Danny Bull“Nowhere is safe in this region”
In the eastern city of Bakhmut, some of the fiercest fighting is taking place. Today we talk with Goktay Koraltan who is filming there and has been in Ukraine on multiple occasions since the invasion began. We breakdown this latest news package and hear directly from Goktay what its like to film there and what gear he’s using.
Goktay tells me the accommodations they stay at are “basic” in Donbas. Most locals have fled. Goktay shared this footage from his room that he thinks is a S-300 explosion. The time between the bright flash and sound of the blast shows you how massive these missiles are. The only sound here is relentless shelling and barking dogs.
“All I’m thinking is if I’m going to see my son again.”
He sees and hears three loud ones back to back in under five minutes. I asked him what goes through his mind when these bombs go off. He tells me, “All I’m thinking is if I’m going to see my son again when I’m on this kind of assignment. He is two and half years old and I don’t want him to grow up without a father.”
I tell him how this hits me and we talk about the shared experience of fatherhood.
There is always a plan but things change quickly:
Goktay says there is always a plan on these deployments, when to enter and exit, though things change quickly, especially when you are on the ground with the military.
“We slept in the bunker last night”
A few photos of Goktay’s sleeping arrangements and dinner below. They sleep in the bunker as they shell nonstop, it is relentless he tells me. “There is a blast every single night.” There are no more sirens as the people left and the ones who stayed are used to just the sound of shelling. No one sleeps more than a few hours per night. For dinner its always MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat). “I love them!” Goktay says.
Equipment and gear:
For his gear Goktay is packing light as they are constantly on the move. It’s not safe to stay in one area as they are under constant threat of Russian shelling. Goktay also says he has to consider everything he’s filming and the consequences of that action, “The biggest challenge was filming the army without revealing any location of their units location. It’s a huge responsibility because you can put their lives at risk.”
He’s traveling with a Sony A7siii and a GoPro 11 Creator Kit on this trip. For microphones a sony wireless lapel and a shotgun mic. Everything on this trip is about weight and speed, and this set up works perfectly as proved in his footage. This does at times come with a cost. He tells me about breaking the XLR attachment on his A7siii while slipping on the ice (its -10 degrees celcius in the day time) and if not for some gaffer tape this would have been a real issue for capturing audio. Luckily another colleague was traveling out of Ukraine and sent their XLR-K3M to Goktay from Kyiv. Besides this he has one extra backup mic, the Rode Go 2 pro.
And with this generous time answering all my questions in the middle of a war zone, Goktay signed off to crack on with his latest edit from Ukraine.
You can follow Gotkay Koraltan and his work on instagram and twitter at @goktay on both
