Sleeping Dog Productions, Inc., a Wisconsin-based HD TV production house plans to launch a new television series about the Viet Nam War called “Welcome Home” for the spring 2015 season. Creators Jon Tennyson and Scott Guyette hope to release the series near the 40th Anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The city fell to the North Vietnamese on April 30th, 1975, and that date effectively marked the end of South Viet Nam. The last US personnel evacuated the city at that time in a painful, mad scramble of helicopters tracing back and forth from the US Embassy in Saigon to awaiting aircraft carriers.
This new series is an anthology of first-person memoirs of Vietnam veterans, and will be illustrated by the veteran’s personal pictures, films and artifacts. The veterans describe the paths each followed to reach Vietnam, the jobs maintained while they were there, and what happened when they returned home. Through hearing their stories, viewers will gain a first-hand perspective on the human cost of a war that directly involved 2.7 million Americans, and cost an estimated $140 billion. The documentary’s working title comes from a custom developed among Vietnam War veterans when they meet one another in the United States. To this day, their common greeting is “Welcome Home.”
The series creators wish to reach hundreds of thousands of viewers, and so help them gain an understanding of the service rendered by our Vietnam War Veterans. Hopefully through that understanding, some of those veterans will finally realize an all-embracing welcome home and unconditional gratitude they’ve earned and rightly deserve.
The series is 90% finished with 12-15 interviews completed so far. Jon and Scott plan to get at least another 20 hours of supporting footage to coincide with the interviews and add to the stories. They also plan on taking a number of Vietnam Vets back to Vietnam as well as other notable locations, such as aircraft carriers and the Vietnam Wall in Washington D.C.
Jon Tennyson
Jon Tennyson began his film/video career as Director of Publications and Education for Ducks Unlimited, an international wildlife conservation organization. As an independent producer, he has developed programming for channels and clients in fields ranging from outdoor recreation and consumer electronics, to aviation. Tennyson has credits on nearly 200 shows, many of which have featured Academy Award winning and nominated actors, international recording artists, athletes and business leaders. He is also a former Vice President of Television and Corporate Sponsorship for the Experimental Aircraft Association and Chief Development Officer for the EAA Foundation. He has served as an executive producer, producer or director on five cable series and numerous specials for Discovery Wings, ESPN2, ESPN, Speedvision and the Outdoor Channel.
Scott Guyette
Scott Guyette is a multi-award winning director, director of photography, producer and senior editor whose credits include five aviation series (Ultimate Flights, ESPN2; Sport Aviation, Speedvision; From the Ground Up, Discovery Wings; Learning to Fly, Discovery Wings and Wings to Adventure, Outdoor Channel), as well as numerous specials for ESPN, Discovery Wings and others. Guyette is a former Executive Producer of EAA TV, The Experimental Aircraft Association’s in house production entity. In that capacity he oversaw all film and TV access to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, the largest aviation event in North America. A pilot and aircraft owner himself, Guyette is one of the premier aerial videographers in the U.S.
For more information on the series or to see additional work from Sleeping Dog Productions, please click HERE.
