The First World War
starts with literally horses and carriages
and ends with tanks.
So it's the moment where
modern war, you could argue, begins.
From the very beginning
I felt this movie should be
told in real time.
Every step of the journey,
breathing every breath with these men
felt integral.
And there is no better way
to telling this story
than with one continuous shot.
Three...two...one
Go! Go!
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.
It's meant to make you feel that
you are in the trenches
with these characters.
The film in itself
is a slice of time.
These two young men
get sent on a mission
to deliver a message
to stop an attack.
Action!
So they've got to cross
into enemy territory
on a race against time
to deliver a message
that will save
1,600 lives.
And the camera
never ever comes away
from the two characters.
There's always that
sort of "get out of jail" card
that you have with a movie
"Well, you know, we might
be able to cut around this
or we might take that scene out."
That's not possible on this film.
The dance of the camera
and the mechanics
all have to be in sync
with what the actor is doing
when you achieve that
it's really beautiful and exhilarating.
Sometimes you have a camera
being carried by an operator
hooked onto a wire
and the wire carries it
across more land
and it's unhooked again
that operator runs with it
then steps onto a small jeep
which carries him
another 400 yards
and he steps off it again
and goes around the corner.
Let's go back to one.
This film does not take place
in a series of interiors.
This is endless exteriors.
No location ever repeats,
so you're constantly
moving through landscapes.
Being such an exterior movie,
we're very dependent
on the light and the weather.
And we kind of realized,
well for a start
you can't really light it.
Action!
Because, you know if you
were running down a trench
and turning around 360 degrees
there's no way to put a light anywhere.
And because we were
shooting in story order
we had to shoot in cloud
to get the continuity
from scene to scene.
So some mornings
the sun would be out
and we couldn't shoot.
So, we would rehearse.
And we're rehearsing.
And then we'd be waiting around,
everyone with their eyes up in the sky,
trying to see how long it would take for the sun
to move behind the cloud.
And as soon as it comes over
you've got this five-minute window.
Everyone would be like,
"Come on! Go, go, go."
Go! Go! Go!
So you are also
in the lap of the gods.
It was like a piece of theater every take.
Once it starts it can't stop.
If something goes wrong
you just have to keep going.
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.
For me, engagement
is very important.
And that is behind the way in which
we decided to shoot this film.
I wanted people to understand
how difficult it was
for these men.
And the nature of that
is behind everything.