Fake Soldiers Used In RNC Video

Patriotic Montage Shown At RNC Featured Actors Hired For One Day Shoot, Not Military

It was a video that was supposed to elicit soaring patriotism and real emotions about the Pledge of Allegiance. But to do that, it used fake soldiers and a staged military funeral instead of the real thing.

On Tuesday night, 15-year-old Victoria Blackstone, a sophomore at the St. Agnes School in St. Paul, led the crowd at the Xcel Energy Center in the Pledge of Allegiance. The audience heard her 434-word essay, “Pledging myself to the Flag of the United States of America,” an essay she’d entered in the “Wave the Stars & Stripes” essay contest and won. The RNC turned that essay into a three and a half minute video, a visually stirring montage rolling over Victoria’s words about sharing the Pledge with Americans who have stood at important moments in history.

There’s the Continental Congress…A real WWII vet…Photos of workers at Ground Zero. A close-up of a folded flag presented to a grieving widow at a military funeral… profiles of soldiers swelling with pride in slo-motion.

But CBS News found that the footage of the ‘funeral’ and soldiers is what is called ‘stock’ footage. The soldiers were actors and the funeral scene was from a one-day film shoot, produced in June. No real soldiers were used during production.

The footage, sold by stock-film house Getty Images was produced by a commercial filmmaker in Chicago. Both Getty and the production company, Mr. Big Films, confirmed that the footage was shot on spec and sold to the Republican National Committee.

One of the actors, Perry Denton of Chicago, Ill. also confirmed that he was hired on a day-rate as an actor for the shoot and told CBS News he was surprised to learn the footage was shown at the convention.

Vis wrote:from reading the story it seems like the McCain camp bought use of some stock footage.... they didn't hire actors and stage anything. Stock footage use is fairly common. That's why they shot the footage on spec.

Cincy Fan 44 wrote:Here's a dirty little secret about some of the video you see networks using to toot their horns...not all of it is shot by them either. They get it from other sources too. Just take a look at some of the commercials you see for the local TV stations. Do you honestly think all of the people in those commercials are just ordinary people that aren't acting like they're surprised they need an umbrella as they're heading out the door?