Cost of Valor

The project

Connor McIntyre, a senior manager at Amazon, approached Dr. Gary Garrison of Belmont's Jack C. Massey College of Business about an AI-powered storytelling project. Garrison assembled an interdisciplinary team across the university: myself and Jake Mahaffy from the Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business, and Dr. Emmanuel Saka from the Watkins College of Art.

The result was two trailer-style films based on Bridges' novel Cost of Valor, presented at a filmmaking showcase on campus on 2 July 2026 to an audience of industry professionals, academics, military veterans and veteran support staff. One reel takes a cinematic approach, immersing the viewer in the action. The second is documentary in form, combining historical context with personal testimony from the novel. Both serve as proof of concept for future feature-length work.

The battle they depict came at a staggering cost. Of roughly 725 helicopters that supported the operation, 108 never returned, more than 600 sustained battle damage, more than 100 pilots lost their lives, and 19 remain missing today.

It's worth noting that everything that you see was generated with AI. The more we created with the various AI image and video models, the more we found various limitations, challenges and then some things that were surprisingly easy to make spectacular. Belmont University — July 2026

What the tools got wrong

Historical accuracy was the hardest problem. AI systems routinely produced imagery that looked convincing at a glance but contained real errors — aircraft configurations, military equipment, uniforms and environmental details all required careful review and correction. AI-generated human characters came out overly polished and uniform, which worked against the goal of authenticity.

Platform safety restrictions created a second category of problem. Depicting military conflict runs into guardrails that don't distinguish between gratuitous violence and historical record.

We had to get creative to invoke the feeling of this terrifying moment that has happened without necessarily showing it. That led to a lot of creative prompting to work around the scenario of creating that visceral energy without actually showing some of the things that the AI video models would simply reject. Belmont University — July 2026

The process ran on iterative prompting, visual testing, historical verification and repeated refinement. Human expertise stayed essential at every stage — which is the finding that matters most. AI can generate remarkably convincing content; whether that content is true still depends on someone who knows the subject checking every frame.

Recognition

Lam Son 719 pilots Ed Newton and Don Elmore presented the faculty team with the Challenge Coin and the Army's 223rd Combat Aviation Battalion Blue Star Patch.