Photo By Capt. Monika Comeaux | The judges and the audience smile at the state of the art performances of various...... read more read more
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CAMP EGGERS, Afghanistan – Members of the headquarters element of Deputy Commander of Support Operations, under NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, many of whom are deployed from Fort Hood, Texas, held a film festival to boost morale Sept. 2.
The idea for the festival came from the Cannes Film Festival, an annual international event that takes place in a scenic seaside town in the south of France.
Brig. Gen. Clark W. LeMasters Jr., DCOM-SPO and also the 13th Expeditionary Sustainment Command commander at Fort Hood, set strict rules for the entries. Film clips had to be in good taste, and were judged on costume and scenery, special effects, the number of staff members participating, acting abilities, and the accuracy of re-enactment. The audience also gave some input by clapping up a storm for the popular vote scores. Festival organizers showed the original movie clip before playing their three to five minute re-enactment piece.
Participants welcomed the film festival.
“I think it builds good cohesion and it’s a good distraction from all the work we currently have going on,” said U.S. Army Sgt. Irene Lopez, a human resources specialist with the personnel section (J1) of DCOM-SPO, who deployed from Fort Hood’s 13th ESC.
The re-enactments showed included the following movies: "The Wizard of Oz," "Talladega Nights," "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Office Space," "The Color Purple" and "We Were Soldiers."
“We chose to re-enact ‘Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,’ because it is a favorite of several people in the J3 [current operations] shop,” said U.S. Army Maj. Joshua Johnson, the officer in charge of the logistics common operating picture within J3. We also thought it would be easy to re-enact the 'baby-Jesus' prayer around the table scene, said Johnson, who played Cal, Ricky’s best friend and teammate from the movie. Johnson deployed from Rock Island, Ill., to support NTM-A for a year.
Lopez and her office chose to re-enact "The Wizard of Oz" scene where Dorothy is welcomed to munchkin land. Lopez said they just recently received their first coalition forces co-worker from Belgium, and the section found it fitting to do this part of the movie to welcome their new addition.
Being in a deployed environment, one has to be inventive when it comes to costumes and props for a movie shoot. Actors were seen wearing anything from trash bag tutus to wigs made out of mop heads.
“For the costumes, we used different levels of the physical fitness uniform and winter gear to imitate the different NASCAR jackets,” said Johnson. “We then printed off some brand name logos and taped them to our outfits to represent sponsors.”
Johnson also explained that his crew did several takes and then edited the best scenes into one fluid movie “to highlight the incredible acting abilities of our superior staff.”
The first four best performances received winner’s cups that are re-awarded each month to the sections that distinguish themselves in the current month’s morale building event. The fourth place cup went to J5 (future operations), the third place cup to LogOps (logistics operations), the second place to the combined efforts of the J3 (current operations) and J2 (intelligence) sections and the winner of this months challenge is the combined staff sections of J1 (personnel), J4 (logistics), J8 (resource management) and the secretary of joint staffs.
“I am very glad that we won, because we put a lot of effort into it,” said Lopez in conclusion.
Members of the 13th ESC plan on continuing the tradition of monthly staff challenges and morale building events upon their return to Fort Hood.
| Date Taken: | 09.02.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 09.05.2012 04:11 |
| Story ID: | 94220 |
| Location: | KABUL, AF |
| Web Views: | 115 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Coalition members organize film festival to build morale, by CPT Monika Comeaux, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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