1917 is a war movie about two British soldiers in WWI who were tasked to do an impossible mission.

The movie starts with the soldiers sleeping, they receive their task, walk through the very long trenches, then to the enemy’s trenches, get chased and bombed… (we will not spoil the entire movie). All that was done in one continuous take!

Actually, it seems like just one long continuous take. When you take a look at the behind the scenes shots of 1917, you will see that the camera crew had to chase after the characters by Jeep, motorcycle, crane, drone, and even by foot.

This has been done before. One of the earliest examples of a one-shot film was Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope. A more recent example is Birdman.

However, 1917 pushes it a step further. In this movie, the task was harder because of the war setting which means persistent action. Add to that, the action took place over large landscapes. 1917 never uses the same location twice.

Obviously, the movie was not shot in 1 continuous take. We will reveal all the techniques and filming tricks used in 1917 to establish the feel of a continuous shot.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins was up for this hard task. Deakins is undoubtedly one of the greatest cinematographers alive. He worked on movies like Skyfall and Sicario, The Shawshank Redemption, No Country for Old Men. He also earned the best cinematography Oscar for Blade Runner 2049 and now for 1917. The list goes on…

Director Sam Mendes decided to shoot the film in a continuous long take to create an immersive experience and to put the audience in the shoes of a British soldier fighting in World War I.

So how did director Sam Mendes, cinematographer Roger Deakins, and editor Lee Smith achieve this extremely difficult cinematic trick?

Planning the long take

To get the 1917 long shot right, the filmmakers needed to plan everything before starting to shoot. And I mean plan to the tiniest detail.

The crew needed to build models for every shot. This would help them visualize the shooting process better.

For example, this is the farmhouse that the two soldiers visit.

Here is the model they built and here’s how it appeared in the movie

The art department built realistic sets from scratch. Each set needed to be able to accommodate for the path of the camera.

This was a main aspect the filmmakers needed to account for before shooting. These narrow trenches needed to be wide enough to fit the camera and crew who will be following the actors as they walk along.

For example, the barbed wire the two soldiers walked through in no man’s land had an angled pathway so the camera could get through. Ramps allowed the camera to pass from no man’s land into the lower German trenches.

For example, the barbed wire the two soldiers walked through in no-man’s land had angled pathway so the camera could get through. Ramps allowed the camera to pass from no-man’s land into the lower German trenches.

Perhaps most impressive of all was the 5200 feet of trenches the crew had to build. As some of the most action-packed and challenging shots happen in these narrow pathways, it was crucial to measure everything.

Timing

Every scene had to be the exact length of the land. So if a scene shot lasted 5 minutes, the action has to take exactly that long to get through that specific area.

So, the production designed should build sets that allow the camera to move and still look narrow. These sets should extend to a large landscape that will fit the exact timing of the actor’s action!

Rehearsals and Blocking

In an interview with Vox Mendes said they wouldn’t fill the set until they knew exactly how long it should be.

This required a lot of rehearsing.

While all films require rehearsals the process for achieving the 1917 long take was much longer and more rigorous.

Usually, the rehearsals on most film sets can take place on the day of shooting. But for 1917 walkthroughs were happening well in advance. They first started rehearsing is a studio and then moved to the real sets.

Every single line of dialogue had to be rehearsed on location. The whole process of blocking and rehearsing scenes went on for 4 months!

Once they figured out the landscapes and timing, measured everything out, and made sure every actor knew their lines and hit their marks… it was time to start shooting.

Filming

There was another crucial step in pulling off the illusion of one continuous long take in 1917:

The camera could never move backward only forward.

The characters had a starting point and a fixed destination and could never go back.

One solution for that was letting the camera move 360 degrees.

This allowed the crew to constantly move forward and follow the characters without making a visible hard cut. Productions of this size call for heavy equipment, but how were the crew supposed to deal with cameras that needed to be mobile?

The solution was a new model of high-definition camera that was much lighter and smaller than usual.

This gave the cinematographer 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.

Scofield’s (the main character) journey downriver was captured mostly by a crane.

Lighting

The constant movement created another big challenge: lighting

This was a challenge because it will be extremely hard and restricting to hide the large lights and their grips in 360-degree shots. It would be very hard to light such large areas.

The most logical solution for that would be natural lighting.

Therefore, cloudy days were the best days to be filming. Sunny days meant more shadows and more equipment.

Imagine that they would be looking at weather apps to see when it’s going to be cloudy and if the cloud would last long enough to do a 5-minute take.

However, they did use some artificial lighting.

For example, this 50-foot tall light tower that was dimmed to create the color of fire that meant to light up the entire wound village.

And, because the movie took place in real time the lighting had to look consistent and to match the natural light of the time of day that the action is taking place.

Editing

In post-production Deakins and Mendes found subtle ways to make those cuts without the audience knowing.

Sometimes an object would block the frame.

Hidden cuts were also seamlessly achieved when characters travel through doorways or entered a dark bunker.

Other shots required even cleverer transitions.

In one sequence, Scofield runs through a burning City and jumps off a ledge into a river. If you look at the same shot behind the scenes you’ll see George running through that same city and jumping off the ledge. But instead of a river, he jumps onto a mat!

With the help of some visual effects, the editors were able to seamlessly stitch together the character jumping off the ledge and into the water.

Crazy Creative filming

Nothing quite matched the challenge of pulling off the climactic sequence in which Scofield runs alongside a trench in the middle of battle.

Getting the shot was a huge endeavor.

They started on a 50-foot crane. It climbs up the trench with the actor… then the camera is taken off that crane and hooked onto another crane. That crane was on the back of a tracking vehicle that was already slowly moving back. So as they hook it on, it’s all one move that moves back.

Still in the same take, the action continues… Jorge speeds up and starts running. Meanwhile, the two crew members that hooked the camera come across the back of the shot, but we don’t recognize them because they were in costume. Once the camera was on the truck it had to follow George as he ran for about a quarter of a mile meanwhile.

Fun Fact

While everything they did while shooting had to be so precise, there was still room for accidents…

As George is running out of the trench you’ll see him bump into some extras. That wasn’t planned!

The actor bumped into them by accident and they just kept the camera rolling. Had Mendes called cut right away, this great genuine moment capturing the chaos of the war would never have made it into the movie

Refrences

This information was taken from: inews.co.uk, vox.com, insider.com

