The best artists, writers, filmmakers, game developers, and animators go to great lengths to infuse their work with realism. After all, coaxing an audience to get lost in the story is what it’s all about. In this series, we talk to professionals in the media and entertainment industries to find out some of the ways the pros go about making their work believable.
The new military comedy Enlisted, about three brothers assigned to a backwater Army base, launched on the Fox network on Jan. 10. Although the show is obviously a farce, the producers are working hard to ensure it portrays military life with a fair amount of accuracy. For instance, the show hired military consultants for advice on realism and also sponsored a “spot the errors” giveaway aimed at members of the military, encouraging them to report an error in exchange for a promotional Enlisted coin.
Fox Social Media Producer Emily Murray works closely with the press and the casts of the shows she promotes, and she told us about the actors’ experience participating in a real Army boot camp. Emily, a Full Sail graduate, accompanied several of the Enlisted actors to a Texas Army base last fall.
“They were sent to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, and I went to take photos and cover them while they were there. They had to go through boot camp training, they were woken up at 2 a.m. to get inspections, it was 100 degrees, and they were troopers out in the desert,” says Emily. “It was exciting to see,” she adds. “They understood what it takes to be in the military.”
Watch a webisode on the Enlisted actors’ experience at Fort Bliss.