J.R. Hudson
Spirit Animal
This thread is stemming from the tail-end of the Jarhead thread whereas we are discussing warfilms and patriotism. Yas Kassana made a comment about The Thin Red Line which I own and really really enjoy but there are elements of the film I do not like; I find some of the battle sequences sleep inducing at times.
That last line can be attributed to obvioulsy Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and Black Hawk Down which are kind of modern day benchmarks for "HOW TO FILM A WAR FILM ACTION SEQUENCE"
Of course then you take Malicks RED LINE and wonder why we felt sleepy during thiese sequences? Yas Kassana vbmenu_register("postmenu_272036", true); mentioned that the filmmakers tried to remove the audience; so I went about searching and found the following sound bites:
"Terry and I agreed that this film really needed to feel as realistic as possible. Naturally, there is a certain amount of visual stylization in the film, but we tried to lend the images an integrity so that viewers could believe that they were watching a real event — without feeling as if they were being overly manipulated by a great filmmaker. "
This film does feel like that during a majority of the battle sequences. You feel like your watching it but without neccesarily being in it. You feel like you are close-up without feeling like you are the documentary filmmaker shooting it. I have a newer appreciation for the film now that I know this.
An interesting quote:
The presentation of violence in the film isn't quite as visceral as the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan [see AC Aug. '98]. Was that by design?
Toll: The combat was certainly important to the story, which is about men experiencing warfare for the first time. However, the graphic and visceral aspects of that experience weren't nearly as important to Terry as the individual soldiers' reactions to the situation. Therefore, our presentation of that type of action isn't as hyperreal as it is in Private Ryan. I was initially interested in taking that kind of approach, but it wasn't Terry's focus. Gary Capo and the second unit did a lot of the combat footage, and they did a great job, but we weren't aiming for the same degree of intensity that Private Ryan has. This is a different kind of movie.
and this is great
Were you keeping tabs on Private Ryan while you were in production?
Toll: We were shooting at the same time. My wife, Lois Burwell, was the chief makeup artist on Private Ryan. She was in Ireland and England while I was in Australia, and we would talk by phone or send e-mails back and forth. She was very excited about the work they were doing. She was designing amazing prosthetic devices and making elaborate blood rigs. She would tell me something like, 'I can't believe how great the dailies look. It seems so real; it's like you're actually watching the war. I'm really excited.' And I would say, 'Oh, that's really wonderful, dear. You must be so happy.' Of course, I was really thinking, 'My God, no, that's what I wanted to do on this film!' I had been trying to get Terry to do more graphic combat right from the beginning, but he didn't see the picture that way. After talking to my wife, I'd tell him, 'Hey, Lois is doing all of this graphic blood stuff on Private Ryan. And he'd reply, 'Oh, really? I don't think I want to do anything like that.' We were obviously interested in seeing how Private Ryan turned out, but it didn't have any influence on what we were doing. Now, after seeing Private Ryan, I must say that I think Steven Spielberg, Janusz Kaminski [ASC], and the crew of that picture created a whole new level of expertise with that type of action and effects work. They did the best job ever of creating that kind of combat experience on film. Ryan is a fantastic film.
That's awesome. So I started this thread and wanted to do an experiment for those that wan't to participate. Let's make an online war film. Let's determine the theatre of operations, the players, the style of film, the stoty within the factual events....
Anyone?
That last line can be attributed to obvioulsy Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and Black Hawk Down which are kind of modern day benchmarks for "HOW TO FILM A WAR FILM ACTION SEQUENCE"
Of course then you take Malicks RED LINE and wonder why we felt sleepy during thiese sequences? Yas Kassana vbmenu_register("postmenu_272036", true); mentioned that the filmmakers tried to remove the audience; so I went about searching and found the following sound bites:
"Terry and I agreed that this film really needed to feel as realistic as possible. Naturally, there is a certain amount of visual stylization in the film, but we tried to lend the images an integrity so that viewers could believe that they were watching a real event — without feeling as if they were being overly manipulated by a great filmmaker. "
This film does feel like that during a majority of the battle sequences. You feel like your watching it but without neccesarily being in it. You feel like you are close-up without feeling like you are the documentary filmmaker shooting it. I have a newer appreciation for the film now that I know this.
An interesting quote:
The presentation of violence in the film isn't quite as visceral as the battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan [see AC Aug. '98]. Was that by design?
Toll: The combat was certainly important to the story, which is about men experiencing warfare for the first time. However, the graphic and visceral aspects of that experience weren't nearly as important to Terry as the individual soldiers' reactions to the situation. Therefore, our presentation of that type of action isn't as hyperreal as it is in Private Ryan. I was initially interested in taking that kind of approach, but it wasn't Terry's focus. Gary Capo and the second unit did a lot of the combat footage, and they did a great job, but we weren't aiming for the same degree of intensity that Private Ryan has. This is a different kind of movie.
and this is great
Were you keeping tabs on Private Ryan while you were in production?
Toll: We were shooting at the same time. My wife, Lois Burwell, was the chief makeup artist on Private Ryan. She was in Ireland and England while I was in Australia, and we would talk by phone or send e-mails back and forth. She was very excited about the work they were doing. She was designing amazing prosthetic devices and making elaborate blood rigs. She would tell me something like, 'I can't believe how great the dailies look. It seems so real; it's like you're actually watching the war. I'm really excited.' And I would say, 'Oh, that's really wonderful, dear. You must be so happy.' Of course, I was really thinking, 'My God, no, that's what I wanted to do on this film!' I had been trying to get Terry to do more graphic combat right from the beginning, but he didn't see the picture that way. After talking to my wife, I'd tell him, 'Hey, Lois is doing all of this graphic blood stuff on Private Ryan. And he'd reply, 'Oh, really? I don't think I want to do anything like that.' We were obviously interested in seeing how Private Ryan turned out, but it didn't have any influence on what we were doing. Now, after seeing Private Ryan, I must say that I think Steven Spielberg, Janusz Kaminski [ASC], and the crew of that picture created a whole new level of expertise with that type of action and effects work. They did the best job ever of creating that kind of combat experience on film. Ryan is a fantastic film.
That's awesome. So I started this thread and wanted to do an experiment for those that wan't to participate. Let's make an online war film. Let's determine the theatre of operations, the players, the style of film, the stoty within the factual events....
Anyone?
