for"Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

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>> PAYTON: Coming up... >> BRANDON: Celebrate a celluloid centennial.

>> PAYTON: Meet veterans exploring their creative sides.

>> BRANDON: And find out how these artists draw inspiration.

>> PAYTON: That's all on this episode of -- >> TOGETHER: "Journey Indiana."

♪ >> BRANDON: Welcome to "Journey Indiana," I'm Brandon Wentz.

>> PAYTON: And I'm Payton Whaley.

And we are not coming to you from the post-apocalyptic future, but rather the Muscatatuck Training Center in Jennings County.

The Muscatatuck Training Center is a 1,000-acre complex that allows military, law enforcement, and civilian organizations to model large-scale, complex training simulations in both urban and rural environments.

The site has been managed by the Indiana National Guard since 2005.

And we'll learn all about this dynamic place in just a bit.

>> BRANDON: But first, producer Saddam Abbas takes us to Monroe County, where Indiana University is celebrating 100 years of 16-millimeter film.

♪ >> I like art and I like thinking about things, but I also always like using my hands and tinkering with things, and there's no better medium than to combine those things in filmmaking, especially filmmaking with a mechanical camera like this, because it's a little bit of a tool.

It's a little bit of a tinker toy mechanism.

It's a little bit of art, and it's a little bit of, like, theory and thinking about things.

And all of that combines.

So it's not just research.

It's not just reading about thing and learning about things.

It's also doing something and doing something using your hands and figuring out how it works.

And that I always found extremely fascinating.

>> Even if you don't know anything about film or film formats, that you can tell that something is different about 16-millimeter, even compared to digital or even Super 8, that there is a different look to it, a different feel, a different texture, a movement that can be very enticing and leads you to ask questions.

But also the process itself is very -- I won't say very different, but there are different approaches compared to the digital process that make it unique and exciting and enticing, I think, for a lot of filmmakers.

>> There are, like, two elements that make working with film really special, especially 16-millimeter.

One of them is that you can actually hold the image in your hand, and this is actually -- I have noticed that over the years how students appreciate that more and more because almost anything that we do now is digital.

So there's no sense of the material itself, but it's really fabulous when you shot something and it comes back from the lab and you hold it up, and you can actually see the images.

So that's one thing.

And then the other thing is every frame is an individual photograph.

So there's actually a change from frame to frame.

So if you were to take your digital camera and you train it on a completely empty hallway, nothing would change.

It would just record whatever is in the hallway.

If you take a film camera because every film frame is slightly different, you actually have more of a sense of -- that it's organic and that the material itself participates in the making of the film, because every film frame is actually literally different from the previous one.

So the little molecules, you know, they are not going to be exactly in the same space, even though Kodak tries really hard to make it transparent, you have a sense of the thing itself that's also participating in the image.

And I think that's really an amazing aspect of it.

>> The 16-millimeter film camera was a revolutionary tool that was developed in 1923 or leading up to that development.

It came out in 1923.

And it really changed the world.

Before that, the 35-millimeter camera was the only way to actually record any moving images or what are essentially still images shown intermittently to trick the eye.

The 16-millimeter camera allowed regular people, for the first time ever, to record their -- their home movies, their memories, and that, of course, led to what we have today with everyone making movies all the time.

But it was instrumental in changing who could make movies, who could -- who could record their histories.

The idea behind organizing the century of 16-millimeter as a conference is part of a year-long celebration of the 100th year anniversary of 16-millimeter film and its invention.

It's really important that IU is hosting this event.

IU, for about the last 120 years, made films, distributed films as part of the old Audio-Visual Center here on campus.

We have a history across campus of special collections that hold 16-millimeter film.

It was an educational film format.

So films that were made and distributed across the United States to schools, to YMCAs, to civic groups, to professional organizations, that's the core of what Indiana University did for almost a century.

The archive itself that we have here is made up of those educational films plus so much more and we have spectacular facilities here, both for preservation, storage, scholarship, digitization and more.

So we felt like it was really important to have this event at this place specifically at this time.

The primary objective of the century's 16-millimeter film has really just showcased presentations and unique screenings from around the world.

We have 13 countries represented from the presenters, from Norway, Italy, Brazil, Korea.

It will be sort of an output of unique screenings, presentations, that represent sort of historical, interesting uses of film, or artistic uses, really highlighting how film has been used over time by a wide range of people.

>> Preceding the official conference, we have a Bolex H16 filmmaking workshop.

One of the main goals of this workshop is very simply just to introduce sort of established filmmakers and novices alike that 16-millimeter is a medium that they can shoot on, that they can use, and it's not some distant relic format from the past that is lost and, you know, only now these prominent filmmakers can use, like Wes Anderson or, you know, Kathryn Bigelow.

No, it's accessible that anybody can shoot on 16-millimeter.

You just need an introduction to it, and that's what we are trying to provide.

So in thinking about the contemporary moment and the future of 16-millimeter, I think all we have to do is look to this event and this moment, that 100 years after it was introduced, we're still thinking about it, talking about it, and shooting on 16-millimeter.

I think that's a testament to its durability and its endurance, sort of in our cultural landscape and to the importance of film and film history.

So I'm not too concerned about its future.

I think it's going to have a long and fruitful future from here on out.

>> BRANDON: Now, Payton, I have heard rumors that you work in TV and film.

>> PAYTON: Yes, yes.

>> BRANDON: Have you ever shot in that medium before?

>> PAYTON: I have not.

I have gotten to watch some people work with it, which I really do love getting to watch them edit, because I spend all of my day haunched over in front of Adobe Premiere; whereas, they get to kind of handle it themselves and really make those cuts and see the image in their hands, which I just love.

I think that's so cool.

>> BRANDON: Want to learn more?

Just head to the address on your screen.

>> PAYTON: Earlier, we spoke with the folks in charge here to find out a bit more about Muscatatuck and the Indiana National Guard.

>> Muscatatuck Training Center is the largest and most realistic training environment for the military and for first responders available in the United States military inventory.

Muscatatuck Training Center is 1,000 acres.

It's 1.5 square miles within its borders.

Because of the unique buildings, the unique structures that we have here that go all the way back to 1933 on site, we can have all kinds of training going on here, whether it be here in the homeland, any place overseas.

We can represent a city anywhere in the world just within the borders of Muscatatuck itself.

In 1920, Muscatatuck was actually named the Indiana Farm Colony for the Feeble-Minded.

It starred for 85 years as a mental health facility, one of Indiana's five mental health facilities that they had at the time.

It lasted for 85 years until 2005.

It shut down, and the Indiana National Guard got the facility to make an urban training facility out of it.

They left everything here.

It was like people got up from their desks and just walked away.

So the good thing for us is it made that much more of a realistic environment when people came in to train.

Almost every domain you can think of, underground, above ground, marine, even space and cyber, we can do here at Muscatatuck.

We have a flooded community which has seven buildings in what's basically a large pool-lined area, and we can flood that.

So you have to rescue people from these buildings.

We have a mock embassy.

So embassy training, whether it be security training or the people who actually have to work at the embassy, can train here and what it will be like when they get overseas.

We have destroyed buildings that we have actually built to look like destroyed buildings.

So they are perfectly safe, but you have to go in and rescue people.

People who may be hurt.

You have to go in and figure out how to get them out.

We can smoke the place up.

We have fire effects.

All kinds of Hollywood-style effects to make it as realistic as possible.

Like, if you name a government entity, they have trained here.

Literally, not just military.

We've had all five branches of the military -- yes, including the Space Force -- has trained here and the Coast Guard.

We have first responder groups who are civilian come here all the time.

This is a very large place for police response training because they can come here.

They can do house searches.

They can do response to an active shooter.

Things that they really can't do out in the civilian world to train here.

Once a year, we have an exercise here that is controlled by the Army Reserve called Guardian Response.

Guardian Response is a nuclear aftermath exercise.

The reason for that is because it allows us to actually exercise every piece of our system if it's an aftermath of a nuclear explosion.

A flood will only give you one piece.

A shooting would give you another piece, but a nuclear disaster, every piece of the national emergency act has to be involved in that exercise, civilian and military.

We will have 7 to 10,000 personnel on this facility in that exercise setting up decontamination lines, going and searching through rubble to find victims, doing all kinds of things, and there will be up to 200 to 300 role players playing those victims at any one time that these people have to then take care of.

We train hard to make sure that we can help people and we can help them in the best way we possibly can and Muscatatuck is the place to put those real world training events into action.

>> BRANDON: Do you know where the bathroom is here?

>> PAYTON: Oh, yeah, Brandon, it's super easy to find.

So if you go down that road past the bombed-out schoolhouse and then just past the caved-in parking garage, it's right there.

You can't miss it.

Want to learn more?

Head to the address on your screen.

>> BRANDON: Up next, producer Adam Carroll takes us to Marion County to learn how veterans in Lawrence are exploring the arts.

>> The VA offers all types of therapy for all branches of the military, to help drown out the chatter of their past experiences.

And as part of this therapy, the participants can join in on multiple events, including the VA Arts Festival at the Arts for Lawrence Outdoor Space.

>> I really find that art therapy has a way of, um, really connecting deeply with our thoughts and our feelings and our behaviors, a little bit different than just talking does.

And sometimes it's like nonverbal.

So you are creating a piece of artwork, and even though we are not saying things, the art's communicating to the veteran, and that's changing the way they're thinking, just regarding their artwork and making their artwork.

It really taps into, like -- into a deep part of the soul.

And many veterans have the experience of having an identity shift, where something completely changes, whether that's because of a trauma or just being in the training or -- like, there's -- it's a very life-changing event.

And so I find that those creative arts really help express how that big shift and change, better than just talking about it does.

♪ >> Christina and her team provide materials and guidance for each participating person.

Where they go from there, it's up to them.

>> So I started the art therapy in April, and it started out with Kristi sending me a box, and it was like Christmas day.

It was amazing!

And I opened all this stuff, and created a closet, a space for it.

And then I started to create a time, and an allocated day to meet her and talk to her about the art, and the ideas that we were working with.

I told Kristi, when I was 6 years old, I knew what I wanted to do in life.

I went to an open house with my parents, and I got to display my artwork.

And I was just on fire.

I was so excited!

So then I fast forward, all through college, I had to work to go to college, and I didn't get to participate in the art showings and so forth, the groups.

Once I got into the military, it's a different kind of art, and I was stationed at Stout Field for 17 years, where I was a modeling NCO, which does maps, charts, graphs, overlays for catastrophic events.

And so I was doing artwork, but it was not the kind of art that I thought I'd be doing.

♪ >> So this year's creative arts festival ties into a national creative arts festival.

I think this will be the 42nd year of the national festival.

So the local VA shows -- not just ours, but across the country -- filter up to that national show.

So the winners today, first, second and third place winners, have the opportunity to submit their artwork to national.

If they win at national, then they get invited.

This year it's St. Louis.

So veterans get an opportunity to travel, spend the weekend for that national festival.

There's going to be so many different varieties of art, glasswork, metalwork.

It's a family-friendly event.

So I'm hoping we'll see a lot of veterans with their families, with their support people, with their friends, with their kids, and I hope that people stand up and dance when people are performing, when the veterans are performing.

I hope that it is lively and everyone's chatting with each other, and the veteran artists are making connections with each other and finding commonalty in -- in what they create.

>> I am so excited to share this day with other veterans, and learn their stories and talk to them about their art.

And since 2013, I haven't got to mingle with other military people that much.

So it's just an amazing journey.

>> We're all kind of starved for that connection.

We've gone through some really rough years.

We weren't able to have the Creative Arts Festival last year because of COVID, and the year before that it was in the VA. And so we're outside of the hospital.

We're outside.

We're at this great venue with these musical swings and live music and food trucks.

It feels like a real art festival.

It is a real art festival!

And I think that's why we've had such -- so many people who want to be a part of it.

♪ >> I really believe in the healing quality of art, whether you are just coloring a coloring sheet or quilting or -- it doesn't really matter what kind of creative activity it is, I just really think that that's good for the soul.

And some of the artist statements that are out there, the veterans have written up to go along with their pieces, they all say similar things.

Like, this really helps me.

This is how I connect to myself.

This is how I connect to others.

That's really, really powerful.

>> This is it!

This is a 6-year-old girl's dream come true.

I texted my friends and family and said, hey, you know, I'm going to do this.

And for many years, my inner circle has known what I used to do, and they kind of see this as a coming out party, so to speak.

And I can't wait to keep doing this and looking forward to another event next year.

>> BRANDON: You know, I find it really interesting the way that they are using this art as therapy, because you go to see art and oftentimes you experience things, you feel something.

But imagine going and connecting with a piece that is therapeutic for someone else and maybe learning something either about yourself or how to deal with something yourself.

>> PAYTON: Absolutely.

>> BRANDON: Want to learn more?

Head to artsforlawrence.org.

>> PAYTON: Up next, producer Jason Pear keeps us in Marion County to check out the Storyteller Drawing Sessions at the Harrison Center.

>> People love to communicate and love to connect.

So it's interesting when you know you are going to be listened to, how much you are ready to tell.

♪ Storytelling Drawing Sessions spotlight long-term residents in like the Martindale-Brightwood, and like, greater Indianapolis area.

To give people who have been here and know the history and have investment in the community, audience, to hear their stories, to collect their stories, and to really recognize them for all the contributions that they have made.

♪ >> A couple of years ago, we were just trying to get to know some of the neighbors.

They are called Greatriarchs here at the Harrison Center.

And in order to get to know them, outside of the special events that we would have, I just felt like we needed something a little extra.

And drawing is a natural way for artists to get together and just sort of hang out and have a good time, and we have plenty of artists here at the Harrison Center.

And we just invited the Greatriarchs, one at a time, to come in and just tell their story, and it just happened naturally, and it's taken off from there.

>> I came to Indianapolis in 1963.

My mother, my brother, two sisters, and my baby girl.

>> Traditionally in drawing sessions, you know, people are going to come in with just a piece of paper and some pencil or maybe a pen.

You know, we have people come in now with iPads and they work that way.

>> And if it were up to me, I would probably turn back the hands of time, slow it down.

>> But we don't limit to that.

We have people who come in to listen to the stories that may be writers or may work in a non-representational way with art, and they just kind of get inspired and get to see what we're doing and get to know the person who is telling their story.

>> And now, I just sit on the front porch and play with my dog and swing on the porch and take it one day at a time.

>> When I'm drawing, the drawing is, of course, important because I'm an artist, but my favorite thing about it is when I take notes around the drawing.

So I like to capture the person's likeness, but I also like to capture the things that they are saying so that I have their story.

So it's not just a drawing, but when you go back to look at it, you know what they said and why they said it, and what their motivations were.

And you can glean a lot from the things that people do and also don't say.

So that's a really interesting aspect is how people tell you their own story.

>> I have grandchildren and great grandchildren, and I just had my first great, great -- >> Oh!

>> Yeah.

>> I think it's really important for artists to kind of keep their skills sharp, and drawing from observation is a really critical skill, I think, for sculptors, for photographers, for painters, obviously.

So it's just -- it's a nice way to practice and hear a good story.

>> He would take that dog and put the dog in the back of his truck and drive up to Church's Chicken, and order a chicken dinner for the dog.

[ Laughter ] And put it in the back of the truck and watch the dog eat it.

>> They range from, like, True Crime.

>> When I think about the abuse that she suffered, and how long she suffered it, she really was a woman with a lot of courage.

>> To RomComs.

>> My second husband, I met when I went to work for Chrysler.

He was just too fine for words.

[ Laughter ] >> This day and age, we're not really face to face like we used to be, and I think that this is offering an opportunity just for face-to-face conversation.

>> You don't have to have any type of artistic experience.

Beginners are welcomed.

Experienced pros are welcomed.

We're just here to chat and listen and draw.

>> And it's just been a really great group effort, as we typically do around here.

>> Boy, now, you did a job!

Now, that's Joanna!

I mean, you got the hoop earrings and all.

>> Oh, yeah.

>> Very good!

Very good!

I like that.

>> Thank you so much.

>> You're so welcome.

>> Oh, yeah, it's just -- now, that just amazes me you can look at somebody and see that.

I can see that nose.

You got that nose and my eyes, girl.

>> Having somebody hear you is always comforting and reaffirming.

So the fact that these people get to come in and tell their story the way that they want to tell it, I think is an excellent experience for them.

Everybody seems to leave the sessions, like, happier and lighter, and feeling more closely connected.

Like, people have made friends at the storytelling sessions.

People you never would have encountered otherwise.

>> BRANDON: You know, I think it would be super interesting to actually be the person telling that story, and then get the opportunity to see what your story inspired in a group of artists.

>> PAYTON: And a little bit scary.

>> BRANDON: That's true.

>> PAYTON: Want to learn more?

Just head to Harrisoncenter.org.

>> BRANDON: And as always, we'd like to encourage you to stay connected with us.

>> PAYTON: Just head over to JourneyIndiana.org.

There you can see full episodes, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram and suggest stories from your neck of the woods.

>> BRANDON: We also have a map feature that allows you to see where we've been and to plan your own Indiana adventures.

All right, well, as we have gotten to the end of the season -- >> PAYTON: Yes.

>> BRANDON: -- and you have been so, just, kind to join us here and go through the rigorous training of being on "Journey Indiana."

I thought the greatest gift to give you at the end would be an actual training camp.

So if you just want to head right over that way, the gentleman in the fatigues -- yep.

>> PAYTON: That's where the cash bonus is, right?

>> BRANDON: Yep.

Have a good time.

>> PAYTON: All right, bye.

>> Payton, welcome to the Muscatatuck gym.

Brandon, of course, has volunteered you to go through the Army combat physical fitness test, an abbreviated version.

So what we're going to do is we're going to take you through five of the six things that we do for the Army ACFT.

You ready?

>> PAYTON: Yeah.

>> Let's go!

On your mark, get set, go!

Come on!

Come on, you got it.

You got it.

That's five seconds.

Doing good.

Control your breathing.

All the way down.

All the way down.

Turn.

Get back here.

Set it down.

Five.

Six.

Straighten your back out.

Seven.

Go, go.

Come on.

Come on.

Turn.

Come on, come on.

A little bit more.

Come on.

Keep going.

Keep going.

>> BRANDON: How are you doing?

>> PAYTON: Great.

Never better.

>> BRANDON: I appreciate that.

I would have joined you, but I got this neck thing and just -- >> PAYTON: Mm-hmm.

>> BRANDON: You know, I just thought it would be a nice bonding experience for you and the show.

>> PAYTON: Totally.

Never ask me for anything ever again.

>> BRANDON: We'll see you next time on "Journey Indiana."

>> Production support for "Journey Indiana" is provided by WTIU members.

Thank you!