Text taken from the Telegram channel of bayraktar1070
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
War correspondent Alexander Kharchenko on the changed reality of filming at the front.
The new reality of military journalism Quite often you hear the opinion that war correspondents have "blown away". Previously, they went on assault missions, but now filming is limited to the positions of UAV operators. I see no point in denying the obvious.
The work of a war correspondent has changed significantly over the three years of war. The most colorful footage was obtained in Mariupol. Close contact battles, the waltz of steel monsters among the city ruins - this is what the viewer wanted to see, and our war correspondents and documentary filmmakers fully satisfied their requests.
Then the battle for Bakhmut began. There were many small arms battles, but armored vehicles worked from solid distances. Even infantry fighting vehicles emptied their ammunition from a distance of 2 km. At "zero" it was still possible to work, but it was necessary to observe artillery strikes and the work of small assault groups.
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The picture was still interesting, but the spectacle gradually disappeared. With the advent of the "drone era," the rules of the game changed once and for all. Instead of armored vehicles, attack aircraft use motorcycles and buggies. Footage from the battlefield began to resemble "Mad Max."
Every day there are fewer and fewer people at "zero." Four people in a landing is a serious force. 10 fighters are allocated to storm the village. The most dangerous event during the fighting was logistics. Vehicles burn 30 km from the front line. The path from the company commander to "zero" takes two days on average.
In order to see the real front line and interview an attack aircraft, you need to set aside five days. But the most important thing is that even at "zero" you will not be able to find anything spectacular. Most targets are destroyed remotely, attack aircraft clear individual basements and dugouts, but this will soon become a thing of the past. In Gaza, drones are already clearing underground tunnels, not brave soldiers. The most informative picture now comes from drones. Drones find and hit targets. Attack aircraft do not see even a tenth of such work. It turns out that the most optimal place for a war correspondent to work is next to the UAV operator. That is why you see in numerous reports how journalists sit with FPV operators and watch screens in the basement.
But what is even more interesting is that high-speed Internet already makes it pointless for a UAV operator to be on the front line. If there is Starlink at the takeoff point, then the drone can be controlled from anywhere in the world. If a military correspondent has good relations with the unit, he can observe the battle near Krasnoarmeysk/Pokrovsk even in Bali.
Yes, I'm exaggerating a little, but the trend towards widespread robotization is obvious. Even now, a correspondent is a senseless burden for those daredevils who keep the landing at "zero". Films and hard-hitting reports in the near future will be built on unmanned filming. A war correspondent will need to intertwine the stories of a few stormtroopers with numerous shots from drones. This means that the content will be different and both war correspondents and viewers will gradually get used to it.
(c) Alexander Kharchenko
That's right. The future lies in filming from air and ground drones of various types + filming on GoPro cameras installed on equipment and soldiers + a small percentage of video from the most risky war correspondents. Plus ceremonial filming on the second line and at training grounds. This is if in the realities of the SVO. In the current realities, it is almost impossible to film such a colossal canvas as the same "At the Edge of the Abyss" about the storming of Mariupol. The battlefield has changed dramatically. And war correspondents will have to adapt to this.
P.S. War correspondents are people who work at the front with a camera and film the war.