1917 — Official Behind-The-Scenes Featurette

source:   www.1917.movie

added: Mon, Sep 30th '19

An official behind-the-scenes featurette has been released for "1917," the new, highly ambitious WWI epic from Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Skyfall).

Featuring cinematography by Oscar-winner Roger Deakins (Blade Runner 2049, Skyfall), the upcoming war film was shot in real-time, in which Deakins and his team composed long, highly-elaborated one-take sequences.

"From the very beginning I felt this movie should be told in real time," says Mendes in the above video. It seems the director is aiming to give audiences an immersive experience and a sense of what young British soldiers had to endure during that horrific war, knee-deep in the trenches.

Mendes continues, "Every step of the journey, breathing every breath with these men fell integral and there is no better way to tell this story than with one continuous shot."

For the film, Mendes recruited acclaimed cinematographer Roger Deakins, and from the start, they knew it was going to be an ambitious undertaking.

"From the first moment I talked to Sam about the idea as a one-shot movie, I knew it was going to be really immersive," Deakins says in this featurette. "Until you actually see it on a screen, you don't really realize how immersive it is -- and how that technique kind of draws you into it."

Starring George MacKay (Captain Fantastic) and Dean-Charles Chapman (Game of Thrones), the film follows two young, wide-eyed British WWI soldiers as they are given a nearly impossible mission to complete -- they must run across enemy lines to deliver an urgent warning message that will stop an army battalion of 1600 soldiers from walking into a trap.

Featuring guest appearances by Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch as a couple of commanding officers, "1917" is set to open in limited release on December 25th, and will expand nationwide on January 10th.