The Battle of Midway has been described by many as nothing short of a six-minute miracle.
“Midway battle is considered the most significant battle ever fought in the history of the world,” Richard C. Matheson, a Malibu resident and author who wrote a screenplay for the USS Midway Theater’s new film about the Battle of Midway, said.
U.S. Navy forces were outnumbered by the Imperial Japanese Navy almost three-to-one on the morning of June 4, 1942. Admiral Chester Nimitz had code readers intercept Japanese radio calls and sent aircraft to attack four Japanese carriers, effectively changing the course of World War II in the Pacific and history.
Shortly after the Battle of Midway, the Navy commissioned an aircraft carrier, and on Sept. 10, 1945, the ship set sail as one of the largest aircraft carriers, with an armored flight deck and air group of 120 planes.
Today, the USS Midway is breaking new ground in San Diego as not only the most visited military museum in the country, but also with new technology in the Battle of Midway Theater.
“The Navy had hoped for an audio visual presentation of some kind about the Midway battle,” Matheson said. “Part of what I came up with, there was the possibility of using holographic technology, meaning figures that looked like people, not objects — historical figures or even if you couldn’t put your finger on who they were, they were people from World War II, and then if they took a few steps forward, they would transition from being 20 years old to being 80 years old. I thought maybe I could integrate that into the story I was telling.”
What’s unique about the experience is the holographic technology used throughout “Voices of Midway,” where visitors can watch a film where it looks like different people are walking out in front of the screen to tell a part of the story.
“There’s a 100-person theater and the project ‘Voices of Midway’ is a 15-minute multiuse film experience with life-size holograms, technology that hasn’t been done before with having a screen behind it,” Director and Producer of the film Scott Levitta said. “Hologram screens are clear. The technology is such that it was used and still is … the very first one was Tupac at Coachella. They did a huge version in Vegas for Michael Jackson.”
An important component of the experience was user engagement and making sure that everyone in the theater could easily relate to what was being projected on the screen.
“Each shot, each piece of dialogue was really based on culling through much more than normal, but because it’s a historical piece, you know that historians were going to look for mistakes and you also had to know that the audience is young, old, mothers, fathers, husbands and wives, kids … we didn’t approach it like a traditional drama because then it would be a little thin for the audience,” Levitta said. “We had to think ‘Would a wife like this? Would a kid like this? Would the military people like this? … Will everybody that comes in over the course of 20 screenings a day like this?’”
State-of-the-art sound and technology is used in the film and the many different hands-on, interactive activities leading up to the theater, including a flight deck, audio tours, flight simulators, historically preserved photographs and letters.
“The whole desire of the rear admiral who’s in charge of the museum — his marching orders were — don’t make this about the war, don’t make this about holograms, the whole thing has to service the heart and soul and the sacrifice of the young men,” Levitta said. “The reason why it’s such a big battle is because it changed the course of history. This stopped that from happening, the Battle of Midway. Six minutes that changed the world. In six minutes, the young men who were on the aircraft carriers and flying the planes were able to bomb three of the four Japanese aircraft carriers which turned the tide of the war, in six minutes. That is what he wanted to portray — the heart and soul of these young guys.”
The 15-minute film focuses on the lives of the men who never asked to be heroes, but deserve to be called nothing less.
“We got letters, actual letters that they wrote, and we used those letters as kind of the heart of the film,” Matheson said. “They are sort of angels that walk among us now. They gave their lives so that we might have ours. My grandfather was a captain in the Navy. Though I was not raised in a military family by any means, I found in meeting all these guys while we were filming, they were so smart … there was something so unmistakingly heroic about them …
“I come from a world where it’s all fiction, in Hollywood and books, not where there aren’t genuine feelings involved in the things that you do, but it’s not the same thing as being on a ship and going into enemy territory and losing all these young men.”
For more information about the USS Midway Museum and the “Voices of Midway,” visit midway.org.
