Two journalists capture images of war crimes carried out by Russian Colonel, Oleg Nagamov, and soon find themselves trapped and hunted as they try to escape to tell the world of the horrors they have witnessed.
Background:
The idea for this episode came to me near the very beginning of my series, over a year ago. The horrible events that took place in Bucha, Irpin and Mariupol were heavy on my mind, and I felt that a much more human story needed to be told of what was happening in my hypothetical war. Frankly, however, I wasn't sure it would "work". Trying to make something emotional through platforms like ARMA3 was going to be tricky, at best. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the result.
Some initial comments:
Latvian, Italian and other pronunciations are my best guess (and therefore, the AI narrators as well). If I messed up, my apologies.
The actual river in Lievarde is wider than what I could do using the maps in ARMA3. In one scene, it's hard not to think, "why not just swim across it?!"
In reality, the Super Market sign atop the store would be in Latvian.
Arvils, the paramedic, continues wearing his bright red uniform, even when trying to sneak through Lievarde. Not exactly smart, I know. I thought of that while filming, but thought it would be too much and take too much time to have to tell the viewer that he changed into something different, and worried it might confuse viewers later in the film.
Why are almost all the extras 20-something men? Unfortunately, that's the majority of 'characters' available in ARMA3, being it's a military first person shooter game. There are very few female characters and fewer older characters. It's frustrating.
Why the change in narrator and point-of-view? That requires a longer answer, and I'm thinking of doing a behind-the-scenes video about this episode in particular. But one of the primary reasons was that I wanted to set a different tone, catch the viewer off-guard and make it clear that this is a stand-alone episode. Also, I felt that by making a first-person narrative, it would add more emotion to the story.
Did Arvils survive? Time will tell. Will we see Debra again? Perhaps!
Lastly, as always, there is only so much I can do as a one-man-show in putting this series together to get it perfectly “right”. The gaming platforms I use are limited, the mods available within them can be limiting as well, so there are times when a rank or uniform might not be right, or a version of equipment, etc. I work with what I have, in the time that I have, so I ask for a bit of grace in focusing more on the story, tone and feel. That said, I’m always happy to receive constructive criticism. This is all about making the story and presentation better. Thanks!
This video was created in part using content of Bohemia Interactive a.s. Copyright © 2018 Bohemia Interactive a.s. All rights reserved. www.bistudio.com
Map.Army www.map.army/
Voice Over: elevenlabs.io/
GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program www.gimp.org/
Davinci Resolve www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve
Deep Noise by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/