3 Scenes from Saving Private Ryan: Scene 1 — Experience v Experience
aka If You Can’t Steal Their Budget, Steal Their Beats/Moves/Reads
As game writers/directors/actors, we have all the disadvantages of animation and live action. Our verbs are often limited, our rendered characters often impassive or uncanny or, frankly, just humanoid props and scenery. Even if we get to use mocap or full performance capture, facial animation is the most expensive and toughest thing to get right. So let’s see what we can steal in terms of the things we can control: dialogue, staging, posture, action, composition and editing.
I’ve been thinking about 3 consecutive scenes in Saving Private Ryan. The first time I saw the film they rather washed over me. Now I appreciate just how much set-up work they do, even if you’re not consciously aware of it. There’s a lot to learn from here. By which I mean, there’s a lot to steal.
The script is good. The performances, staging, composition and editing are out of this world, which is to say, they give the impression of utter realism.
The scenes come early in the film, right after that nightmarish opening beach assault, and The Secretary In Headquarters Makes The Connection And Tells The Powers That Be (“That boy is alive. We are going to send somebody to find him. And we are going to get him the hell out of there.”)
In synopsis, they go like this:
1 Captain Miller reports to Colonel Anderson, and is given a new mission
2 Miller discusses the new mission with Sergeant Horvath
3 Miller needs an interpreter, so collects Upham from the intelligence section.
An early draft of Robert Rodat’s screenplay has a lot more business: the beach is still under fire, Miller talks to more officers, Miller disputes the need for the mission, there’s lots more Talk, they steal General Gavin’s jeep. By the time they get to the shooting script, it’s all be stripped down to a clear through-line of need, action and consequence.
I can’t find the scene on YouTube. G’wan, spoil yourself, watch it for realz, better than free, legal-like, for actual money.
The late, great Dennis Farina as Colonel Anderson; Tom F. Hanks as Captain Miller; Tom Sizemore as Sergeant Horvath; Jeremy Davies as Corporal Upham.
1: Miller Briefs Anderson, Anderson Briefs Miller.
It’s not so much the sheer scale of the production (the hundreds of extras, the trucks and half-tracks, the soldiers lounging in the sun, the German prisoners being marched off), as the attention to specific detail: the dirt on Hanks’ face, the line on his forehead where his helmet was, the hot shaving water, the coffee, the sandwiches, the clean white map. So when we cut back to Miller’s impassive face, we know he’s looking at the sandwiches. We fill his face with meaning.
Look at the use of rhythm and editing to make impassive faces and props eloquent. These are nearly all we have in games, we need to know how to make them do work for us. We pull into Miller at 0:25, five full seconds of him looking at…what? Hot Shaving Water. Back to Miller. Hot coffee. Sandwiches.
Back to Miller, then an extraordinary line-crossing edit, almost a jump cut, to behind Miller at 0:30, a completely unbalanced, incomplete composition that pans to Anderson looming unexpectedly close over Miller, and talking unexpectedly soft after being so vinegary on the phone.
Can you think of a better scene that’s basically just a list?
“These 2 minefields are actually one big one. We tried to make our way up through the middle of it, but it turned into a mixed, high-density field, a little bit of everything: Sprengmine 44s, Schumine 42s, pot mines, A-200s, the little wooden bastards that the mine detectors don’t pick up. This road here…they placed big mushrooms, Teller mine 43s, I guess for our tanks, from here right up to the edge of the village…”
Shop talk, professional to professional. Even if you don’t know what everything means, you know what it means to the characters.
The Understatement “They just…didn’t want to give up those 88s.”
Miller lost in that thought, back in that minefield. Despite Miller’s hands shaking back in the landing craft, he’s strong, competent, expert, and at this point only slightly haunted.
”It was a tough assignment, that’s why you got it.”
Miller gets the toughest jobs. He deserves a rest. He’s not getting one.
There’s a wonderful choice (I don’t know whose): 1:15 the way Farina keeps looking at Hanks’ face, doesn’t return to the map, already way ahead of him, appraising, preparing, apologising in advance for what he’s about to give him. Syncopation of action and intent.
A hard thing to do with non-human actors, but I love Farina’s softness when he asks about casualties. The way he blinks on “I got another one for you”. And then no reply from Miller, just straight into…well, that’s for next time.
What Can We Steal?
Make impassivity eloquent by juxtaposition.
Props can speak loudly.
Make characters look at the same thing at different times, or different things at the same time.
