness was retained by using real archive photos for face swapping the A.I. generated characters using Magichour.ai. The original 60's theme music score and hit-oriented songs were created using Suno.com. Here is the film sales pitch deck link with more details: https://recondomovie.com/Recon_Commando_film_sales_pitch_deck_11_11_25.pdf

Challenges we ran into:

General challenges were time period continuity with uniforms, equipment carrying units, faces, service vehicles and weapons from the 1967 time era. We also discovered that M16 combat rifles were often appearing as modern but in fact, A.I. was generating little know models that indeed proved to have accuracy with exception to the rifle carry handles. Also there was reservation with the A.I. platforms to create graphic war-time violence.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Accomplishments we're proud of is creating a seemingly impossible and undisclosed life style and jungle warfare experience that audiences can relish in and realize just how intense and horrifying it really was for the U.S. soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. We are also happy how we could mix real D.A.S.P.O archive film footage and photographic stills with the A.I. generations to effectively and seamlessly tell this "hybrid" documentary/docu-drama story.

What we learned

We learned that this is a now a new form of documentary film-making and story telling that we created by augmenting real documentary footage with A.I. image and sound generations. We also learned there is a tremendous potential for creating emotional and memorable real life experiences for audiences world-wide by presenting content for real-life stories that was previously unavailable or non-existent.

What's next for Recon Commando

Next steps for Recon Commando is to acquire legitimate film/documentary distribution as well as distribution for the hit-oriented soundtrack album that presents a slate of "new yet familiar" songs. We also plan to use this film as a template for promoting efforts for further documentary film projects for our company and for inspiring other filmmakers to do the same.

Built With

• elevenlabs
• hailouai
• internet-archive