Shane Seley has what might very well be the best job in the world.

Seley is a founding partner and creative director at Wide Awake Films in Kansas City, Mo. On paper, the titles are impressive enough. In practice, the gig is even better. He has shot and edited footage for Nickelodeon, Sprint, CBS Sports and Monday Night Football. He's worked in Honduras, Ecuador, Israel, the Philippines and 48 of the 50 United States.

The building in which Wide Awake Films is housed was once an honest-to-goodness 19th-century gentleman's club straight out of every wild, wild west cowboy movie ever made. The "Turf Exchange" featured gambling and drinking, a bar and brothel, and it's quite possible that legends such as Jesse James, Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok visited the place.

That's very cool, yes, but here's the kicker. A passionate Civil War enthusiast -- he's read Rifles For Watie 20 times and even read the entire book to his unborn daughter, for cryin' out loud -- Seley and the five-person staff at Wide Awake Films have produced several documentaries on the War Between The States. Two of them -- The Battle of Franklin: Five Hours in the Valley of Death and Bad Blood: The Border War That Triggered the Civil War -- have won Emmys.

Wide Awake Films provides stock footage of Civil War re-enactments to outside projects, and the company also produced a project for the National Geographic Channel entitled Day Under Fire. In addition to the Civil War's Battle of the Wilderness, the three-part series included episodes on battles in World War II and Vietnam.

One of his proudest accomplishments of late, Seley says, was to have provided the interpretive film for Wilson's Creek National Battlefield ... it is, after all, where the main character in Rifles for Watie fought his first battle. The film was shot in high definition and 5.1 surround sound. Wide Awake Films is currently at work on a full-length version of the title, which is scheduled to debut on WTBS.

According to the Wide Awake Films Web site, "Our extensive network of history experts, preservationists, living historians and re-enactors is unsurpassed -- due in large part to our commitment to accurately portraying, and passionately preserving, our nation's history." That emphasis on quality of content and presentation is clearly evident in all the company's Civil War documentaries.

They've definitely not been thrown together with the kind of video camera that Grandma uses to shoot family vacations.

"Not only are we history geeks, but we're also video geeks," Seley adds. "We use a lot of high-end technology to do what we do. We bring that technological knowledge into the historical arena.

"Everyone is an expert [when it comes to] television, whether they admit it or not. Everything we do is judged against what people see on broadcast television. We try to keep our standards up to that quality as much as we can. We shoot a lot of high definition [footage] and we edit almost entirely in high definition. It pays off."

To those with a passing interest in the Civil War, it might seem strange that a company located in Kansas City be so hugely invested in the conflict. Take a deeper look, though, and it makes perfect sense. Antebellum clashes between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in Kansas and Missouri were beyond vicious. These weren't the kind of grand battles fought at Gettysburg and Antietam, either. It was outright guerilla warfare. Nothing ... no one ... was off limits.

"A lot of what went on here on the Kansas/Missouri border, you could argue that it helped trigger the Civil War," Seley says. "It's like a pebble thrown in the pond ... those ripples went out. It was brutal. There were families who still haven't recovered."

The company's Bad Blood documentary focuses on that sad chapter of American history. Other Wide Awake DVD documentary releases include:

• Spotsylvania Courthouse: The Clash of Grant & Lee at the Crossroads
• Shiloh: The War is Civil No More
• Manassas 1861
• Chickamauga: High Tide in the West
• The Battle of Stones River: The Fight for Murfreesboro
• The Battle of Perryville: The Invasion of Kentucky

In many cases, footage for these documentaries was shot on the actual battlefield. An avid "living historian" Civil War re-enactor himself, Seley has been both in front of and behind his cameras many, many times.

"When we shoot at a national level event, our crews, based upon our experience level, are usually the only crews allowed on the battlefield," Seley begins. "We dress in the clothing of the clothing of the side we're on -- Union or Confederate -- and even camouflage our camera gear with natural colors so that we blend into the event ... and so we don't ruin our own wide shots."

Its work with corporate partners is Wide Awake Films' "bread and butter," admits Seley. The Civil War, though, isn't about to get left behind. Not a chance.

"The Civil War is something that we've always kind of had a passion for," Seley says. "We're real active in battlefield preservation. We donate a lot of time, services and footage to the Civil War Preservation Trust. ... That's what we're about. We're really into history and we hope to see more of the history thing blossom. We're really working in that regard, especially with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War [coming up] in 2011, that's a big part of where we see our company going."