Translated material
First -person war
Available portable cameras changed our vision of the war. The soldiers began to hang the cameras on themselves and then fill the videos on YouTube. The first -person videos seem to carry you from the screen right on the battlefield. The soldiers run, fight, scream, get wounds in the head, die and survive - and all this is no distinguishable from the new Call of Duty or Battlefield trailer. "Butenka" talks about how records from soldier's cameras have become truly popular.
Province of Kunar, east of Afghanistan. One of the most fierce places in the Afghan war, which is waged by the United States and NATO. The notorious Red Wings operation, on which the book was written and the film “Survived” was shot, happened here.
Mountains and rocky hills on all sides clamp a small valley. Below a piece of a green plain, several stone buildings and a Afghan village. Somewhere there are fighters of the Taliban, they are not visible, but shooting is well heard. The camera is fixed to the fighter’s helmet and shows the first -person battle.
Ted Daniels, 37-year-old first grade of the US Army, served in the 4th Infantry Division. That morning, along with his unit, he went to patrol. In the area of the village they were fired, most of the detachment was pressed by machine -gun fire. After the confusion of the first minutes of the collision passed, Ted pressed the button to turn on the camera, shouted: “I'm going down” - and climbed to an open slope. The battery was enough for three minutes, 28 seconds and almost 39 million views on YouTube.
The soldier slowly moves down the rocky slope. Stops, but stubbornly descends. Several dust fountains take off very close to the leg - they noticed him. Daniels breathes heavily, crying out from stone fragments that pour on him from close hits, and is desperately trying to find at least some shelter. In the end, he falls behind a stone that does not cover a quarter of his body. The first bullet knocks out a machine gun from the hands. "I'M HIT!" - Ted shouts tearfully several times, - "I'M HIT!" Again and again. He picks up an assault rifle with a under -barrel grenade launcher, groans from the second bullet. "I'M HIT! I'M HIT! " - A panicing soldier repeats only one phrase every few seconds. In response, only deaf sounds of shots are heard on the record - and voiced ricoches of bullets from stones nearby.
The massive introduction of cameras in the American army occurred simultaneously with the outbreak of war in Afghanistan - in 2007. Initially, we were not talking about founding chambers - the shooting led mainly from military equipment and drones. The soldiers themselves began to attach cameras directly on themselves - this turned out to be a very simple way to preserve their memories and sensations. By 2011, the popularity of soldier's shooting has reached such volumes that GoPro even developed a special mount for army helmets.
At first, the army leadership had nothing against such cameras - the video from them was often used to “analyze the flights” after the battles and helped a lot for training purposes. The soldiers perceived these notes as their trophies, something that they brought home from business trips-and then showed, explaining what they had to go through. “Many veterans receive a huge sense of satisfaction and relief from the realization that now many people can see the most difficult and proud moments of their lives-and realize their experiences,” the creator of the YouTube channel dedicated to the video from the first person explained at the forum.
Funker530 is one of the first and most popular YouTube channels with records from soldier's helmets. Its owner retains anonymity - it is only known that he is a former Canadian veteran who served in Afghanistan. The channel began with the notes of his own business trips to the Kandahar: Funker530 served as a machine gunner. Initially, it was just a way to show his family and friends what he did during business trips, but then the video began to gain popularity. Other veterans began to write to him and offer their videos. The main motivation was the desire to explain to ordinary people what they pass in the war, and one of the ways to combat post -traumatic syndrome.
Fifty -six minutes - Ted Daniels’s video was downloaded so much to the channel specially created for this. Arriving from Afghanistan home, he showed an entry from his camera to his father and decided to show his two children when they grow up. The most simple and logical solution Ted considered to fill the video on the private channel on YouTube and store there until the time came. He was going to make a video closed immediately after loading, and putting a video for download, he went for a walk around the city. Having returned, Daniels found a message from Funker530, who managed to see the video and, like many other veterans before Ted, suggested filling him on his own, much more popular channel. Ted thought that the face was not visible on the video, and only colleagues could identify him by voice, agreed and gave a small interview describing the background of the clash.
The faces on the video are really not visible, but a sleeve chevron - rhombus with a stylized image of ivy inscribed in the corners. CNN noticed this on the same day - and the video became viral. The next day, the story was on the main pages of all American media. Two days later, Danielsa called his sergeant and asked if he was on the video that all the Internet is full.
The main problem of the video on the part of the army command was that it could be perceived as the propaganda of the military force of the Taliban. A lonely frightened soldier, rushing along the slope under enemy fire and looks as helpless as possible, is not a very good advertisement for the American army. In the comments under the video on YouTube, people condemned all Daniels’s actions - from the decision to move to an open slope to its ways to move, shoot, even the speed of recharge of the store.
Funker530 won the most from the video: the number of subscribers and views on its channel grew several times, as well as advertising income. Now Funker530, in addition to YouTube channel, is a whole veteran community with its site, forum and related psychological assistance and rehabilitation organizations.
In the Russian YouTube segment, the rollers from the battlefield are occupied by shooting from the Donbass. But if the video of the American soldiers is made by a tightly fixed camera-and no installation, then the vast majority of the Donbass filming, except for the quality, do not differ from the records of the Chechen war: this is still a separate operator that takes off and does not take direct participation in the battle.
Despite the fact that in the rollers from the Donbass there are much more harsh details-charred, stripped and mutilated corpses, armored vehicles, broken houses and roads-they are deprived of the main dignity of American filming: a sense of direct involvement in what is happening due to filming from the first person.
The videos from the Donbass perform a completely different function than the recordings of American soldiers from Afghanistan. They are like combat reports, reports on the situation on the fronts, and in the comments there is always another endless battle in the general war. If in the western YouTube the information load is not at all important, but only the quality of the picture and the amount of action on it, then in the Russian-speaking space exactly the opposite: the best video will be the one where nothing happens, but some results and consequences of clashes are recorded. Rollers with cuts of funny moments from the records of American wars are mixed with jokes and memes gain millions of views. It is unlikely that it would occur to anyone to make a similar video based on the records of war in the Donbass.