Victory at Gettysburg!

We fought on both sides: Confederates during the Blue Gray Alliance Reenactment on June 28-30th and Union during the Gettysburg Anniversary Committee Event the following weekend, July 7-9th. We shot enough new footage to have to buy a new hard drive! We'll be looking through it over the next couple of weeks to put together a short Pitch Tape for the feature-length project.

The events were extremely intense with 1-3 battles each day, rain or shine. Some days had temperatures in the upper 90s with almost 100% humidity. We spent time holding down our tents under strong winds and getting completely drenched in the rain in our wool uniforms. Several reenactors went down with the heat during the events, and we heard that many spectators had to be hospitalized with dehydration and heat exhaustion.

However, even though the 150th Anniversary Reenactments of the Battle of Gettysburg brought many difficulties and challenges, they proved to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience that taught us more in two weekends than we may have been able to learn in years of study.

We made lots of excellent new friends including a civilian reenactress of Japanese descent, a really fascinating young woman who works in her non-reenacting time as a volunteer firefighter, and several other filmmakers, reporters and photojournalists who were working on other projects documenting Gettysburg. I was interviewed for an article in the York Daily Record/Sunday News as well as for a non-fiction book. The 6th New York was followed by a female photojournalist from Bucks County, PA, who was imbedded with our unit for two days of battle. The Reenactress Facebook and Twitter were both buzzing during the week, and we gained a ton of new followers and posted dozens of photos.

We toured the historic Gettysburg battlefield site and took pictures near the monuments that memorialize the actual 53rd Georgia Infantry Unit that we portrayed on the field.  We also visited the Gettysburg National Military Park and museum, run by the same National Park Service that got sued and lost for kicking a female reenactor off the field back in the early 1990s.

We're newly motivated to review all of the footage we shot and to be posting more information about our experiences as female reenactors in Gettysburg to share with the world. The whole adventure proved to be extremely inspiring and character-building for both Keyes and myself, and we're excited to continue on the journey of bringing the documentary film, Reenactress, to life!

Stay tuned to this space!

J.R. Hardman (Reenactress Director)