THE VIETNAM WAR | PBS Previews: In Country | PBS Video Lecture | The Impact of the Vietnam War Era on the Present day - Personal Learning

(gentle music)
- We did take a camera
crew to Vietnam twice.
- We had to move our
whole crew there.
We had to figure out locations,
and gear, and workflow.
- We all wanted to represent
the Vietnamese perspective,
but we weren't sure
we'd be able to.
If we didn't find
a way to do it,
our whole film's gonna not
be what we wanted it to be.
- There are North
Vietnamese soldiers
and Viet Cong guerrillas, and
South Vietnamese civilians.
And you go in always realizing
that the first
thing you have to do
is shed what you
thought you knew.
(dramatic music)
- We wanted to get
to know the people,
we wanted to get
to know the place.
We wanted to spend time there.
We wanted to make people
feel comfortable with us
so that we could do what we do.
- We had a wonderful Vietnamese
producer, Ho Dang Hoa,
and he was the one
really who helped us
identify veterans and
find people to talk to.
- For us to do interviews
the way we like to do them
in a foreign language,
it was a challenge
to come up with a way
that we could feel like
we were having a
natural conversation.
Mark Roy, our
extraordinary sound man
came up with a system
where we basically had
two interpreters
everywhere we went.
Our Vietnamese producer
would hear our question,
and then reinterpret
that question
for our Vietnamese interviewee.
And then Ben Wilkinson,
our extraordinary
consulting producer,
would be off in a
closet or a bathroom,
or down a dingy hallway.
- He was listening
on an earpiece,
whispering into a microphone.
And we could hear him,
so we were basically having
like they have at the UN,
simultaneous translation
of the interview,
so we could be
responding in real time
to what the people were saying.
- By the time the second
question was asked,
they realized we were just
having a conversation,
and even though couldn't
actually understand each other,
we really understood each other.
- What struck me
was how beautiful
Vietnam was to look at.
(plaintive music)
There were just
these endless acres
of these jade
green rice paddies,
and these lovely villages
inside these groves of bamboo
and palm trees.
So, how could a place
like this, so beautiful,
and so enchanting be at war?
- [Sarah] We are now
climbed up a little hill
in Lang Co
shooting some
incredible rice paddies.
- We don't quite know
what's gonna happen.
We have to be open-minded.
We're driving down the road,
oh my God, the sun is
setting, there's a rice paddy.
Jump out, cross the
road, get the camera,
quick, quick, quick, that
happens all the time.
Our cinematographer
Buddy Squires
just completely outdid himself
to get the footage that
we thought we might use.
(dramatic music)
Now, many people in
Vietnam are too young
to remember the war,
but they still have family
members who know someone.
I mean, it's that close.
And you just sort of
try to understand,
if you possibly can, what this
experience meant for them.
It's inspiring to see how
resilient people can be,
because you walk around Vietnam,
there's no sign that
a war happened there.
It's not as though
there's this dark cloud
hanging over every
part of Vietnam,
it's not like that at all.
You have to look hard to
find evidence of the war.