Bringing The Vision Of '1917' To Life

Oscar-winning Sam Mendes’s epic war film “1917” was not shot in all one take, but it certainly feels like it.
Oscar-winning editor Lee Smith says his job was to take eight-minute scenes and perfectly transition them together to make it seem like one shot.
“My job was not just to put the two shots together, which I had to do in a big hurry, because each choice informed how the set up was for the next shot,” Smith says. “Really, it was about checking performance, talking to Sam [Mendes] on a daily basis, checking pacing, rhythms, the accumulative effect as you start putting the film together.”
Cinematographer Roger Deakins, also an Oscar-winner, says nailing down the style and feel of the film, along with the actors’ rehearsals, took months of preparation. To match all the shots together, the crew could only film under cloud cover. He says a lot of days were spent anxiously waiting for a cloud to pass by for them to shoot.