(dramatic music)
(whirring of helicopter rotors)
- We're making a movie.
We're making a cinematic experience
for our audience every week.
It's huge.
It's a lot bigger than we even anticipated.
Building an entire forward operating base.
Building an entire Afghan village.
Going up in Black Hawk helicopters.
- There's only three of these in the United States.
All the pilots have flown in a war zone.
So they're very experienced.
Really makes this show feel
like we're right there in the midst of it.
And I love the Black Hawk work.
- [Helicopter Crewman] Sounds like chaos down there.
For better or worse, we're goin' in.
- This is really about offering audiences insight
into a world and a group of characters
who really run the gamut.
- I like you both, all right?
You're damn good medics.
- Hey, can you hear me?
We're gonna get you outta here, okay.
- We chose Santa Clarita because there's a part
of Santa Clarita where we're in
that we can match pretty closely
to Laghman Province in Afghanistan.
And then we had Fahim, the actor that plays the warlord,
who's also our technical advisor.
- Read the script, thanks to Roberto
he wrote it so well and everything is...
The makeup, wardrobes, um, I mean everything.
They're all so professional.
I thought I'm gonna be in trouble,
I'm gonna fix this, fix this.
And I couldn't find any flaws.
(warlord speaking in foreign language)
- Trade?
(warlord responds in foreign language)
- How do you get research on a warlord of Afghanistan?
You're not going to find it on the internet.
You're not going to find it anywhere.
He helped me correct it to the point
where it was like, okay, that's what a warlord
interior in Afghanistan, in a rural town would look like.
- What Tomas has been able to do for us,
our production designer, is nothing short of miraculous.
He built an entire forward operating base for us.
And our interiors on stage blend seamlessly
with our exteriors so you have them racing
towards the OR outside on our forward operating base,
cut through two doors that burst open
and suddenly you're on our stage
and it's exactly what you would expect
that next part of the set to be.
What he's done for us has given us our third character,
which is our setting.
- I'll tell you what, the first time I walked onto this set,
I just looked around, and I'm like,
these people are not playing at all.
- Every set that we've been on, the details are amazing.
The set dressing did an amazing job, the construction, it...
Our guys who have been over seas when they were on set
well it's like eerie how similar this is,
right down to the CHUs,
which are the housing units where we stay.
We've got Humvees, we've got ambulances,
we've got everything.
The world is just alive.
- [Soldier] How'd you manage to get an ambulance?
- Every single thing has been thought of.
It's been gone over.
And it's been taken care of.
Having a set that's really just perfect,
it places you in it so much easier
when you show up to do your job.
- I think people who have been out there
are hopefully gonna just go like,
"This is exactly what it is."
And, you know, you're doing a scene
and a Black Hawk helicopter just lands for real
and you're not on a sound stage.
- You go out, you see that base,
and you see how realistic it looks.
There's very little that's left to the imagination.
So as an actor it's a wonderful gift.
Coming from theater,
knowing how important the imagination is, it's great.
But to be on set and to be (snaps) there,
it just puts you in the world.
- It was a scale model.
We built what was there that we had to start with,
which was a couple of walls and a couple of guard shacks.
But just with cardboard, we started building containers
and building tents and building things.
And I just created like a little bit of a menu of elements.
And then we just started placing them on this scale model.
It helped a lot because it was like
being able to organize our heads around
what we had to work with and what, how we could add to it,
and what areas we would use to play.
If the helicopter comes in or if the trucks come in.
You know we did a double stack layer of containers
and put a control tower above it
and filled it up with radio and gears and everything.
- Command, this is Bravo One.
It's quite different being on set
and working with weapons and kind of feeling
what the soldiers have to wear
and what they have to go through
and running with all this gear on
is a really eye-opening experience for me.
- I'm very impressed with the level of authenticity
that they're striving for.
Everything from, you know,
what people are doing in the background,
making sure that they look okay,
to see if they can match the reality of
you know, what happens over there,
which is never how it's supposed to happen.
You know, you have all of your policies,
you have all of your ideas laid out,
and then when you go to combat
you make the best you can with what you have.
But everybody from the actors, director, writers,
they're very keen on making sure
that it has the sense of realism
that I experienced as a part of my combat tour
and also the other military advisors.
- Before every scene, actual 68 Whiskeys
would come and describe everything.
- We have military consultants who help us
with the general military stuff.
Greg Bishop, he sits on set
whenever we do anything at the base,
and he'll look for every little detail,
say that wouldn't happen, that you'd never see.
He's not holding his gun right.
They're not dressed properly.
They're not walking properly.
They're not saluting properly.
This is how they would be.
- I walked in on that first day of set,
usually that first day of set is,
would I have to have these conversations with actors
and with, you know, the hair dressers and the producers.
And we didn't have to do that.
They were, they were (snaps) boom,
they got their hair cut and they were ready to go.
- Well, for the military look there's all the rules
and regulations that go along with that.
We stuck very close to all of that.
And then as far as the Afghan look,
Tomas, our production designer,
really had a beautiful vision
trying to make the village look like a painting.
And so we've really gone with that with the colors,
just in overall the whole look.
Lots and lots of research, of course, went into that.
I have an entire wall just built on that kind of research.
- My whole life I've wanted to play a soldier.
I grew up on an Air Force Base in Colorado Springs
and three of my very best friends
are career military members.
When I talked to Michael about the backstory for Sasquatch,
he told me that I used to be an Army Ranger.
And one of my very best friends like in high school
became an Army Ranger, so I got to do some of my research
I talked to him on the phone for hours and hours at a time
asking him questions about what base life was like,
what it was like dealing with Afghan villagers,
basic protocol, even from my gear that I'm wearing,
it's all exactly specified to what he told me,
which is really cool.
- They're striving to do everything as close to,
you know, real life as possible.
- I managed to stabilize him on the bird, ma'am.
He's still in pretty bad shape.
- [Medic] I'll take it from here, Sergeant.
- Also, by getting it right, we're honoring the real men
and women who are, you know, fighting for everyone.
- The actors are very dedicated to makin' it
as real as possible.
In the scene when they're performing a medical procedure...
- (whirring of helicopter) He's going into shock.
- They'll like call me over to make sure, you know,
the needles are in the right place
or whatever that detail is
that's going to stand out in the shot.
They wanna be seen doin' it right.
And I think they wanna pay tribute to
the medics and the job of the medic as well.
(upbeat music)
(clap)