Going Beyond the Call of Duty

A few weeks ago I was asked by my friends at Llewellyn Films to help produce a couple of segments for "It's Supernatural" with Sid Roth. The first episode that I worked on was an interview with Mary Nahas, daughter of Private John Galione and author of "The Journey of Private Galione."
Who is John Galione and why should I care you may be asking, here's the quick and dirty:
Towards the end of WWII, finding Nazi concentration camps wasn't a priority for the US military. But this didn't stop Private John Galione from going AWOL to look for the camps. What he discovered was the Mittelbau Dora camp. Dora was the camp where Heinrich Himmler was developing V-2 Rockets.
Had Galione not gone AWOL and found the camp, it would have been found by the Russians and changed the face of the Cold War.
Annnnd now you know!
I was the San Diego location producer for the re-enactments of parts of Galione's story. We filmed at the Eagle Gold Mine in Julian, CA and the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo, CA. I also have a small cameo as one of the concentration camp prisoners, which I had to cut all my hair off for - no more curly locks for me.
The great thing about this project was getting to find locations that matched the original one in Germany enough that we could composite the pieces together. The piece features several composite shots, a couple involving angels interacting with Private Galione and one involving a photograph of the entrance to the Mittlebau-Dora tunnels and a boxcar in San Diego. The results are amazing - especially for the budget we had.
A special not to producers and location scouts: if you need to make dollars stretch in your budget, San Diego (city, county, and port) offers free permits for filming and most locations are willing to negotiate very reasonable prices for location fees.
You can view the entire episode HERE.