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Behind-the-scenes of Saving Private Ryan

After the enormous commercial success of Jurassic Park in 1993 and The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2 in 1997, director Steven Spielberg tackled a more serious and dramatic project in Amistad. Amistad was a well made film when compared to the other movies released that year, but, not receiving an Oscar nomination for �Best Picture�, Amistad sank. Ultimately considered a commercial and, to some degree, a critical failure, Spielberg attacked his next directorial project with a vigor and enthusiasm not seen since his personal triumph in 1993, Schindler�s List. The end product of this determination was 1998�s Saving Private Ryan.

With a box-office take over $250 million, a draw that garnered Saving Private Ryan the title of the number one grossing film of �98, and a nomination for the �Best Picture� Academy award, an award that, in our opinion, unrightfully went to Miramax�s Shakespeare in Love, Spielberg stood at the helm of yet another modern classic. However, what mattered the most to Spielberg, like the opinions of the Holocaust survivors for Schindler�s List, were the feelings of the American veterans of World War II. And on this platform, perhaps, Spielberg scored his biggest career victory, as Saving Private Ryan was viewed by historians and veterans alike as the best war film ever made.

The plot of Saving Private Ryan is rather simplistic--in retrospect, the film�s most memorable sequence, the storming of Omaha Beach in the opening scene, had nothing to do with the storyline persay. After surviving the D-Day invasion, Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) is assigned to lead a squad of eight GIs to find private James Francis Ryan, a solder whose three brothers had all died within hours of each other, and get him off the front, to be returned to his grieving mother back in Iowa. Adding to the simplicity of the script was screenwriter Robert Rodat�s decision to make Miller�s character an enigma. "You�re really not supposed to know anything about him," Hanks stated candidly.

Rodat conceived of the idea behind Saving Private Ryan while walking through the town square in his hometown in New Hampshire. Rodat recalls, "In the town square, there�s a monument to those from the village who died in war, dating back to the American Revolution. In almost every war, there were repeated last names--brothers who were killed in action. The thought of losing a son to war is painful beyond description; the thought of losing more than one is inconceivable."

Upon crafting the initial concept into a screenplay, Rodat brought his script to producer Mark Gordon, who in turn sent copies of the script to Hanks and Spielberg.

"The paradox that first attracted me to the project [was] how do you find decency in warfare?" Spielberg asked. Fascinated by the script and the World War II era, a fact that is reflected in the settings of several prior films of his, Spielberg soon jumped aboard to direct the film.

After nabbing Hanks, and filling out the rest of Miller�s squad with actors Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Edward Burns, Jeremy Davies and Tom Sizemore, Spielberg cast Matt Damon as Private Ryan.

Just off the success of his Oscar nominated performance in Good Will Hunting, casting Damon might have seemed like a drop in the bucket for Spielberg and the Saving Private Ryan casting director, Denise Chaiman, but, as is often forgotten in the marketing drive to publicize a film, at the time Damon was cast, Good Will Hunting had not yet become the success story it is today; Damon was still virtually an unknown actor to the American public during principle photography.

Once the actors were cast, they needed to transform themselves into a credible military unit. To perform this task, the filmmakers enlisted former U.S. Marine Corps Captain Dale Dye (pictured on the next page, arms folded across his chest) and his company, Warriors, Inc. Dale was no stranger to this type of work, previously called upon to teach actors battle lingo and methods of warfare (you�ll see his name listed as the technical advisor ) on the sets of The Last of the Mohicans, Outbreak and Forrest Gump, among other films.

"I believe there is a certain core spirit that is common among men and women who fight for their country," Dye remarked. "And I think to understand it fully, the actors playing [those types of characters] need to experience the rigors that combat people all over the world face." So, in order for the members of Captain Miller�s squad to understand the world of warfare, Dye put all of the actors, with the notable exception of Damon, through that lifestyle.

As part of their ten-day �boot camp� experience, Dye took the Saving Private Ryan cast into the field, made them eat rations and sleep in pup tents in the mud. For their part, the actors didn�t necessarily find this to be the most pleasant and enjoyable of experiences.

"We were soaking wet, hiking five miles a day with 40 pounds of gear on our back, getting about three hours of sleep... only you don�t really sleep because you�re freezing and shaking in a tent," Ribisi said of the matter. However, in the end, most parties felt the experience was worthwhile.

"Something really happened there," Sizemore said. "We learned you don�t do anything by yourself in the military; it really is teamwork. If another guy is having a hard time�he can�t get his gear on, he�s sick, whatever�you stop and help him out. It brought us closer together, so when we started shooting the movie we felt a bond."

Once the matters of pre-production had been attended to, Spielberg and company began filming Saving Private Ryan. The most formidable challenge the production team was the shooting of the Normandy invasion, so, naturally, they decided to shoot that first. The only trouble was figuring out where to recreate that scene, because the actual Omaha Beach had become a protected historical landmark in France. After weeks of searching, the team finally decided upon a stretch of beach in Ireland that closely resembled the terrain of Normandy, right down to the golden hue of the sand.

Once a location was settled on, production designer Tom Sanders and his team began to transform the Irish coast into the German stronghold at Normandy, complete with the defensive Belgian gates and iron hedgehogs.

One of the most difficult aspects of recreating the D-Day invasion came with tracking down World War II vehicles to use. Producer Ian Bryce commented, "Tanks and other vehicles are quite plentiful, but we had to look all over the world for the landing craft." Some of the landing craft, or Higgins boats as they were called, were discovered in England and a couple were found in Scotland, but, the majority of boats were found, surprisingly, in Palm Springs, California.

After the tanks and boats had been refurbished and shipped to Ireland, the production needed to cast 750 extras to portray soldiers in the invasion. And when you need armed forces, the best place to turn is the military. The Irish army, which had provided Mel Gibson�s Braveheart with scores of extras, provided Saving Private Ryan with the number of men they needed.

Outfitted in period uniforms that costume designer Joanna Johnston had to have made from scratch, carrying weapons that it took armorer Simon Atherton three months to obtain, the actors and extras were finally ready to shoot the scene.

For those of you who have seen the film, one of the most noticeable aspects of the scene is that the action is all shot on hand-held cameras, much like one might see when watching a newsreel out of the same time period. And that was precisely Spielberg�s intention. By not storyboarding prior to shooting, Spielberg felt that he was "able to hit the sets much like a newsreel cameraman following soldiers into war."

This personal, more intimate touch, helped draw viewers into the chaos and hell of D-Day. "Omaha Beach was a slaughter," Spielberg said. "It was a complete foul-up: from the expeditionary forces, to the reconnaissance forces, to the saturation bombing that missed most of its primary targets. Given that, I didn�t want to glamorize [the invasion], so I tried to be as brutally honest as I could."

With the shooting of the Omaha Beach invasion finished, the Saving Private Ryan production team traveled to the abandoned British Aerospace facility in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, located approximately 45 minutes north of London to film the rest of principle photography.

There in Hatfield, Sanders and his team were called upon to create the bombed out French town that would serve as the setting for Saving Private Ryan�s climactic battle scene, where Miller and his men are fighting to keep the Germans from advancing past a French bridge.

And where there is a bridge there is a river, so Sanders� crew began this segment of photography by digging an actual river. Following the river, came the building of the bridge and the full-scale reproduction of the French village. Crafted first as models, Sanders worked closely with Spielberg to design nooks and alleyways that were then built into the set, from which Spielberg could shoot the action from various angles.

Dye�s help in this portion of filming was, again, quite instrumental as he assisted Spielberg in mapping out a realistic battle plan for the men to follow on-screen.

The end result of all this effort and tireless work by Spielberg and the rest of the Saving Private Ryan production team was one of the most moving and well respected films to have been released during the late �90�s. Spielberg will again have an interesting time trying to top himself with his next project.