Avini has stated that his film crews tried to avoid the "sloppy fakery" of most TV News reports. He had his teams stay at the set for long periods of time, taking the time to discover and encounter "the other." He tried to maintain realism by minimizing the use of cinematic effects, and worked to avoid depicting the habits that combatants had adopted when they were being filmed. Avini rarely filmed major victories and was hardly interested in strategy or military issues; his documentaries were almost exclusively devoted to how volunteers ("bassijis") viewed the conflict and their participation in it.