This shot from "1917" shows Lance Corporal Schofield,
played by George MacKay,
running through a destroyed town
and jumping off a high ledge into a river.
It seems like just one long, continuous take.
However, if you look behind the scenes leading up to this,
the camera crew had to chase after George
by jeep, motorcycle, and even by foot
as the actor then jumped off a ledge onto a mat,
which was cobbled together with another shot
of the character jumping into a river.
This is just one of the many crafty ways
the filmmakers made the movie look
like it is all just one single shot.
Getting it right required precise timing,
the highest level of planning,
and some incredibly clever shooting and editing.
The entirety of "1917,"
a drama set during World War I,
follows a pair of young soldiers
trying to deliver a message to stop an attack.
It was not actually shot in one take,
but rather a series of continuous, uncut shots
that were then cleverly connected
to give the feeling of one long take.
While this has been done before,
"1917" presented many new challenges for the filmmakers.
One of the earliest examples of a "one shot" film
was Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope."
A more recent example is "Birdman."
"1917" pushes it a step further
with its persistent action
and the constantly changing terrain.
It never uses the same location twice.
Who was up for this daunting task?
Cinematographer Roger Deakins.
Deakins earned a reputation as one of the
greatest cinematographers alive today
thanks to his masterful work
on movies like "Skyfall" and "Sicario."
He earned the best cinematography Oscar
for "Blade Runner 2049."
Roger Deakins: I mean, this is not a sort of style
of filmmaking that is right for very film.
It's very a particular film.
Narrator: Director Sam Mendes wanted to create
an immersive experience and put the audience
in the shoes of a British soldier fighting in World War I.
Getting the camera right up in the soldiers' faces
as they moved through long, narrow trenches
was a major aspect of that.
First off, because of all the long takes
the crew would be shooting, "1917" required
even more preparation than the average movie.
For example, the crew built models of every single set,
like this farmhouse that the two soldiers visit.
Here is the model they built,
and here's how it appeared in the movie.
The models helped the crew see
how the overall scene should look.
Take the scene where Schofield
runs through a destroyed city.
It was lit up by flares in the sky.
Because the flares were the main source of lighting
for certain shots in this scene,
the crew needed to time exactly how long
the flares would be in the air.
So they tested it on a mini-model of the city
with a light contraption that traced
which directions the shadows would move
and how light would fall through the buildings' windows.
Seeing the landscapes and sets in person
was just as important for getting
the entire continuous shot down.
The art department built realistic sets from scratch.
Each set needed to be able to accommodate the camera's path.
For example, the barbed wire the two soldiers
walk through in no man's land had angled pathways
so the camera could get through.
Ramps allowed the camera to pass from no man's land
into the lower German trenches.
Meanwhile, tunnel entrances had to be
the exact right length
to accommodate the camera and their cuts.
One window was built to come apart
so that the camera could pass through it.
Perhaps most impressive of all
was the 5,200 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.
Every scene had to be the exact length of the land.
So, if a scene and shot lasted eight minutes,
it had to take exactly that long
to get through that specific area.
In an interview with Vox, Mendes said
they wouldn't build a set until they knew
exactly how long it should be.
This required a lot of rehearsing.
While all films require rehearsals,
the process for "1917" was much longer and more rigorous.
According to Deakins, on most films,
these rehearsals can take place the day of shooting.
But for "1917,"
walkthroughs were happening well in advance.
They started rehearsing at Shepperton Studios
near London and then moved to the sets.
Every single line of dialogue
had to be rehearsed on location.
The whole process of blocking and rehearsing scenes
went on for four months.
Once they had gotten the lay of the land,
measured everything out,
and made sure every actor knew their lines
and hit their marks,
it was time to start shooting.
There was another crucial step in pulling off this illusion.
The camera could never move backward, only forward,
as the characters had a starting point
and a fixed destination and could never go back.
One solution for that:
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 was the crew supposed to deal with cameras
that needed to be mobile?
The solution: 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.
A heavier camera would not have worked
with the crew's stabilizers,
which were crucial for when the camera operators
had to walk and run after the soldiers.
Deakins: Creatively, Sam and I talked about it.
We wanted the camera to be quite steady.
We didn't want a jerky camera and stuff.
Narrator: One can understand
why the camera needed to be light,
as there are cameras running along wires
to capture shots like this one,
where Schofield jumps across a broken bridge.
The camera also traveled on wires
for its trip through no man's land.
It could very easily be unhooked from these wires
by a camera operator.
Schofield's journey downriver was captured
mostly by a crane.
A part of the sequence in which the character
drops down an 18-foot set of waterfalls
was shot by attaching the camera to a drone.
The constant movement created another big challenge:
lighting a scene.
They did use some artificial lighting,
like this 50-foot-tall light tower
that was dimmed to create the color of fire
and meant to light up the entire ruined village.
However, if they put lights in the trenches,
they might accidentally show up on screen
during one of the movie's many 360-degree shots.
So they relied mostly on natural light.
Cloudy days were more optimal than sunny days,
as sunny days meant more shadows.
Deakins: I mean, I'm looking at all my weather apps
to see when it's gonna cloud over.
And then, is that cloud gonna last long enough
to do a five-minute take?
Narrator: And because the movie took place in real time,
the lighting had to look consistent.
Even a little too much sun in the sky
meant production had to shut down for the day.
Deakins needed to know not just how shots would look,
but how they would be stitched together in post-production.
Deakins and Mendes found subtle ways to make those cuts
without the audience knowing.
This would also help editor Lee Smith immensely.
Sometimes an object would block the frame.
Shots where characters traveled through doorways
or entered a bunker also allowed for easier cuts.
Take this shot, where the two main characters
walk through a black curtain.
Other shots required even cleverer transitions.
In one thrilling sequence,
Schofield 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 rapids.
And to capture him even getting to that point,
the camera crew had to make sure they were
completely in sync with the actor's every movement.
Some parts of the mazelike sequence involved
chasing after him with a camera attached to a motorcycle.
For the big leap, they needed to attach a camera
to a longer, more flexible crane.
But nothing quite matched the challenge
of pulling off the climatic sequence
in which Schofield runs alongside a trench
in the middle of battle.
Getting this shot was a huge endeavor.
Deakins: We started on a 50-foot technocrane
that was armed in from, say, as we're facing George,
from the right-hand side.
And then it climbs up the trench with him
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,
'cause the camera's basically on a stabilized head
called a stable eye, surprise, surprise.
And 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 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.
And they were quite glad,
'cause they got money for being extras that day.
Narrator: Once the camera was on the truck,
it had to follow George as he ran
for about a quarter of a mile.
Meanwhile, they had explosions
going on in the background.
According to Deakins,
they only had enough explosions for four takes.
And thanks to their tireless rehearsals and walkthroughs,
they were able to pull it off on time.
And 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 they called "cut" right away,
this great, genuine moment
capturing the chaos of the war
would never have made it into the movie.