Gettysburg movie and movies today

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**Psienesis**

Swastakowey wrote:
Started watching Gettysburg yesterday. At a whopping 4 and a half hours long I still have the final hour left to go. Awesome movie in my opinion.

However watching the movie made me realize something. Current movies are far too perfect.

Zulu, Zulu Dawn, Waterloo, Gettysburg etc all have something in common. They use real looking people and the things they do look real.

Sticking with Gettysburg for the examples:

Men messing up in battle. Plenty of times I saw stumbling and bumbling. At one point I saw a guy accidentally discharge his shot wastefully in the air. Uniforms sometimes fell apart as people ran. Although the battles are wonderfully orchestrated by who I assume were a collection of America's reinactors they still made human mistakes that I felt are likely on the battle field. It clearly was not shot to perfection. One scene a horse is refusing to co operate with his rider and ends up sort of running sideways while the rest of the formation was normal. The list goes on. Added to this is the fact that these people look normal. Sort, tall, fat skinny and old and young. Like they actually grabbed people out at random and chucked them into a battle scene (kinda like real life I suppose).

How often have you run for your life and looked gorgeous while doing so? According to Jurassic Park you look really dashing while running from giant Dinosaurs wanting your flesh for sport only. In Gettysburg you look like a mess falling apart and stumbling like a fool.

When watching Fury or the Avengers and even the latest Terminator movie it really hit me how everything on screen is "perfect". Every scene has perfect people doing things perfectly. The only screw ups appear to be orchestrated screw ups built into the plot. Take fury for example, all the actors in that tank stood out to me as more than perfect fit men (except the kid, but it was obvious this was done by design). The new terminator movie was an army of very photogenic men (and some women) looking awesome while doing these very perfectly orchestrated fight scenes and then once you end up in the past everything is perfect unless by choice they are not (like the homeless man).

I'm not too sure if I am the only one who has noticed it, but movies feel like everything, from the noises (most sounds on the big screen are fake, but this has been true for a long time), the colouring, the backgrounds and heck even the people in the background are all perfect and it gets to the point where it feels fake because of its perfection. None of it feels normal or relatable.

I think one of the best examples would be Jurassic Park. If you look at the people in the background everyone is clean, trendy, tidy and immaculate:

Spoiler:

No dirtiness, no dustiness and everyone looks perfectly selected and so on. It is like this the entire movie.

Why is this? Is it because we would rather see perfection over normalcy on screen now? Is it because of the obvious CGI effects present on even the most mundane things (see Wolf of Wall street or Mad Max etc)?

Gettysburg is a pretty cool movie, while not as visually impressive as say Waterloo it features what I think a real army would look like doing things I would expect. Just a bunch of normal men put into a mad situation.

Opinions?

One of the reasons you get that in Gettysburg is that all those nameless soldiers on the field in the movie are not just "extras" picked up by the studio. They're hobbyist Civil War re-enactors, who brought with them their own uniforms, accessories, unit standards, wagons, cannons, etc etc etc and, for the most part, staged re-enactments of that battle, specifically, before. The Gettysburg Re-enactment is, like, the Woodstock of the re-enactment scene... everyone wants to save up the money to make the trip and take part in it.

So what you have here is thousands of people staging a battle that they've already studied extensively, re-enacting, as accurately as possible, actions and life of the era, based on studies of historic documents, journals, diaries, letters, etc. to make the film as true-to-life as they possibly could.

There's a couple exceptions in a few scenes, where the director pissed some of the re-enactors off, so they're smoking filtered cigarettes and wearing wristwatches while on-camera, but I'm not sure if it's visible in the final cut of the film.

**sebster**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Back on topic, Gettysburg, Waterloo and so on of course are not dramas, they are history and dramatic enough in the reality not to need souping up with spiffy actors and catchy lines.

That is why the original Tora Tora Tora is a much better film than Pearl Harbour.

Yeah, that's one thing Hollywood does not do anymore - historical recreations. Films where character and the like take a back seat to showing a more or less historical recreation of an actual military operation.

I for one would absolutely love to see the sinking of the Bismarck done in full, historical detail. It'd be an amazing story of resilience, as the British hunt the pair of German ships only to face the disaster of the Hood, then rally goddamn every boat they've got to hunt the Bismarck down. What you could do with modern CGI would be amazing - imagine showing a scene from the Suffolk as it searches for the Bismarck, only to see the thing has turned to attack and is moving within range. Imagine the four great ships trading shots for 10 minutes, until the Hood goes down. Imagine the Swordfish swooping in to drop their torpedoes, or the brutal hammering the Bismarck copped in the final, sad end.

**Swastakowey**

sebster wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Back on topic, Gettysburg, Waterloo and so on of course are not dramas, they are history and dramatic enough in the reality not to need souping up with spiffy actors and catchy lines.

That is why the original Tora Tora Tora is a much better film than Pearl Harbour.

Yeah, that's one thing Hollywood does not do anymore - historical recreations. Films where character and the like take a back seat to showing a more or less historical recreation of an actual military operation.

I for one would absolutely love to see the sinking of the Bismarck done in full, historical detail. It'd be an amazing story of resilience, as the British hunt the pair of German ships only to face the disaster of the Hood, then rally goddamn every boat they've got to hunt the Bismarck down. What you could do with modern CGI would be amazing - imagine showing a scene from the Suffolk as it searches for the Bismarck, only to see the thing has turned to attack and is moving within range. Imagine the four great ships trading shots for 10 minutes, until the Hood goes down. Imagine the Swordfish swooping in to drop their torpedoes, or the brutal hammering the Bismarck copped in the final, sad end.

I wonder, if a kick starter was put together to gather financial support for these kinds of movies, if they would start getting popular or not. Even mini movies maybe? Could be a fun venture to get into.

Obviously a kickstarter film probably wont get the money needed for the Bismarck event but definitely could start smaller.

**Crazy_Carnifex**

Swastakowey wrote:
sebster wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Back on topic, Gettysburg, Waterloo and so on of course are not dramas, they are history and dramatic enough in the reality not to need souping up with spiffy actors and catchy lines.

That is why the original Tora Tora Tora is a much better film than Pearl Harbour.

Yeah, that's one thing Hollywood does not do anymore - historical recreations. Films where character and the like take a back seat to showing a more or less historical recreation of an actual military operation.

I for one would absolutely love to see the sinking of the Bismarck done in full, historical detail. It'd be an amazing story of resilience, as the British hunt the pair of German ships only to face the disaster of the Hood, then rally goddamn every boat they've got to hunt the Bismarck down. What you could do with modern CGI would be amazing - imagine showing a scene from the Suffolk as it searches for the Bismarck, only to see the thing has turned to attack and is moving within range. Imagine the four great ships trading shots for 10 minutes, until the Hood goes down. Imagine the Swordfish swooping in to drop their torpedoes, or the brutal hammering the Bismarck copped in the final, sad end.

I wonder, if a kick starter was put together to gather financial support for these kinds of movies, if they would start getting popular or not. Even mini movies maybe? Could be a fun venture to get into.

Obviously a kickstarter film probably wont get the money needed for the Bismarck event but definitely could start smaller.

I think trying something like Das Boot using this method could be interesting. Small cast, small set, add special effects. Say, focus on a Convoy or something.

**Swastakowey**

Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
Swastakowey wrote:
sebster wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Back on topic, Gettysburg, Waterloo and so on of course are not dramas, they are history and dramatic enough in the reality not to need souping up with spiffy actors and catchy lines.

That is why the original Tora Tora Tora is a much better film than Pearl Harbour.

Yeah, that's one thing Hollywood does not do anymore - historical recreations. Films where character and the like take a back seat to showing a more or less historical recreation of an actual military operation.

I for one would absolutely love to see the sinking of the Bismarck done in full, historical detail. It'd be an amazing story of resilience, as the British hunt the pair of German ships only to face the disaster of the Hood, then rally goddamn every boat they've got to hunt the Bismarck down. What you could do with modern CGI would be amazing - imagine showing a scene from the Suffolk as it searches for the Bismarck, only to see the thing has turned to attack and is moving within range. Imagine the four great ships trading shots for 10 minutes, until the Hood goes down. Imagine the Swordfish swooping in to drop their torpedoes, or the brutal hammering the Bismarck copped in the final, sad end.

I wonder, if a kick starter was put together to gather financial support for these kinds of movies, if they would start getting popular or not. Even mini movies maybe? Could be a fun venture to get into.

Obviously a kickstarter film probably wont get the money needed for the Bismarck event but definitely could start smaller.

I think trying something like Das Boot using this method could be interesting. Small cast, small set, add special effects. Say, focus on a Convoy or something.

Hmmm, I might do some research on what it actually takes to do a project like this. It could be a cool idea to get a group of people working on an idea and get it to kickstarter. Potentially could be a bit of fun for people who are interested in that type of thing.

But you are bang on. Needs to start small.

**infinite_array**

One of my favorite moments in the second season of Vikings is during one of the fights (and I can't remember for the life of me which one it is) when one of the extras is walking down the hill and just eats it. Completely falls. And they decided to keep that scene in instead of reshooting. I thought it was great. Can you imagine how many big, imposing warriors over the course of history have gotten silly nicknames because they stepped in a hole at the wrong moment in a fight?

**sebster**

Swastakowey wrote:
I wonder, if a kick starter was put together to gather financial support for these kinds of movies, if they would start getting popular or not. Even mini movies maybe? Could be a fun venture to get into.

Obviously a kickstarter film probably wont get the money needed for the Bismarck event but definitely could start smaller.

That's a really interesting approach. I like the way you and Crazy_Carnifex are thinking - could start with a sub movie to keep the budget small. Pick one of the more crazy sub stories from history and just tell it as it actually happened.

**Swastakowey**

sebster wrote:
Swastakowey wrote:
I wonder, if a kick starter was put together to gather financial support for these kinds of movies, if they would start getting popular or not. Even mini movies maybe? Could be a fun venture to get into.

Obviously a kickstarter film probably wont get the money needed for the Bismarck event but definitely could start smaller.

That's a really interesting approach. I like the way you and Crazy_Carnifex are thinking - could start with a sub movie to keep the budget small. Pick one of the more crazy sub stories from history and just tell it as it actually happened.

Yea pretty much. I am pretty keen. No idea where to start but I gotta look at what really goes into a film, then what goes into a kickstarter and then what goes into a final product. I suppose even a small film would be pricey to make. If it seems plausible then it would be a cool project for people interested in this kind of thing. Which given the popularity of movies like this should be somewhat large.

**snurl**

One thing that made the movie Gettysburg stand out was the number of extras, around 8000 actual living people were there for the scenes involving Pickett's charge. Most of them were there as volunteers, who wanted to do their part to see the book made into a movie. (Killer Angels)
These days CGI would probably be used to re-create something of that scale.
I was there as a "Background Artist" for three weeks. Making that film was a lot of fun.
The National Park Service let us film on some of the actual battlefield for some of the key scenes. At the original Pickett's charge, the Confederates had 120 cannons in line for the initial bombardment. For the recreated scene in the movie, we used the original ground from the tree line to the Emmitsburg road, and there were 120 guns there to re-create the beginning of the assault. The ground does shake when that many guns go off at once. There were around 8000 reenact ors there to do the scene, about half the amount of the actual battle.

**Swastakowey**

Ok starting a movie kickstarter is definitely way above my head. Reading around just blew me away with how much goes into the smallest movies.

**Frazzled**

Have kickstarters ever successfully funded anything?

**Swastakowey**

Frazzled wrote:
Have kickstarters ever successfully funded anything?

Well I have some very cool Sci Fi dwarves from kick starters... So technically yes. Also I think we all remember Kung Fury?