The first 28 minutes of saving private Ryan are devoted to the bloody allied invasion of Omaha Beach on
June 6 1944
The scene is rightly regarded as one of the best battle scenes in film history. Thanks to a brutal and unflinching
Recreation by Steven Spielberg. By placing this extended scene right at the start of the film, it's clear that
Spielberg's goal was to drop the viewer right into the action without warning, a traumatic [experience] that
leaves the viewer on edge for the rest of the movie and this way Spielberg mimics the
exhaustion that the allied Soldiers had to fight through for the entirety of their time at war
but to create and realize the scene, Spielberg had to reconcile a fundamental contradiction the sequence had to be chaotic and
Coherent at the same time in other words the critical impression of the battle should be one of
Randomness, of violence and Death occurring so rapidly and indiscriminately that the mind is bewildered it has no time [to] process
but that randomness has to be communicated cinematically via some sort of structure a
Coherence that somehow leaves you with the feeling of Chaos
What spielberg is trying to do is fill in two different kinds of gaps in our knowledge?
about this historical moment first he wants to close the gap between
Hollywood's heroic depictions of World War two and the Vicious deeply harrowing experiences of those who are actually there?
I mean even in strong depictions of the normandy landings like the great
1962 movie the Longest Day filmed entirely on
Tripods the viewers experience is still some distance from the subjectivity of the moment in Saving Private Ryan
Spielberg wants to shrink that distance as much as possible
The other Gap spielberg wants to close is the one between what we know about this event and what we've actually
seen of it there is
Extremely little footage of the normandy invasion on June 6 1944 and almost none from the landing at Omaha Beach
There are a lot of reasons [for] this a significant percentage of the cameraman who filmed the war for the allied powers
were killed
The remaining did their best to avoid that same fate by finding places of cover where they could film at a distance for this reason?
You get a lot of footage from before the landing at Normandy on the Boats which
Spielberg recreates in Saving private Ryan and a lot of footage after the battle is over
During the Chaos cameraman were doing their best to keep themselves and [their] cameras out of danger
documentaries that spielberg relied more on were shot far from the normandy beaches
Specifically with the Marines at Tarawa [which] was shot in Japan and the battle for San Pietro
which was made by the famous filmmaker John Huston italy watching that second film Spielberg was struck by how cameramen
Always stayed low to the ground and how the camera shook when an explosion went off nearby as critic
Toby [Hagen] notes Spielberg discovered that if he adopted the style of the battlefield cameraman he could achieve a more subjective
Experience of the war and that's exactly what he did
But the footage that I think has the most impact on the Omaha Beach scene is [John] [Ford's]
Masterful War film the battle of Midway from 1942 in that film Ford
brilliantly keeps in moments when blasts affect the camera gate or
Knock his handheld cameras back and forth from this in some creative [editing] you get a much [more] visceral impression of the battle
So the essence of the idea for saving private Ryan is here, and it's obvious in the battlefield camera approach
But what's not so obvious is how Spielberg takes this essence and injects it with steroids
For example one of the things that spielberg does that no actual wartime cameraman could do is
switch perspectives the Omaha Beach scene functions from three different perspectives the vantage of the invisible
Battlefield cameraman the [vantage] of Tom hanks [and] the vantage of the German Soldiers on the top of the cliffs
Spielberg alternates between these to give a more
360-degree perspective on the battle without losing any of the immediacy that is his primary concern even crazier
It actually took me a few watches to realize that this shot right here [is]
Actually meant to be a moment inside Tom hanks head like the most intense
First-person shooter game ever this kind of thing couched almost hidden in the middle of the rest of the footage
intensifies that feeling of being there to its most extreme
Maybe this is why the sequence triggered actual PTSD in a few world war two veterans who watch the film?
but the key to understanding how Spielberg squares Chaos with
Coherence is in the amount of information that he crams into each shot the Omaha beach scene might seem like the craziest
Fastest most intense sequence in all of film, but I counted the shots in the scene [that] lasts exactly
24 minutes there are exactly
200 shots which means that every shot averages
7.2 seconds, I mean that is an incredibly high average for a scene like this
And it didn't seem right to me until I actually went back and watched the scene with this in mind
you're asked to comprehend so much in this Omaha [beach] scene so spielberg eases the pressure on your brain by
Panning, tilting or moving the camera when others would just cut this way you don't [have] to waste too much mental energy on
Orienting yourself
You can absorb the relevant information as it comes and spielberg is great at feeding you relevant
Information as my friend tony once remarked this is a guy who loves to move the camera
With motivation so in a 12 second shot like this one you get a wide shot
[two] close-Ups three inserts and the medium shot eight pieces of information and the transitions here are really great, too
He loves to start a long shot with the action from the Previous moment
This is how he strings together all these mini vignettes and gives them a forward momentum that keeps the viewer on track
expected [Rafi] of course there's so much more to say about the scene about the sound mixing and the lenses and the
desaturation of the film stock about the costume design and the set design
But that's all been well covered before what inspires me [about] this scene is how such a maelstrom of action?
Retains its focus from end to end
You can't just stage some
Insanity film a bunch of it from different angles and hope to find a [through-line] in the editing a scene with an impact like this
Something that you can revisit again and again and find new things takes real cinematic
concentration in other words
anyone can capture Chaos but only the best can capture Chaos with
clarity
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