LOS ANGELES - Lights, camera, action! ... a helmet and flak jacket would be very useful, too.

If a war breaks out in Iraq, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps plan to film soldiers on the front lines of battle and bring their stories to movie audiences in video spots similar to the old Movietone film reels made during World War II, people involved with the effort said on Wednesday.

The idea, explained Marine Lt. Colonel James Kuhn, is to show people the real images of war and put a human face on the men and women fighting it.

"It's intended to fulfill the Navy and Marine Corps obligation to maintain a strong tie to the public, to let them know what we're doing," Kuhn said. "It's an opportunity for people to hear how the soldiers feel about what they do."

The reels, too, will give audiences the chance to see what actually happens in battle as it happens -- bullets flying, bombs blasting and people being put in harm's way.

The effort stems from a roughly five-minute short film the Navy and Marines made after the Sept. 11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan called "Enduring Freedom -- The Opening Chapter."

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That film played in about 200 Regal Entertainment Group theaters equipped with digital projection equipment last year, and through word-of-mouth publicity, it has become a hit at public events, business conferences and private seminars, Kuhn said.

Lance O'Connor, a partner in Santa Monica, California-based American Rogue Films, which trained and equipped soldiers with new high-definition digital cameras to shoot the video, said the reels will be made in the same vein as documentaries.

"It's not about propaganda, it's about documentary work. If it were propaganda, it wouldn't work," he said.

Kuhn agreed. "It's not being done to create a statement on policy one way or the other," he said.

O'Connor's company put together "Enduring Freedom," and for years has made promotional spots for the U.S. military.

He said "Enduring Freedom" includes live footage of battles in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and that similarly, the camera crews for this new effort will be in the middle of the action.

"Our guys are going straight to the front ... secret operations, Navy SEALs, whatever is going over on the first tier (of operations), we're going to film it," he said.

While "hard combat" will be featured, the men and women doing the fighting also will tell personal stories of how they feel about war and about serving their country, Kuhn said.

"It's a story of who these people are and why they do what they do," he said.

A spokeswoman for Regal CineMedia, the Regal division that outfits theaters with new digital projection systems, said her company does not yet have plans to show the films, but is talking with the Navy and Marines about doing so.

"I'm sure those discussions will continue to go forward, she said.

Kuhn said the films will be available to the general public, anyway, regardless of whether movie theaters decide to screen them ahead of films.

The military has a long history of battle photography dating back to the Civil War, and in 1944, a Marine staff sergeant won an Oscar for a World War II short, "With the Marines at Tarawa."

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

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