IOWA FALLS- The crazy, almost too good to be true story of a pair of German immigrants living in Wellsburg who came to be involved in a Hollywood short film about World War II got a little crazier last Wednesday night. The production team traveled all the way to north central Iowa to shoot the trailer, and two more Grundy County natives got involved at the last minute.
“Reveille,” which is based on a chapter from war hero turned actor Audie Murphy’s memoir To Hell and Back, is set along the Winter Line in northern Italy, but German advisor, Wellsburg resident and Ellsworth Community College Professor Jorg Rochlitzer found an area of Jones Park in Iowa Falls that just happened to resemble the location and convinced writer/director Michael Akkerman and executive producer Myra Miller to make the trek to the Hawkeye State.
“It was like this snowball effect of bringing all these different people on who saw the potential in this whole thing and the meaning behind it. They got really attached to it,” Akkerman said. “The fact that we’re out here right now, we’ve been shooting all day, and we’re in costumes and everything like that just completely taking it seriously shows how dedicated these people are to history and all that stuff. It’s just a really humbling experience to get all these people on board who I didn’t even know a year before.”
Akkerman, who resides in Boise, Idaho, added that the decision to shoot in Iowa was “spur of the moment,” and the main film will still be shot in southern California come November. Bernd Wittneben, also of Wellsburg, is playing German squad leader Walter Brander, and the other actors and crewmembers on set raved about his abilities during the shoot, which took place first along a creek before it reaches an intense, emotional climax in a cave where the German soldiers are taken prisoner.
“I was really nervous about finding the part for that character, but he’s perfect for it,” Akkerman said. “This whole thing has been serendipity like you wouldn’t believe.”
One of the major selling points for everyone involved in the project is authenticity: Akkerman calls “Reveille” an “anti-Hollywood” project that’s stripped of the theatrics of most war movies, comparing it most closely to the HBO miniseries “Generation Kill” about the Iraq War.
“It’s raw. It’s unapologetic. It’s not overly dramatic. It’s not dramatized and blown out and all that stuff,” he said. “It’s just very bare bones, raw as can be.”
The shoot also provided opportunities for two recent BCLUW graduates and current Marshalltown Community College students to hone their chops on a big-time film set thanks to Professor Steve Muntz. Dillon Jacobson worked as a camera operator focusing mostly on tracking shots, while Lane Schnathorst acted as one of the German soldiers alongside Wittneben’s Brander. Jacobson and Schnathorst have collaborated on several past projects including an all-state short film earlier this year.
“This is just something that I live for, and the fact that I’m able to take it a step further so early in my “career,” it’s absolutely amazing,” Jacobson said. “This is a perfect story for somebody who wants to make it big, and I got to be involved.”
Schnathorst relished the chance to act alongside Wittneben, who was recently sworn in as a U.S. citizen, and he had no idea that he would be chosen.
“I had to shave up my sideburns. I had to put on 60 pounds worth of gear and just walk a lot,” he said. “I hadn’t acted in about six months now, and it was a good refresher.”
A gaggle of other military advisors, college students and actors hung around the set as some swapped stories of basic training and their own service. Both Schnathorst and Wittneben practiced taking “shots” and falling backward at the perfect angle before their American counterparts carried them off to the cave.
If the pieces fall into place, Ellsworth and MCC students may be invited out to Hollywood to watch the shoot in November, and “Reveille” could become the first chapter in an anthology series of lesser-known WWII stories. Regardless, it’s an experience that none of the players involved will soon forget.
