STACK #186 Apr 2020

FEATURE FILM

“We had the whole film on a schematic; they basically start at Point A and end up a Point B and they never go backwards. I think that’s vitally important for the rhythm of the movie – the landscape is continually changing and the environments are changing.” Verisimilitude was also crucial in creating an intense and immersive experience for the audience. “We put a huge amount of work into the detail of everything. Those guns you’re hearing are the real weapons.

we had to build the film as we were going to prove that it would work

preparation, it was still a surprise once we were out of the gate and started filming. This film had to be perfect every day. There was no compromise, which made for some interesting and difficult decisions that had to be made as the film was being shot. “We had to build the film as we were going to prove that it would work, which is, again, slightly unusual. You had to make the film continuously look like a finished product, because it informed what was going to be shot the next day. You might have 25 to 40 takes of a certain scene, and you’ve got to pick the right take. So I’m watching two and a half hours worth of dailies, all to pick a five-minute section – it’s pretty daunting, but we got it done.” Smith’s previous collaboration with Mendes on Spectre involved creating the extended, unbroken chase sequence that opens the Bond film, and when the director approached him with the idea of making an entire feature resemble one continuous shot, he laughed. “ Spectre was hard enough with five and a half minutes of one continuous shot as opposed to two hours of one continuous shot. I wondered why Sam wanted to torture us so. But having read the script, I realised what he was going for, and even though I had to remind myself as I was reading the script that it was going to be one shot, I was worrying

scripted,” reveals Smith. “It was designed because we needed the time

We got German guns and took them out with special

passage; George had to be knocked out and then wake up later. “Being faithful to the day/night timeframe of the film, it was decided

sound recording crews, because obviously you couldn’t shoot live ammo on the day. It’s shockingly loud and shockingly accurate over a long distance – and large caliber bullets. I had no idea you could have snipers in World War I shooting from like a thousand yards. “That whole opening sequence walking through the trenches… they dug like two miles of trenches, it was insane. On a normal film you’d probably dig a couple of hundred yards and just redress it, turn the camera around and run them back through it. This was an enormous undertaking; I walked through with my assistant before the camera went through one day just to have the experience and just thought, ‘wow.’ You felt like you were there, because the extras were all in uniforms with their guns. It was intensely moving, because you think this was life for these young guys – eight feet down in a ditch, pretty much waiting for certain death when they go over the top, or get blown up or gassed. and just try and stay more in the moment, which I thought was very effective. I found audiences coming out of it saying they’ve never felt so tense for so long, and a lot of that comes from the believability of the situation and the quality of the two young actors, which was so good. “To everybody’s credit, we all had one purpose on this, and that was to get the best possible film we could, and we had to get it right. And I’m pleased to say we did in the end. But you never know – it’s kind of a terrifying experience.” “The other thing was not to be too explicit with the carnage and brutality,

we weren’t going to cheat. We could have easily made it more like one shot, but the idea was the time transition was required to have him knocked out for several hours, so as he moves forward we come into dawn. So there is a cut listed in the script and we were faithful to that cut.” When asked if the editing process on 1917 was similar to another one-shot film, Birdman , Smith points out some differences. “I can’t say exactly how they did their work, but what I noticed in Birdman was the camera would quite often drift off the subject and they would make a transition and then drift back on again. We never did that. We decided to never have the characters leave the frame. So there is a stylistic difference between the films. The beauty of 1917 was you were never in the same location twice, you were always moving forward.

• 1917 is available to own on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-Ray & DVD from 22 April, 2020

about coverage, pacing… There were a lot of faults as I was dissecting the script, but that sort of melted away once we started shooting, because the performances were so great. “It was a bit of a learning curve – every day was kind of, ‘What can we possibly do to make this even better than it was in our heads and it just kept evolving as we were shooting.” There is one obvious cut in the film, however, that facilitates the transition from day into night. “That was actually

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