by Paige Ringelberg
(Warning: spoilers and some graphic content ahead)
In late December of 2019, masses of people exited movie theaters feeling exhausted. It wasn’t because the movie they watched was horrible or the effects of sitting in an uncomfortable chair for a couple hours straight was kicking in. They felt drained because it was as if they went through every single adventure, every twist and turn, punch and kick, with the characters on screen. They were nearly trapped in a collapsing underground bunker or chased through a destroyed city; they endured the fear, pain, and confusion of war. From what their bodies and souls were telling them, they could have been in that movie themselves.
Watch the video below to begin a deep dive into this project!
World War I, also called the Great War, took place from 1914-1918. While it had already been tense in Europe for years, the war truly began when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. Once Austria-Hungary had gained the support of Germany, they declared war on Serbia (which was backed by Russia). It eventually became the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire) versus the Allied Powers (Russia, Great Britain, France, Italy, Romania, Japan, and the United States). During this war, more than 16 million people (soldiers and civilians) died (History.com Editors, 2022). This “War to End All Wars” was arguably where modern warfare began (Solly, 2019). What began with horse-drawn carriages ended with tanks.
Now, almost a century later, another war is looming. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a “special military operation” (Kirby, 2022) in Ukraine. The Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, claims his goal is to “de-militarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.” While Putin claims this isn’t “war,” what’s happening isn’t that different from how other wars have begun. After thousands of deaths and millions of displaced citizens already, what more will we endure?
World War I is known for trench warfare, poison gas, and the beginning of modern warfare technology. World War II is known for Nazis, genocide, and nuclear weapons. If we truly are on the brink of World War III, what will it be known for?
What transitions will we make and how far will our innate drive for innovation take us? What stories will we tell?
Maybe a hundred years from now, there will be a film made about this year. But to better understand what is happening now (and what may happen in the future), we can begin by looking at what’s happened before. We can step out of the fog that COVID-19 has dragged us through and begin to look outside of ourselves, at what’s happening, what has happened, and what has yet to pass. World War I set the stage for global scale conflicts to come. While there’s a lot that happened during the Great War, 1917 focuses largely on communication, and how trench runners, or foot messengers, were still depended upon to deliver important messages. And that’s where this film’s story begins.
Watch the video below to learn about what went into creating the plot for 1917!
GEORGE MACKAY
George MacKay, a 29-year-old British actor, has been involved in multiple projects, including True History of the Kelly Gang, Wolf, Ophelia, and more. At first, Mendes wasn’t sure if MacKay would be right for the role. He’d seen MacKay’s other work, but, as Mendes told Benjamin Lindsay (2020), “that wasn’t initially my image of Schofield. I had someone dark-haired in my head, and so I was interested but unconvinced. And then he came in… He was everything that I had imagined, but something else, and I began to reimagine the role with George in it.” Mendes also said, “George embodies some of the qualities that I was looking for. There’s something about him that’s slightly old-fashioned and internal” (IMDb, 2019). Even MacKay felt he was right for the role from the very beginning. For the auditions, the actors only got small pieces of the script, but even without the greater context of the script, MacKay said, “I felt like I knew Schofield” (Entertainment Weekly, 2019). And he committed fully to the role, visiting places that he thought Schofield could have lived and spending weeks practicing crawling around on his belly like he was in no man’s land (Lindsay, 2020). He worked on understanding everything about his character to the point that when Mendes called “action,” it more meant “exist” to MacKay.
DEAN CHARLES-CHAPMAN
Dean-Charles Chapman, a 24-year-old English actor, played roles in several movies as well, including The Commuter and The King. He even played Tommen Baratheon in popular TV series "Game of Thrones." He approached the role of Blake a bit differently than MacKay approached Schofield. In the audition, he used an Irish accent to soften his character and make Blake feel even more like the heart of the movie. He also pointed out some differences between him and his character: “Blake’s got a bit of a special ability to crack jokes in the middle of a war zone,” said Chapman. “Whereas I think I would be in a terrible state” (BBC Radio 1, 2020). Chapman remembers feeling exhausted, both physically and emotionally, while working on this film. He became so immersed in his character from day one that he sometimes forgot they were making a film. “The conditions that we were actually filming in was so realistic to how it would have been,” Chapman said. “I always described the mud in no man’s land compared to walking on ice. That’s how slippery it was…I’ve never had an experience like that before. It was sort of trying to find the balance between having what an actor prepares, and we prepared a lot, but then also, almost forgetting that and just seeing what happened on the day, and trying to gel them together” (Entertainment Weekly, 2019).
Both actors were involved in the whole process from day one. They would show up to the empty fields where sets would eventually be built, wearing their full costumes (they’d have to get used to the weight of the packs, which were filled to the brim with items WWI soldiers would actually carry), and they’d run through the script scene by scene. Despite all the planning and precision with which they had to film scenes, it was still crucial that the acting didn’t appear structured and planned out; “you’re encouraging spontaneity and freedom in front of the camera, because you want those little accidents,” said Mendes. “You want people to feel like you’re living through this, not acting it” (Entertainment Weekly, 2019). Many of the cast and crew described the whole process as a dance between the actor and the camera. They had to be in sync with each other at all times to maintain the seamlessness and organic nature that Mendes wanted.
OTHER STARS
Alongside these lesser-known actors were big names including Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Andrew Scott, and Richard Madden. Despite having a star-studded cast, Sam Mendes never worried about their recognizable faces distracting from the story or the main characters. To him, their performance mattered significantly more than their faces. He cared about getting the best and most talented actors to play the right roles (Entertainment Weekly, 2019). In addition, Mendes talked with each of the actors about how they wanted to portray their characters. In the end, they came down to not having anyone be the Bad Guy or be “above” the others. Instead, they decided that “they all needed to be lost in the fog of war… They’re all people who are convinced that they know the truth, but a hundred yards away someone who thinks completely different... Everyone has to be equally credible and everyone has to be equally lost” (Entertainment Weekly, 2019). That was another aspect that added to the believability and reality of the film: keeping the characters human.
While the actors and their performances played one of the biggest and most influential roles in this film, the music score played one as well. Music is often the driving force behind a scene. According to Deguzman (2021), “film scores are composed to enhance a film’s story and emotion…[they are] tailored specifically for what is happening in the film on screen.” It hints at what’s to come, builds tension, and can make a grand entrance even more exciting.
Newman’s score for 1917 is described as “an opera for both nerves and emotion” (Greiving, 2019). Newman spent many months working on this score, and Mendes was very particular about how he wanted it to be. He didn’t want it to be “too military” (Grobar, 2020) and he felt that having the orchestra was crucial, but he wasn’t quite sure how much orchestra he wanted. So, Newman had to get pretty creative, pretty fast. Newman constantly asked himself, “How would [the] music speak? When would it speak, and what would be its language?” (Grobar, 2020). Newman often even treated the music like a living, breathing thing. Eventually, after plenty of discarded ideas and a lot of time, Newman had moved from the “too military” snare drums to lap dulcimers (a stringed folk instrument) and ambient electronic sounds that had a neutral but “tick-tocking” (Grobar, 2020) pace. Using electronic sounds as the base, Newman recorded the score with an orchestra made up of “strings, solo cello, brass, breathy wind instruments and big drums” (Grobar, 2020). Newman considered this score to be the toughest challenge he had ever undertaken but, after many months of work, a beautiful and unique score was born.
Not only is the score impactful, but so is one particular music moment in 1917. Right before the running scene, Schofield stumbles across a company of British soldiers sitting in the woods, listening to a soldier singing loud and clear. Schofield, enchanted by the random scene of peace and beauty, collapses against a tree and listens along with his fellow soldiers. The song, “I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger” sung by Jos Slovick, is about a weary soul making his arduous journey through life (not unlike Schofield). It’s a powerful moment in the film, one of the few moments when everything slows down enough for us to reflect on everything that’s happened so far. For just a few minutes, we can forget what we’re doing and the stakes of the task at hand, and just sit and listen, right before being tossed right back into the fray.
Check out the video below for some mighty musical moments!
1917 is a spectacular film, but it wouldn’t be as impactful without its incredible score and thoughtful songs.
If there was anything that could possibly surpass the sheer beauty and genius that was the music of this film, it would have to be the cinematography and visual effects, and how they came together to create what makes this movie stand out among the rest: the one-take.
What is "one-take?"
In most movies, the camera cuts back and forth between characters and scenes for the entire duration. These cuts offer different perspectives as well as transitions from moment to moment. A common example of using these different shots is during scenes where the dialogue between the characters is the focus. Common shots in these types of scenes are called over the shoulder (OTS) shots, where we switch back and forth between two or more characters to see the speaking character from the perspective of another character in that scene. See the two images below for a visual:
This shot is seen constantly in movies because it’s so effective and simple. But it’s not quite as simple when you’re only allowed one take (or at least, it’s not allowed to look like more than one take). How do you get the perspectives of the characters and establish the locations if you’re not allowed to make any obvious cuts? Sam Mendes, his crew, and the actors undertook this task when rehearsing, building the sets, and stitching it all together to make one seamless and immersive film.
Rehearsals
Before the visual effects and cinematography came into play, though, it began with rehearsing. The actors started rehearsing in the studios then went to the open fields where they would eventually build the sets and film the movie. Then they rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed. And rehearsed a little more. Scripts in hand, the actors would act out their scenes and walk through it. At certain moments in the script, they marked the ground with colored posts (Schofield’s path was marked with yellow markers and Blake’s path with green markers) to indicate where a certain incident would occur in the walk and where the characters would be. They had to measure out everything. They had to see how long it would take to act out that scene and how far the characters would walk; “so, if a scene’s shot lasted eight minutes, it had to take exactly that long to get through that specific area” (Insider, 2020).
The Sets
Mendes even said that they wouldn’t build a set until they knew exactly how long it needed to be for the scene; “the world has to be crafted around the rhythm of the script,” said Mendes (IMDb, 2019). According to Insider (2020), the whole process of blocking and rehearsing the scenes took four months. And, since the sets had to match the action of the scene perfectly, and no location was used twice, they had to build every set from scratch. They built over a mile of trenches that were not only designed to be the exact length of the scene but were also just the right width for the cameras to pass through without too much of a hassle. For the destroyed village of Écoust and the abandoned farmhouse, the crew first built models of the sets, some images of which are shown below:
From those models, the art department then faced the enormous task of constructing each of the sets. An additional challenge that went along with their choice of filming location was that it was all exterior. That meant they were always at the mercy of weather. And, because they couldn’t use artificial lighting like most crews do in movies (because of the 360-degree nature of all the shots), they “had to shoot in cloud to get the continuity from scene to scene,” according to Roger Deakins, the cinematographer of 1917 (IMDb, 2019). So, whenever the sun was out, production came to a halt.
Camerawork and Cinematography
Roger Deakins was the driving force behind creating the one-take look. According to Pippa Harris, one of the producers of 1917, “from the very early days, Roger was right by Sam’s side, working out exactly what it was that Sam was looking for” (IMDb, 2019). Deakins had worked with Sam before on other films, including Jarhead, Skyfall, and Revolutionary Road. He also worked on No Country for Old Men and Bladerunner 2049, the latter of which he won an Oscar for Best Cinematographer.
Producer Callum McDougall said, referring to the unique camera work of 1917, “you’re always moving forward. You never go back” (IMDb, 2019). So, Deakins had to figure out a way to maneuver the cameras around so they were always moving forward but also providing the different angles that would appear natural and keep the audience engaged. This couldn’t be accomplished with your average bulky camera, so Deakins had to use “a new model of high-definition camera that was much lighter and smaller than usual. This gave Deakins the same great image quality but also allowed for more portability and for the camera to more quickly be attached to something like a crane or a drone” (Insider, 2020). Not only did they attach the camera to cranes and drones, but they also filmed certain shots using a car, motorcycle, a running cameraman, wires, and more.
They also had to use stabilizers whenever the cameraman had to follow the running actors through crowded trenches and other haphazard sets. Deakins and Mendes wanted the camera to stay relatively steady; they didn’t want the jerkiness that is common in high action scenes, so stabilizers and smooth transitions (from car to cameraman to crane to motorcycle to whatever else they needed next) were crucial to keeping everything smooth and seamless. Visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron said, “The whole exercise is to immerse the audience among our two young heroes and not call attention to what the camera is doing, or create spectacular moves. It’s all about how to be invisible and immerse the audience into the journey” (Loftus, 2020). Here, Deakins describes the camerawork behind the famed running scene to Insider (2020):
We started on a 50-foot Technocrane that was armed in from … the right-hand side. It climbs up the trench with [MacKay] as the camera’s booming out on the arm. He hesitates at the top of the trench. Then the camera’s taken off that Technocrane because the camera’s basically on a stabilized head called a “stable eye.” Surprise surprise. Then they hook it onto another Technocrane and that Technocrane is on the back of a tracking vehicle, and that's already slowly moving back so, as they hook it on, it's all one move that moves back. George [MacKay] speeds up and starts running. Meanwhile, the two grips that did that are in costume. So, they find a way around to be able to come across the back of the shot and you don't see them until that point in costume. They were quite glad because they got money for being extras that day (n.p.).
For that particular scene, “they only had enough explosives for four takes” (Insider, 2020). Fortunately, they were able to pull it off in time, despite a few little accidents along the way. During one of the takes, actor George MacKay ran into some of the extras, falling down as he was running. But he just got back up and kept running. That take made it into the film and made the whole scene feel even more real and organic because, just like life, it wasn’t perfect.
Visual Effects
So, the rehearsals, lighting, sets, and camerawork were all huge elements of pulling off the one-take. Now, onto the visual effects (VFX). According to Marc Loftus (2020), the Moving Picture Company (MPC ) was the main force behind the VFX. Having done work on movies like Wonder Woman, Life of Pi, The Jungle Book, and many, many more, they were certainly up to the task. The team leading this task was made up of visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron, MPC VFX supervisor Greg Butler, special effects supervisor Dominic Tuohy, production designer Dennis Gassner, and, of course, Roger Deakins.
In most movies, there can be hundreds of different shots to bring together, and the editors aren’t trying to hide that. But for 1917, that couldn’t be the case. It had to be looked at as a single shot, resulting in some pretty long takes. One of the longest takes lasted for up to seven minutes! The team was tasked with “stitching” (a technique that helped the VFX team bring different shots together without distracting the viewer (Loftus, 2020)) each shot together, as well as including all the added effects to make the war in the movie seem realistic. Making it look believable was so crucial to the success of the film, because you can’t make an immersive film if it doesn’t look real or believable. Some of the stitches were relatively simple, such as a prop or part of the set moving in front of the camera to block the characters for a moment or going to a black screen (like when Schofield was knocked unconscious). But others required a lot more work and creativity.
Check out the video below to learn about some particularly tricky "stitches" in the movie!
According to Ian Failes (2020), “VFX touched 91% of the frames of the film.” It was a huge job. MPC definitely had their work cut out for them, in the end “lead[ing] the visual-effects work with approximately 600 artists contributing to the film. The team’s work included digital environment extensions including No Man’s Land, the canal crossing, the burning village of Écoust and Schofield’s jump into the river as well as destruction, pyro and water effects” (MPC, n.d.). Some of the effects are more obvious than others, but the majority of the VFX in this movie could go unnoticed by the casual viewer.
“From the very beginning, I felt this movie should be told in real time,” said Mendes (IMDb, 2019). “Every step of the journey. Breathing every breath with these men – felt integral. And there is no better way to tell this story than with one continuous shot.” Fortunately, all the efforts were not in vain.
1917 won many prestigious awards, including: Academy Awards (Oscar) for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects; BAFTA Film Awards for Best Director, Outstanding British Film of the Year, Best Film, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Sound, and Best Achievement in Special Visual Effects; and many, many more.
The end result of this film was an outstanding, impactful, and immersive work of art that upped the standards for all movies. It placed us right alongside the characters and had us live through every shock, danger, and moments of fear and reflection. It combined impeccable performances by the actors, beautiful and heartbreaking music, a fascinating story behind the inspiration for the engaging plot, awe-inspiring visual effects, and so much more. The amount of work that went into this movie is nothing short of astounding, with a budget of roughly $95 million, four months of rehearsals and 65 days of filming, 500 extras, and very creative use of VFX.
In the time we’re living in now – distanced from each other, both physically and socially, with a potential third World War on our doorsteps – we could all use a little refresher on empathy and what the others around us can be going through. 1917 is a wake-up call; it awakens us from the COVID-19 stupor, reminds us of the horrors of war, and shows us the extraordinary things humans can create when they have passion and creativity.
“At the end of the day, you just hope you made something special that people feel personally about,” said Sam Mendes. “When you achieve that, it’s really beautiful and exhilarating” (IMDb, 2019).
Hello!
My name is Paige Ringelberg and I graduated from Montana State University in the fall of 2022. I studied English with a concentration in writing, as well as entrepreneurship and small business. In late September of 2023, I moved to Atlanta, GA in search of new opportunities and experiences. I have a love for movies and all that they entail, so I strove to combine my passions with my skills to create an informative and entertaining Capstone project. I hope you learned a lot and enjoyed the ride! If you're interested in speaking further, whether it be about movies, jobs, or even the weather, you can reach me at my email: paiger_15@yahoo.com. Thank you so much!