WEBVTT

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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So I think the
first thing is to say

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these are not storyboards.

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Because storyboards
are essentially

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graphic representations
that you lay out first

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that then decide what editing.

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This is what we call the
episode board, which tells you--

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This is what we call the
episode board, which tells you--

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running North, South,
North, South, North, South--

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what's in that episode
once we've done it.

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This is essentially the table
of contents of the script.

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And we bring this
out for the people

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that have come into the
editing room to look--

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the scholars, the veterans,
and most important,

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the warm bodies.

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So they can look and
say, oh, I fell out here.

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Or I didn't understand this.

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We've done this for every
film since "The Civil War."

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And they're color
coded to an extent.

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This sort of salmon is the
two times we have a title.

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This sort of salmon is the
two times we have a title.

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This is-- if it's yellow,
it's Americans in Vietnam

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or talking about
Vietnam experiences.

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The green are in South
Vietnam or Vietnam.

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The red is North Vietnam
once it separated.

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And I look.

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And I see a wonderful balance.

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This inhalation,
this exhalation,

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this respiration of different
modes, different locations.

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this respiration of different
modes, different locations.

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And that, to me, says
that this episode is

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doing what it should be doing.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Key to creating a kind of
Russian novel of a story,

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with all these plots and
subplots and different levels

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of characters, is how
you introduce them

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and how you
introduce the themes.

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It's very interesting in Episode
1 that most of the exposition

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is sort of general.

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It's not specific.

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It's not specific.

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They're people you're
going to learn about.

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And the audience got
that immediately.

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That I was being forced
ahead to meet somebody

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that I'm going to want
to know much more about.

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So in fact, a good
deal of Episode 1

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was resisting the
temptation to stop

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and fully set something up.

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What is set up is the
geopolitical recipe

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for a disaster.

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And what the presidents--
mostly Truman and Eisenhower--

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have done to either help or
turn a blind eye to a developing

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have done to either help or
turn a blind eye to a developing

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quagmire that they could
have easily put an end to.

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But I realized what we lacked
was what our film was going

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to be about, which
was the intimacy

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of the American
experience in Vietnam.

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Because there were
all these moments

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when something happened--

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what we have in here, in
here, in here, in here--

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you begin to be invested
with a set of Americans who

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you begin to be invested
with a set of Americans who

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are-- all these stories
are going to be told again,

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or some variation of
their story again.

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Some will be hugely
significant characters

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in almost every episode.

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Some will be important
characters all the way through

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but not necessarily
every episode.

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And it was a really
effective device

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to say to mainly an
American audience,

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we've got skin in this game,
even in this early setting.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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So Episode 2 is a pretty
interesting episode.

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So Episode 2 is a pretty
interesting episode.

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This was our problem child
from the very, very beginning

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to the very, very end.

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It defied our ability to
figure out how to make it work.

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And then all of a sudden,
you know, six months,

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seven months before locking,
it suddenly came together.

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And we figured it out.

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The key to it was the level of
the introductions of people.

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So just to tell you
something, this John Musgrave

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and his nightlight--
talking about being

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and his nightlight--
talking about being

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out on a reconnaissance
thing at night

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and having to squelch
the radio as people

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are trying to check
to see if he's awake.

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And what he is is
not only awake but he

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can hear the breathing or the
chattering of Viet Cong right

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nearby.

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It's terrifying to him.

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What it does is it's somebody
you met first episode.

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He's coming back.

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And he's talking about
the anguish of a soldier.

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And it has the ability to put
you in at an intimate level.

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From the Battle of Ap Bac on
to the end, it ran smoothly.

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From the Battle of Ap Bac on
to the end, it ran smoothly.

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This had no
structure whatsoever.

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And what we did is we
put Musgrave in here.

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We put him here.

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We brought him
back another time.

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We introduced a few
intimate people,

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including the journalists.

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And we made Kennedy a
character throughout.

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His words echo throughout
the whole episode.

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And so you begin to realize
that on that skeletal structure

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And so you begin to realize
that on that skeletal structure

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of getting to know
some soldiers,

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getting to know the
President, getting to know

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the journalists, that
all the other stuff that

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seemed unformed and incoherent
suddenly cohered together.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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These early episodes
are essentially

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doing some table setting.

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And then somewhere
in Episode 2 we

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switch from table setting to
introducing our main characters

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and our main themes.

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I think it's important
to understand

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I think it's important
to understand

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that we insist that
each episode stand alone

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and have its own arc.

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But we also need the arc
of the entire series.

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So if you can
imagine an hourglass,

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each of these
episodes is getting--

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I mean, we cover 103 years
in this first episode.

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We cover three years
in this second episode.

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And the next episode is going
to be a year and a half.

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So that by the time we
are in Episode 5 and 6,

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we are intimately mostly
with our characters

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we are intimately mostly
with our characters

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on the ground in
Vietnam and not worrying

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about geopolitical stuff.

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We are just in the horrible
meat grinder of war

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and what it does
to human beings.

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And so it is a very careful
and calibrated introduction.

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We meet people when
they're in high school.

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We know what their parents
did in World War II.

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We know what happened
to them in boot camp--

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not everybody, but
a few signal people.

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And then we move them along.

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So we're beginning to fold
in the ingredients of this.

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So we're beginning to fold
in the ingredients of this.

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And as those ingredients
go in, just because you're

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showing the geopolitical
situation in the White House

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or in Hanoi, or in Moscow
or Beijing secondarily,

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you're beginning to understand
what the larger themes are.

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So you're intimately
involved with

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the North Vietnamese soldiers,
Viet Cong guerrillas,

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and the American
soldiers, and the people

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at home worrying about
them or protesting,

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beginning to protest about it.

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And you're beginning to
get the largest thing.

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And what happens is you
have a non-didactic meeting

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And what happens is you
have a non-didactic meeting

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of theme and individual story.

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And that's where you want to be.

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You don't want
some stuff to feel

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like lessons and some
stuff to feel like, oh,

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that's great stuff.

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You must be doing the
lessons out of obligation.

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It's organic.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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So the final column
is upside down.

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And that's when we
take out a scene.

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And it may be that we replace
it with a different scene.

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I see that we have Ron Ferrizzi,
who we met in Episode 1.

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I see that we have Ron Ferrizzi,
who we met in Episode 1.

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He's a helicopter pilot.

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And we do a little bit
more on his biography.

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It didn't really
work in Episode 2.

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Nor did the nurse that
comes in, Joan Furey--

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her growing up.

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And so what we did is we merged
these biographical sections

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into when they later appear.

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Where they came from,
what their father did,

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what neighborhood he came from--
we needed to know about them.

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And we try these experiments
of whether they might work.

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This maybe gets into the book.

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Or maybe it's just not there.

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Or maybe it's just not there.

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And this is the awful,
awful triage of what we do.