credit: Josh Clark

Filmmaker Josh Clark

Josh Clark recently graduated from the University of Oregon in Eugene, but his Northwest Student Emmy award-winning senior project, Outside the Wire, travels all the way to Afghanistan.

Clark’s short documentary tells the story of two photojournalists, seasoned veteran and U of O professor Dan Morrison and recent graduate Cali Bagby, who were embedded with frontline Marines in Afghanistan. 

Arts & Life sat down with Clark to learn more about what went into crafting this film.

What were some of the challenges of making the film?

There were a lot of challenges because it was only supposed to be 10 minutes max but that was still longer than anything I’d ever done and surprisingly a lot more work. [Laughs.] And we had so much footage that we shot of them.

It was hard because there were so many good pictures and information. Dan Morrison has been constantly going to the worst places in the world since the '80s, so he’s seen it all. There’s so much stuff from his life that was just amazing. And everything he said I thought, “Man, we’ve got to put that in the documentary.” He would just tell stories like it was nothing. “Oh, I wanted to be a war journalist and I went down to Ecuador and it seemed pretty alright and I was talking to this guy and his head just exploded right in front of me,” just like it’s nothing. It was tough.

Cali, on the other hand, [Afghanistan] was her first real crazy experience with that so she didn’t have as many stories, but she had some pretty interesting stuff, too. With her it was more like funny stories that we really liked but we couldn’t fit them in... We didn’t have enough space.

But she had to pee in front of all the Marines and stuff. Like, “Hey I’m a journalist and now I am going to pee in front of you.”

What do you want people to get out of the film?

At first we were going to do a war documentary basically. But it turned out to be less about the war itself and more about the experiences of being there and seeing it from an outside view. It is more about the smaller things.

You could read about what’s going on if you wanted to. But I thought basic life was really interesting. For example, you have to crap in a plastic bag and throw it in a giant burning pile of trash. No one tells you that kind of stuff. That really got me: the giant burning pile of feces and garbage.

I just thought it was interesting how it affected them and what it was like living the Marine lifestyle.

Do you feel like you would ever want to be a war journalist?

I did sort of get into it just talking to Dan Morrison. I have so much respect for that guy. He’s 60 and he’s out there risking his life, running around with these 20-year-old Marines. And I’m thinking, "Man, I should be like out there doing crazy stuff like this." But I don’t know. I’m not sure if I could actually handle the reality of it all, you know? Like seeing people get killed and stuff — It’s not really something that I want to experience that much.

Anything else you'd like to add?
My professor Dan Miller was instrumental in the production of this movie. I just want to give sincere thanks to him, as well as our director Jeff Szabo. Jeff and I spent many an evening in the editing bay together, and he is an amazing and talented filmmaker. Co-producers Jessie Higgins and Megan Koler were both major assets to our team as well.

Cali and Dan are both such inspiring people. It's just incredible that a person Cali’s age is risking her life to keep the American people informed about our military actions, especially considering the increased dangers facing a woman in a war zone.