Apache helicopters fly over Los Angeles.
Photo courtesy of Chief Warrant Office Two Max Foor.
Loyalty. Duty. Respect. Honor. Integrity.
Those five words, grouped together, almost immediately trigger thoughts of the U.S. Armed Forces and the principles they espouse. So when retired Army Captain Brian Chung founded his entertainment military consulting company, he included those words in his business plan’s core philosophy.
“The way we run this business, we take the exact same mentality of [being a solider],” said the 29-year-old chief executive officer of the Los Angeles-based Musa Entertainment Military Consulting. “I think, [that’s] one of the things that makes our business unique.”
It’s not the only thing.
At barely a year old, Musa, which means “warrior” in Korean, stands in a class of its own, providing a service that until very recently no one else has: making sure the entertainment industry gets the military right. Not just technical advisors, the consultants at Musa help film, television, gaming and advertising productions acquire military props and equipment, and advise them on how to achieve authentic portrayals of the Armed Forces.
For those who care whether an Army captain’s colors go on the right or left, or what kind of weapon a soldier should be using in a modern combat situation (and the military folks do care), they turn to Musa. The company boasts a broad network of technical experts in just about every branch of the military and every major specialty, including Navy SEALs and Special Forces. Chung’s past clients (including those he worked with while still with U.S. Army entertainment office) include the feature films Dear John (2010), G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra (2009), television shows and Hawaii Five-0, and the video game Medal of Honor (2010). The consultants are currently working on the upcoming Lifetime series, Coming Home.
“No one offers what we offer in terms of the spectrum of services we can provide a production,” said retired Lt. Col. Greg Bishop, Musa’s chief marketing officer. “Literally, from idea to script development, all the way to marketing the final project, we can help at every stage of the process and can save [clients] a lot of money.”’
What the general public may not realize is that most production companies can’t afford to purchase or rent tanks, submarines or fighter jets for their films—and they often don’t have to. With Department of Defense cooperation, studios can gain free access to U.S. military equipment, personnel and locations, the caveat being that the military views the production in a positive light.
“When the military decides to support a project, it’s kind of a mutually beneficial scenario,” explained Chung, an Iraq war veteran, “because then the military’s basically getting a free commercial.”
It was while Chung, who was injured in Iraq, was undergoing treatment at Fort Irwin, in Barstow, Calif., that he first learned about the cooperative work between the military and entertainment industry from a lieutenant colonel who was in the hospital room next to his. Later, Chung offered himself up to the defense department as free labor, with one condition: that he get a chance to learn all about the entertainment/military connection. Keeping its promise, the department made Chung the Army liaison on the set of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)—an experience that led to his unexpected on-camera debut.
A scene from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009).
Photo courtesy of Paramount.
“We were working on a scene with no written dialogue,” recalled Chung. “Then [director Michael Bay] asked [me] what would this guy say in this situation, and I told him, and he was like, ‘I like that. OK, you (pointing to an actor), get off the set, and Brian, you get in there and I want you to say it.’”
“I was like, ‘What is this, like a screen test?’ And he said, ‘No, no, I want you to say it. It’s going to be in the movie.’”
Chung politely declined until Bay mentioned something irresistible to a businessman.
“He said something like, ‘I’m going to make hundreds of millions of dollars on this movie, and you’re going to get residual checks,’ and I was like, ‘OK, makeup, let’s go!’”
Through his work at the defense department, Chung noticed “there were a slew of projects that could have potentially gotten military support, but people didn’t know how to navigate the bureaucracies of the military correctly, and they didn’t get it.
“I realized I could be an advocate and take the production companies as clients. Then word got out pretty quickly that there was nobody else doing this, so we got picked up with an agency right away (the United Talent Agency), and the rest is history.”
As a self-described “stereotypical Berkeley kid,” with shoulder-length hair and five earrings, who liked to sleep in until 2 p.m., the Korean-born Chung was perhaps not the type you’d expect to join the Army. And then 9/11 happened.
“On 9/11, my brother calls me and he’s yelling in my answering machine,” recalled Chung. “And I still remember what he said. He said, ‘Brian, get up. We’re going to war.’”
Chung joined his campus ROTC shortly after, and was on active duty for five years, including a deployment to Iraq from the fall of 2007 to the summer of 2008.
“I wholeheartedly believe that the Army is the best leadership course that anyone can [take],” said Chung. “It’s leadership learned under fire, where your life and the lives of your people are really depending on your decision. It’s a tremendous amount of pressure, but it also forces you to succeed because failure is not an option.”
Retired Army Captain Brian Chung and retired Lieutenant Colonel Greg Bishop.
Photo by Eric Sueyoshi.
“When you translate that to the business side, it actually translates really well. We have our staff, but Greg and I are doing a lot of heavy lifting. Greg is my leader, and I am his leader. If anyone falters, I know that I can follow Greg out, and if Greg falters, I know that he trusts me to lead him, and that’s why we’re battle buddies.”
Bishop, who served in the military for 22 years, is a major reason the fledgling company is taken as seriously as it is. As the former deputy chief of the Department of Defense office in West Los Angeles, Bishop worked as the Army’s entertainment liaison for two years; in other words, he used to be the gatekeeper. “I know what we can get and can’t get,” he said.
Notably, Bishop joined the Army initially because he wanted money for film school, but he often tells his friends, “the Army probably got me to Hollywood faster than film school ever would have.”
Although Musa is the only company in the business doing what it does, there are others coming up who are trying to do the same thing. But Chung and Bishop think they carry an edge not only because of their military expertise, but also because they understand the needs of the entertainment industry.
“Combat experience does not equal a good military advisor,” noted Bishop. “And that’s not a knock on anyone’s combat experience. It doesn’t matter what it really looks like; it only matters what it looks like in that frame, and in that scene. One of the biggest comments we get from soldiers is, ‘Sir, this isn’t the way we would really do it.’ Got it. But people need to understand it from the perspective from this square, this lens.”
From the other side, Chung and Bishop want production companies to realize that there are at least 2 million active duty members and over 25 million veterans, who, as potential audience members, will know if a movie messes up the military stuff.
“There was this low-budget film that had a woman with a beret on, and it just looked like a baker’s hat, it was insane,” said Bishop. “The worst violations were on the first season of Army Wives, which was the year before the Army got involved. There was a guy wearing his rank on a sweater at home on a Saturday morning—just out of control.”
“There was also a female wearing an infantry’s badge, and females aren’t allowed in the infantry,” Chung chimed in. “The question again is, who cares? But, as a military guy, people are damn proud of that uniform. That beret takes a minimum of 24 hours to form, and soldiers are in the mirror making sure it’s right the whole time. A lot of times, not only does it take them out of the movie, but a lot of times they think it’s disrespectful.”
“At the end of the day, there are really two words we’re trying to get: plausible and realistic,” said Bishop. “If it’s not realistic because we’re fighting aliens, then OK, you think through the process and say, if this were happening, how would we fight this? What systems would be in place, and what tactics ould be employed? Because, if we did get invaded by alien robots, who’s going to [take care of] it? The U.S. military.”
