The director of the award-winning documentary The War Tapes, Deborah Scranton is committed to using new technology to give people power to tell their own stories.
Why you should listen to her:
Filmmaker Deborah Scranton helps real people tell compelling, honest stories. Her 2006 documentary The War Tapes put cameras in the hands of National Guard troops stationed in Camp Anaconda, in Iraq. Through their raw footage and diaries, they brought home a truth that we at home would never otherwise know about what one soldier calls "the war for cheese."
Scranton has also created the TV documentary Stories from Silence, Witness to War, which tells the stories of World War II veterans in living New Hampshire. She's currently working on a nonfiction feature film that will, in her words, "tell the US-Mexico immigration and border story from the inside out -- putting cameras in the hands of the Border Patrol ... ranchers who live on the land being crossed, humanitarians who leave water in the desert trying to save lives, coyotes ..."
Blog Posts on TED
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"Bad Voodoo's War" on Frontline April 1 and online – March 30, 2008
Deborah Scranton's latest "virtual embed" documentary film, Bad Voodoo's War, premieres April 1, 2008, on PBS's Frontline and online. From the Frontline site:
In June 2007, as the American military surge reached its peak, a band of National Guard infantrymen who call themselves "The Bad Voodoo Platoon" was deployed to Iraq. To capture a vivid, first-person account of the new realities of war in Iraq for Frontline and ITVS, director Deborah Scranton (The War Tapes) created a "virtual embed" with the platoon, supplying cameras to the soldiers so they could record and tell the story of their war. The film intimately tracks the veteran soldiers of "Bad Voodoo" through the daily grind of their perilous mission, dodging deadly IEDs, grappling with the political complexities of dealing with Iraqi security forces, and battling their fatigue and their fears.
The show airs on New York's Channel 13 on April 1 at 9pm, and April 5 at 5am. Find air dates in your area, and watch the preview >> For more background, check out Deborah Scranton's TEDTalk about The War Tapes, her groundbreaking "virtual embed" documentary about Charlie Company, a team of National Guardsmen during Operation Iraqi Freedom, as filmed by Sergeant Steve Pink, Sergeant Zack Bazzi and Specialist Mike Moriarty. Titles for Bad Voodoo's War were created by TEDster Jakob Trollbäck, whose own TEDTalk will be appearing on TED.com this month. -
Scenes from "The War Tapes": Deborah Scranton on TED.com – September 13, 2007
The director of the award-winning documentary The War Tapes, Deborah Scranton makes films that help people tell their own stories. She talks about making The War Tapes, her 2006 doc that put videocameras in the hands of Charlie Company, a unit of the National Guard stationed in Iraq, for one year. Their raw footage and diaries tell a powerful, unsettling story. (Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 17:49.)
Watch Deborah Scranton's talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Deborah Scranton on TED.com.
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