1917

1917 has recently been one of the most popular films to come out at the start of this year, and with great detail on how this film was made it was nominated one of the best films to be released. Due to the genre of this film, some films in the past was not as successful as 1917 but the concept and the planning for this film was so detailed that it took months and months to plan. The original concept for this film is that the director wanted a war film that was all in one shot, this type of movie has been done before but not to the extent of 1917.

In an interview from the film, the director Sam Mendes remembered a story which his granddad told him as a kid, which was a real life story where him and a fellow soldier had to deliver a message across No Mans Land to stop an attack, the story line of this is unique as it is not just a typical war movie of soldiers fighting which I thought it would be before I heard of the concept for this film. In the interview he tells the story on how he came up with the idea and on the phone to one of the producers he asked to help out on it and Sam Mendes said on the phone “By the way, I want the film to all be in one shot” and then hung up the phone, I found this funny but Sam did also help a lot with everything in the film.

The most surprising aspect of this film was the planning, it was so detailed that they made a small version of the set on a table and designed everything based on that, they had to plan the timing from location to location and they even planned which ways the shadows went when the flair sets off in the sky at night, to me this was next level planning as it must have taken months. The cinematographer Rodger Deakins also had a huge part of the planning and the production side of the film, in an interview he explains how he wanted to use the ARRI Alexa Mini due to its small size so it can be passed on from person to person when filming, with the filming aspect of the movie, the camera had to be modified so that it can be attached and detached from various amounts of machines but also passed to a camera man smoothly so it was unnoticeable to the viewer and whilst watching this myself, film they did it perfectly.

Even though this film is supposed to be a one shot film, it’s actually edited to make it look as if it was one shot, with this, the planning and the production team had to be smart on how they edit in post-production to make it all look like one shot, with this film I give all the people involved respect for all the effort put into this film and it had definitely paid off in the end, finally in the interview the director Sam Mendes ends off saying “We’ve all been discussing our new movie 1917”, the word “our” proves that he is a good director to work with as it’s a team effort rather him saying “discussing my new movie” which shows respect.

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