In October, we had a special production trip to Seattle and filmed in a sound stage for the first time in the project. The footage we captured in Seattle will make up the introduction of the documentary.
In past videos, I’ve introduced the story of the Franklin by putting narration over a series of clips of footage of the March 19, 1945 attack. This is a somewhat standard method by which stories from WWII seem to be established in documentaries, but that would require me to write a script that tells the Franklin story. I feel it’s better for someone who was there to tell the story.
To do that, I considered using some of the first-hand accounts written by Franklin shipmates in the book USS Franklin (CV-13): The Ship That Wouldn’t Die. My plan was to film children or grandchildren reading selected stories that their fathers/grandfathers had contributed to the book. However, it would have been expensive and logistically difficult to fly in people from across the country to one location at one time to film them reading the narratives on a sound stage.
Subsequently, I remembered that there was one war correspondent on the Franklin at the time of the attack. His name was Alvin S. McCoy and he worked for the Kansas City Star newspaper. The morning of 19 March 1945, he had just sat down to breakfast in the warrant officer’s ward room two decks below the hangar deck when the ship was hit. McCoy and others in that area were able to make their way up to the flight deck. There, he became a witness to the explosions and conflagration, as well as to the efforts to tend to the wounded, rescue those who were trapped or in the water, fight the fires, jettison ordnance, and save the ship.
(Photo courtesy of Dr. Mary McCoy and Marion Wright.)
Eventually, McCoy ended up on the USS Santa Fe where he wrote his articles about the attack. The war blackout was removed on 17 May 1945 and McCoy’s stories were published by the Kansas City Star the next day in the morning edition, the Kansas City Times. The publisher also put the stories on the wire for free so that newspapers across the country could pick them up and print them on the same day. It was McCoy’s stories that I chose to convert into a script to introduce the story of the Franklin in the film.
I conducted a genealogical search of Alvin S. McCoy’s family tree and located his two daughters, Dr. Mary McCoy and Marion Wright. Mary is a retired entomologist and Professor Emerita at Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas. Marion worked as a journalist and is a retired Division Communications Manager for Boeing Space and Defense Group in Seattle. They both agreed to participate in the documentary, and I set up filming when I learned that Mary was planning to visit Marion in Seattle in the fall.
I rented the production stage at Northwest Camera Company for two days. We stayed at an AirBnB one block away and went in the day before our rental to meet the folks there, see the facility, and make plans for the next two days.
The first day of the studio rental, Tim O’Laughlin (director of photography) and Zach Noblitt (sound mixer), worked with the studio manager/gaffer who was experienced and knowledgeable about filming in this space and who provided valuable input for our project. Together, they set up cameras, lights and sound for filming the next day. Mary and Marion came by in the afternoon, brought by Sarah and Curt Cox, Marion’s daughter and son-in-law. They came to see the studio and to test the lighting to make sure they had enough illumination to read their scripts. They also did a practice read through part of the script.
On the second day of the studio rental, Mary, Marion, Sarah and Curt arrived in the morning. We filmed Mary and Marion reading the script that I put together using their father’s articles about the USS Franklin that he had written more than 79 years ago.
In the photos below, Mary is the sister with white hair and Marion has red hair. Marion’s daughter Sarah is in photos 1-4, helping her aunt Mary and her mom while Zach set up their microphones.
The last two photos of the set below were taken by Zach Noblitt. I’m in the last photo sitting at the table wearing the headphones. Zach provides headphones during filming that allows me to hear the sound from the microphones. Zach was sitting to my left with his sound gear set up on the table, which you can see in the 5th photo of the set. In the 11th photo, you can see Tim filming the sisters with two cameras, one capturing the both of them in one frame and the other for close-up work. We also had a camera up on the mezzanine level (9th photo below) filming the entire stage, with the video projected live to the monitor you can see on the table in front of me and also in the 10th photo. This was expertly set up by the manager of the studio.
After we filmed Mary and Marion reading the script, they and Sarah and Curt went to lunch while we set up for their interview. After they returned, Mary and Marion sat down in front of the cameras and told us a number of stories from their lives about their mother and father, including their father’s return home after the attack on the Franklin, and about their father’s investigative journalism in politics that resulted in the Pulitzer Prize awarded to him in 1954.
Overall, it was a successful shoot in Seattle and we thoroughly enjoyed meeting and working with Mary and Marion and Sarah and Curt. They all were very generous with their time and they contributed to a very important part of the film. This includes the time we spent preparing in advance for the shoot. Mary and Marion and I talked on the phone a number of times before Mary’s trip to the West Coast. The sisters’ families also supported them as we all prepared for the filming in Seattle.
Also in preparation for the filming, I had to license McCoy’s two articles about the Franklin from the publisher that owns the Kansas City Star. Without the license, we would not be able to keep McCoy’s stories in the film, as read by his daughters.
Speaking of the Kansas City Star, I think it’s worth mentioning that it has a rich history. The paper was founded in 1880, so has been in publication for a long time, and has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize eight times. This includes the Pulitzer received by Alvin S. McCoy. I’m happy to have the opportunity to include the paper in the film.
It was a great experience filming in a studio, and the Seattle shoot brought us one step closer to the end of production. There are a number of interviews to be conducted in my state of residence, Massachusetts, including at least one with a relative of Medal of Honor recipient Chaplain Father Joseph T. O’Callahan who was originally from Boston. Stay tuned for that development.