Monsters to Destroy: ZAP Completes Post on Lucasfilm's 3-Part Foreign Policy Documentary Series

After a six month hiatus, our friends at JAK Films (Lucasfilm Ltd.'s production arm) completed offline editing on part three of their series "Manifest Destiny." The final chapter "Monsters to Destroy" spans the historical period of Bush 41 through Bush 43, from the end of the Cold War (1989) through the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

We provided finishing on episodes one and two in 2010 covered here in our blog.

"Monsters to Destroy" was written and produced by our old friend Sharon Wood and was edited by Greg Sirota and Jim McSilver. The task (for ZAP) was in some ways more complicated than the previous two episodes, as the archival material was 1980s-early 2000s video of decidedly mixed quality requiring careful up-rezzing to HD, conformed by ZAP's on-line wizard Ri Crawford and artfully color graded by our colleague Leo Hallal. Same post team who was colorist on episodes 1 and 2.

MANIFEST DESTINY

A documentary mini-series on U.S. Foreign Policy

What does a City on a Hill have to do with Guantanamo? How did descendants of anti-colonialists create what some have called the most powerful empire on earth? Where do exceptionalism, democracy promotion and interventions abroad intersect or collide? How has the 19th century rallying cry of “Manifest Destiny” continued to influence American foreign policy?

These and other questions are raised in the powerful stories featured in MANIFEST DESTINY, an historical series being produced by the documentary unit of JAK Films, a division of Lucasfilm. The series is comprised of three 90 minute episodes

Part 3, “Monsters to Destroy,” examines America’s multilateral and unilateral military campaigns in the post-Cold War era. By following how George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush interpreted humanitarian intervention and democracy promotion, from the first Gulf War, through Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the episode will bring the concept of Manifest Destiny into the 21st century.

Now that the series is completed, Lucasfilm will begin actively trying to place the series on domestic television and will plan their educational distribution.

Manifest Destiny - A History of American Foreign Policy from Lucasfilm

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

Was the United States a beacon of freedom or an emerging imperialist power? A new 3-part documentary series from the same Lucasfilm-JAK Films documentary unit that produced ninety four one-hour history documentaries for young people asks fundamental questions of American identity and its role in the world of nations since the early eighteenth century. Going from advocacy of democracy to containment, through the emergence of the US as a world power after the first world war to world superpower during the cold war and finally the world's only superpower.

ZAP was brought in to provide on-line post production including HD conforming, color grading, title design and animation.

This ground-breaking series revisits our foreign involvments and adventures throughout our history: Cuba and Spain, The Philippines, Mexico, Vietnam, Somalia, the Former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The American Historical Association got a sneak preview of epsode one earlier this year:

Broadening our vision.... to the Philippines, indeed taking in the Westward Movement on the North American continent and the whole Pacific region, is the first public screening (a world premiere!) of a just-completed Lucasfilm production, Manifest Destiny: To Conquer or Redeem. Directed and produced by Sharon Wood, the film tells the powerful story of the Spanish-American and U.S.-Philippine Wars in the context of continental expansion and conquest. As part one of Manifest Destiny, which will be a three-part series on U.S. foreign policy, this film tracks the evolving role of “American Exceptionalism” as the United States grew from a rebellious colony into a continental power and began to develop an overseas empire. Utilizing some remarkable historic footage and revisionist approach, it’s a work that guarantees you’ll never again see William McKinley as a kind of innocent victim of circumstances.

The three films all create linear worlds in which ambiguity is downplayed and the argument or story is made as clear as possible given the available evidence.