Andrew Scott has revealed that a complicated lighter ruined his scene in Sam Mendes’ new war film 1917.
The Fleabag star makes a brief appearance in the film, filmed as if it were a single long take, and admitted that she was responsible for some versions of her scene being unusable.
He told a press conference in London for the film: “You have to work alongside the camera crew and the extras, but the big challenge is that you don’t want to mess it up, because you’re only there for five minutes. You don’t want to be that guy.
“The big challenge is that if you make a mistake in the fourth or fifth minute you have to do it again from the beginning.”
When asked who made the most mistakes and ruined a take, director Mendes joked, “Andrew, in his one scene, made more mistakes than anyone.”
Scott responded, “Never smoke, never use a lighter.”
Mendes continued: “You have seven minutes of magic and then if someone trips or a lighter doesn’t work, you have to start over and none of it is usable.
“We were oscillating between thinking ‘Why do we do this to ourselves?’ and ‘This is the only way to work.’”
However, actor George MacKay, who has a full-length scene toward the end of the film, said that sometimes mistakes improve the final product.
He said: “Sometimes you make mistakes that are beautiful. There’s a big race towards the end, I’m going one direction and there’s a lot of guys going horizontally and I just hit myself.
“I didn’t mean to get hit the way I did, but it ended up being real and it showed up in the movie.”
The film, which follows two young soldiers who are sent to deliver a message to another company that could save hundreds of lives, was inspired by stories Mendes was told by his grandfather.
He said: “I had the idea from the story my grandfather told me about carrying a message, but the problem of the First World War in general is a war of paralysis.
“It was only when I started researching it and came here and discovered this moment in 1917, when the Germans withdrew and the land they were fighting for was abandoned, that it seemed to me that there was a possible story to tell about this epic journey.
“One of the reasons World War I is not as represented in films as World War II was that the nature of the war was quite static.”
Discussing his decision not to end the film with the end of the war, Mendes said: “I was very conscious of not turning it into a history lesson.
“We know how the war ended, but I felt like they were two British soldiers, but they could easily have been two German soldiers.
“It was about the experience of war and not the historical moment. Through the micro, through individuals, you only begin to understand the macro, the detail of a man’s experience, you see the panorama of death and destruction.
“Sometimes I feel like, as you can go anywhere in the cinema, your eyes become bigger than your stomach to express the immensity of war, but there’s always a human being and that was very deliberate and I’m pleased that it’s establishing a Connection. “
Asked how many cuts there are in the film, cinematographer Roger Deakins said: “That’s a secret, but you can probably figure it out.
“We shot about 65 days and the longest take was probably nine minutes, so let’s do the math.”
He added: “The biggest difficulty was crossing the terrain and doing some of the really intense and sensitive scenes and making it all look like a piece.
“You’re using a lot of different techniques, the trick was trying to make it look like a camera all the time – that was the biggest challenge, that and the weather.”
1917 opens in UK cinemas on January 10, 2020.
