How Realistic is the Sound Design in The D-Day Landing Sequence in Saving Private Ryan?

Written by Ian J. Palmer

© Ian Palmer, 2002

Table of Contents

Introduction

Contextualising Saving Private Ryan

Analysis of Saving Private Ryan

Conclusion

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Bibliography & Resources

introducing private ryanWar films have been produced since the dawn of narrative cinema. Countless films have been made about World War II, during and after the campaign. Certain aesthetics have been integrated into the war film as trends have moved into showing war how it actually is and not the glorified and exciting action adventures of past decades. As time has moved on, more and more people have seen what war is actually like on Newsreels and Television (Vietnam was the first Television War). As far back as 1930 when Lewis Milestone released All Quiet On The Western Front, War has been portrayed as a negative event.

It could be said that every possible way of portraying war has been explored by a director in some way. Madness in Apocalypse Now (1979), Action & Adventure in Where Eagles Dare (1969), the epic scale of war in The Longest Day (1962) and authentism in Saving Private Ryan (1998).1 These last two films are about the invasion of Normandy on the 6th June 1944. One of the bigger sequences of The Longest Day is the Omaha beach landing by American troops at 6:30 am. This battle makes up the 25 minute sequence under examination in this essay from its portrayal in Saving Private Ryan (Henceforth will be referred to as Ryan).

Ryan is not the first time Steven Spielberg has directed a film set around the time of WWII. He has also made films that have treated the war as both fantasy and harsh reality. The Indiana Jones trilogy portrayed event preceding the war with fantastic action and caricature Nazis. Schindler’s List showed that war from the point-of-view of the holocaust and genocide of Jews. Ryan has possibly made more of an impact than his previous films; it has especially enjoyed examination by the academic side of film criticism;

Highly acclaimed in some quarters for its ‘intensely realistic’ depiction of the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach in June 1944, the historical events on which the film is based are remembered both for the numbers who died in the offensive and as the beginning of the invasion that eventually led to the Allies’ victory. This is not the first film to be made about the D-Day landings but it is the first film about the 2nd World War to be made in an era where filmmakers have at their fingertips the technological armoury to create the arsenal of special effects characteristic of blockbusters such as Jurassic Park and Titanic.2

This quotation is interesting in that it mentions the age in which we now live where anything is possible when it comes to making films. An interesting question would be “Could Spielberg have made Ryan if he had not had the use of CGI or digital sound editing?” Some of the sound’s choreography would certainly be horrendously difficult to achieve with the equipment of the time. Abbey Road Studios, the biggest studio in the UK, only had an 8-Track recording system by 1967. The sheer amount of sound (in both volume and intensity) in the D-Day sequence is tremendous. As it happens, Spielberg is lucky to be able to put on film whatever his imagination wants to, the same applies to Gary Rydstrom, the Sound Designer.

By recent standards, Steven Spielberg directed the most visceral portrayal of war to hit the silver screen - Ryan has set the standard and style of war films made since its release. Its influence can be seen in the following films – Gladiator (2000), Band of Brothers (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001) and We Were Soldiers (2002) are among films that share its aesthetic features.3 Sound in particular has been influenced in numerous ways. All the above films are primarily naturalistic in their sound design. Attention has been paid to the timbres of the sounds of battle; gunfire, explosions, ricochets. They also share small moments of ‘Internal Sound’: small scenes where we hear the sounds that a character hears.4 Black Hawk Down contains a hearing loss scene (similar to the one in Ryan) where the sound mimics what Ewen McGregor’s character hears (or does not) when he is too close to an explosion. Band of Brothers contains a small scene in ‘Carentan’ (Episode 3) when Marc Warren’s character, Albert Blithe, is cowering in a foxhole unable to join the battle. His commanding officer orders him to fight. A “hyper-real” scene follows where the mechanics of the gun itself are brought to our attention in crisp detail. We are hearing what the character is focusing on in his moment of transformation from a coward to a soldier. This aim for sound to be as realistic as possible using various forms of reality and point-of-view is the key to the sound design of Ryan. The analysis of Ryan will primarily be concerned with how it is realistic and not realism itself. However, realism does play a part in the idea that film can be realistic or authentic.

1 ‘authentism’ will be defined and explained later in the text

2 Julia Hallam & Margaret Marshment, Realism and Popular Cinema, p. 118

3 Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks were the Executive Producers of Band of Brothers so it is no surprise it was made in the same aesthetic style as Saving Private Ryan

4 This will be discussed in detail later

It will useful to use the word ‘authentism’ for this purpose in this essay. Before we can discuss authentism in sound design, it is necessary to understand how it works in film as a whole. This essay will be primarily concerned with how authentism can be used as a tool to create a certain aesthetic effect, or to affect the audience in some way.

Some of the techniques used in Ryan are derived from the Italian school of Neo-realism. For example, the use of ‘location shooting and natural light, closer to the documentary style than a studio fiction film’. Spielberg had realised that “cinema was no longer an entertainment in the usual sense, but a tool to unite audiences with reality, with truth”.5 This is clearly evident in Ryan, as he has tried to show what it was like to be on Omaha beach on 6th June 1944. Spielberg states on the Region 2 DVD release that what he tried to do was “approximate the look and the sounds and even the smells of what combat is really like”.6 Spielberg has used elements of Neo-Realism to show the audience what it was like to be in the thick of the action. The mise-en-scène is authentic. The beach used is actually in Ireland, but it looks uncannily like Omaha.7 The costumes, weapons, the beach obstacles, the German bunkers are all accurate in their design and appearance. This quest for authenticity also spread to the sound; the sound of the guns being fired are authentic because they are recordings of the same guns used at Omaha back in 1944.

Ryan needed to create its shock value with an authentic sensibility . Most people in the western world have seen countless news reports and documentaries showing what war is actually like. We now have an idea about what war looks, sounds and feels like. Ryan is trying to portray what hell war is really like. This war is not exciting or fun; it is the most horrific place to be. From the film, it is evident that Spielberg knows all this, so Ryan plays out like a documentary in every way but story. “[Janusz] Kaminski [Cinematographer] films it all of it in faded, grainy, newsreel-quality footage, so that we all know that this is the way war really looked.”8 Hallam and Marshment have suggested that Ryan is trying to look like a documentary to reinforce its realistic tendencies. The film needs to be this realistic to enable the audience to be horrified. “To hit you in the face with the sound. It’s difficult in film nowadays to do anything new. People know CGI and computer generated stuff, so with the sound, the louder it is the more involved the audience becomes, it’s like a punch in the face.”9

Before we can really start to discuss authentism, it is necessary to introduce two essential terms for this essay;

‘Authentic Timbre’ - Sounds that are accurate to their diegetic source.‘Authentic Choreography’ - Sound that is designed to be accurate to a situation.

These two terms help differentiate how sound can be realistic in two different ways. The first describes how the timbre of a sound can be realistic. For example, the sounds of the guns in Ryan are authentic because they are recordings of the same guns used in WWII. The second term describes how the sound is choreographed to become authentic. The randomness of the gunfire, for example, is designed to create the chaos of the sequence. Whether it is realistic or not will be discussed in detail in the next section of this essay. For now, we must turn our attention back to a portion of film theory that helps form the notion of authentism.Michel Chion discusses realism in relation to sound in his book Audio-Vision. He discusses ideas about how sound can make film more realistic than it otherwise would without the sound. Alien is a good example of how Chion defines realism in sound when he mentions “acoustic discomfort”.10 Chion uses the idea that a film is more realistic when it is not perfect in its construction. For example, two films are made about a war. The first is shot with 35mm Film and shows the war in crisp detail, full of colour and steady camera-work. The second is shot on VHS, the image is fuzzy, the camera is shaky and erratic. Which one is more realistic to an audience? Chion argues that the latter will be considered more real because it feels as though it is a report straight from the action and not something that is constructed with care and attention to audio-visual quality. It is more realistic because the film is more concerned with the content than with the aesthetic qualities it exhibits. The same can apply for sound. “The impression of realism is often tied to the feeling of discomfort, of an uneven signal, of interference and

5 Cesare Zavattini, Media2 Lecture notes ‘Realism’

6 Production Notes on the Region 2 DVD first release of Ryan

7 ibid.

8 Julia Hallam & Margaret Marshment, Realism and Popular Cinema, p.97

9 Mark Lawrence, interview, 25th Aug 02

10 Michael Chion, Audio-Vision, p. 108

microphone noise etc. These effects can of course be simulated in the studio during PPS and orchestrated. Alien uses effects of acoustic discomfort to heighten its sense of realism”.11 Ryan, however, does not fit into this description when relating to sound: we hear everything in crisp, clear detail. It is for this reason that we will not be discussing realism and sound in Saving Private Ryan.

Chion further explores how an audience understands realism by suggesting that “sound that rings true for the spectator and sound that is true are two very different things”.12 Here, it is suggested that sound has to be believed by an audience to be realistic even if it is not. This notion will be explored in detail later in this essay. Verisimilitude is the supreme element in creating realistic sound design.

11 Ibid.

12 Michael Chion, Audio-Vision, p. 107

contextualising private ryanThis section of the Dissertation is intended to place Saving Private Ryan in context with other World War II films. War as a film genre is very broad in its types of films set in war. This discussion will be focusing on war films that feature men in battle and any reference to war films should be thought of in this way. These films share a variety of sound trademarks: gunfire and explosions being the primary ones.

War films traditionally feature battle sequences of various sizes. Over the decades, these sequences have become more and more visceral in their portrayal of battle. Visually, we have been witness to ever more realistic injuries to the flesh. Martin Amis states that “in general, the escalation of violence in war films is not much questioned. Even the squeamish accept that a mechanised heartlessness forms the natural background…’what did you expect? This is WAR’”13 This escalation has also affected sound. Audibly, we have been witness to more and more realistic renditions of bullets tearing flesh apart.

Sound in war films is fairly straightforward. It is comprised mainly of gunfire, explosions, ricochets, bullet impacts and shouting men. In the earlier years of film, sound effects libraries were devised to hold a catalogue of sounds engineers could quickly draw upon. The sounds of gunfire and ricochets have been re-used and recycled for decades in countless films. The same ricochet heard in hundreds of westerns can also be heard in numerous war films. Even by 1977, when Richard Attenborough released A Bridge Too Far, these stock sound effects are still present.

Fifteen years earlier, The Longest Day was the most ambitious film ever made. Darryl Zanuck (Producer/Director) was a veteran of WWII, a Signal Corp Colonel serving with Lord Mountbatten. Zanuck, like Spielberg, wanted his film to be authentic to the actual events of the day. However, his advantage over Spielberg is that he had seen action in war. The primary difference between sound in Ryan and The Longest Day is one of the eras that they were made in. During the 1960s, sound (at Twentieth Century Fox Studios) was produced on a Stereo magnetic tape system.14 At the time, stereo magnetic tape was being hailed for its greater sense of realism in the fidelity of its reproduction compared to the monaural optical system it replaced. The signal-to-noise ratio was greatly reduced.15 This lead the same sounds used for gunfire and ricochets being heard in greater fidelity. Being made in the 1990s, Ryan’s soundtrack benefited from being created and then reproduced digitally. This system should provide a signal-to-noise ratio of virtually nothing, only a slight amplifier hum through the speakers in the cinema would be noticeable. A listener will therefore only notice the soundtrack itself and no other noise in the auditorium (apart from the noise people make while watching a film).

Modern films also benefit from having Directors who are much more interested in what sound can do for their stories. The 1970s saw a new wave of directors who utilised sound to help tell their stories. Coppolla (Apocalypse Now, 1979), Scorsese (Raging Bull, 1980), Lucas (THX 1138, 1971) and Spielberg (Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, 1977) were among a group of filmmakers who began to use sound as it presents itself today. Also during the 1970s there was an increasing quest to produce films that were more realistic in their design, sound included. To this end, sound has become a tool to produce a realistic world in which to tell a story, be it even a fantasy film. Even the world created in The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring (2001) sounds like ours.

The other major difference between The Longest Day and Ryan is how the timbres and choreography of the sound are produced. The sounds of the gunfire in The Longest Day are clearly taken from a sound effects library. The same bullet ricochet is heard repeatedly; it is the cliché ricochet heard in a Western when bullets bounce off brick, wood and even sand. This sound effect is most prominently heard in the scene where the 116th Infantry of the 29th Division ascend and capture the Point du Hoc. Overall, The Longest Day does not appear to be concerned with sound. The sound is functional and needs to be there, if it were not present, it would be very disrupting for an audience as this is not silent film. Furthermore, there is no attempt to call attention to the sound. The only time it is really noticed is when it is viewed in the wake of modern styles of filmmaking. Sound is minimal in its use in the Omaha beach landing. We are not subjected to the same aural impact as Ryan.

A Bridge Too Far is a good chronological mid-point for comparison between The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan. It was produced during the beginning of modern sound design in the 1970s. Unlike its contemporaries, the sound is generally uninteresting. When noted that Apocalypse Now was only

13 Martin Amis, Screen Violence, p.15

14 As some cinemas were still only using mono playback systems, a mono mix was produced alongside the stereo mix.

15 All information about mid-century audio reproduction techniques from John Belton’s article, Sound Theory Sound Practice, p.158-167

released two years later, the potential for sound in A Bridge Too Far is almost completely ignored. We hear the same stock sound effects used for the gunfire, explosions and ricochets. Ben Burtt talks about stock sound effects and sound effect libraries;

In 1936, Warner Brothers did the film Charge of the Light Brigade, and they recorded a lot of exterior gunshots since it was a big battle movie. They recorded a lot of bullet ricochets for that film which really became their standard material for the next thirty years. You still hear them. Two or three of them are so familiar to the public because they’ve been used in endless cartoons.16

Even if other studios had made the same libraries, the same recordings of more obscure sounds have been recycled for decades. It has not been until the last few years that sound designers and directors have become more aware of what they can do with sound. This includes thinking about the timbres of sound effects, especially gunfire. It is now apparent that directors and sound designers have wanted either to create more realistic gunfire sound effects, or to create a certain timbre to a gunshot.

Another issue is the fact that the recording quality of sounds made in the 1930s will not be very good compared to sound today. As sound recording and cinema audio reproduction have improved, the fidelity of the sound effects used in film will need to improve alongside. The sound in A Bridge Too Far is far superior in quality than The Longest Day. Even though what appears to be the same sounds used, they are more alive to the ear. Perhaps they have been equalised or re-mastered for superior sound quality.

This improvement in sound quality, that makes the soundtrack brighter, can have an aesthetic effect on the sound design. The entire universe created by Attenborough is more ‘alive’ than Zanuck’s. More attention has been paid to atmos tracks. For example, a brief scene in a house occurs and we hear bombs exploding in the distance from within the house. This brings the universe of the film to life, it makes it much more believable, therefore, more realistic.

A Bridge Too Far is much more concerned with showing the gritty brutality of war than The Longest Day. We are treated to more visceral battle sequences. We see and hear bullets impact with flesh in a more realistic manner. The sound in one of the 1st Airbourne’s Arnhem battle sequences reflects the brutality in allowing us to hear more of the smaller details (such as the aforementioned bullet impacts) of combat. This brings our contextualisation to an end and to Saving Private Ryan, where the smaller, more visceral details of the sounds of battle are explored in far greater detail than heard in film before.

16 Ben Burtt, Sound-On-Film, p. 141

analysing private ryan“Tales abounded of WWII veterans breaking down as the sheer realism and authenticity brought awful memories flooding back.”17

Saving Private Ryan made an enormous impact on audiences around the globe. It shocked and terrified us, showing war in a gory, blood-soaked hell of a reality. This section of the essay aims to discover how the sound is designed to portray war in a realistic fashion. As previously mentioned, this essay is concerned with realistic sound design and not realism sound design.

The biggest problem with discussing realistic sound in a war film is one of authenticity. Gary Rydstrom (Sound Designer) and Richard Hymns (Supervising Sound Editor) have never seen combat, so how do they know what war sounds like? Rydstrom and Hymns have done some research and have listened to recordings made during the war. In a BBC Radio 4 documentary on film sound, Hymns states that;

We’d listen to original WW2 recordings of a bombardment on a French village that had these really disturbing amount of explosions. Spaced barely apart at all and they just didn’t stop. The recording we had was two minutes long and obviously it was turned on after the bombardment started and the recorder was turned off long before it was finished. It was this two minutes of non-stop explosions, there was none of this ‘movie bombardments’ where it’s like “nnnnneeeeeeoooooorrrrrrr boom”. This was like boom…it just goes on and on. My first clue was that background layer, the very furthest background layer would need to be almost non-stop, constant bombardment. It was gonna be a lot of work to make it varied and interesting.18

So, Hymns and Rydstrom have heard what war can sound like from the time period of the film. Listening to recordings made of combat is very useful to create the correct sound design for a battle sequence. This explains why the background battle atmos track is so intense and relentless, the inspiration garnered from actual recordings of war. It is also evident that they have avoided another sound cliché in the battle atmos; Hymns says they did not use the “‘movie bombardments’ where it’s like “nnnnneeeeeeoooooorrrrrrr boom”.19 This was like boom.” As every battle will have a different sound to it, unless one was present at Omaha in 1944 it is very difficult to say that the choreography is authentic. We can only conclude here that it is plausible based on Hymn’s research.

Listening to recordings of battle, made at the same time as the film is set, gives further information as to what the timbres of the sounds are like. A problem with Hymns & Rydstrom’s research is that a recording made during the 1940s will not be of high fidelity compared to today’s standards. This low quality recording can therefore go against their aim of producing sounds of authentic timbre. To aid in their search for authenticity, they have sought out the weaponry, and even the same bullets, as used in WWII to record and use in the soundtrack. Hymns discusses how they managed to recorded authentic weapon sounds: “We found somebody that not only had an alarming amount of German & American World War II equipment in working condition, but also the ammunition to go with it.”20 So, it can be easily concluded that the timbres of the sound in the film are completely authentic. There is no doubt that after listening to Hymns talk about the lengths to which they have gone in their search for original weaponry, that the sound of an M1 Garand rifle being fired in the film is what it would have sounded like if one had been at Omaha in 1944 to hear first hand.

It is important to note that the sounds of the guns are very different from what one would expect them to sound like based on previous sound design. In Hollywood, guns go ‘Bang’ or ‘Boom’. A small shotgun will sound like a huge cannon for example - This is the law of enlarged firearm calibre.21 Directors have

17 Empire - The Director’s Edition; Steven Spielberg, p. 112Please Note: To enable me to write a paper on authentism and sound in war films without having seen war myself, I located and interviewed three World War II veterans. Appendix A is a copy of a graph produced to represent the dynamics of the D-Day sequence. Appendix C is an edited (cutting out the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’) transcript of the three interviews. I will refer to the three men’s comments where relevant. It needs to be stated that the three interviewees are British, they were not at Omaha so do not know exactly what it was really like. However, all three of them have seen battle. Out of the three interviewees, Cecil was the only one who actually saw action on D-Day and that was on the much quieter section of coastline; Sword Beach. Biographical details of what the men did during the war are contained in Appendix C.

18 Dancing Shadows, BBC Radio 4 documentary on film sound. Part 2 - ‘Sound and Fury’

19 Dancing Shadows, BBC Radio 4 documentary on film sound. Part 2 - ‘Sound and Fury’

20 Ibid

21 The first gun fired in Terminator 2 is a shotgun. From an interview on the Region 2 DVD release, Rydstrom demonstrates that the sound of the gun was comprised of 2 cannons (amongst other sounds).

long been interested in using the sound of gunfire for dramatic impact by enlarging the sound it produces. Norval Crutcher (Sound Editor) refers to his experience on Running Scared (1986) “In the shootout, there was an automatic gun the director Peter Hyams was very particular about. If we really just played the sound the gun made it wouldn’t be as dramatic; you want it louder. Hymns wanted it to sound like a bazooka…it’s got to have character to it.”22 Rydstrom has ignored this general rule to create the realistic gunfire sounds. In Ryan, the gunfire sounds could have more impact on the audience because they are unusual; it is not what they expect a gun to sound like.

Now we have determined that the timbre of the gunfire is absolutely authentic, while the choreography is very close to being authentic. Other factors such as narrative and the film’s intentions have also had a say in how the sound is arranged. Narrative and realistic sound design shall be discussed next.

In many instances, the sound behaves in a completely unrealistic manner, or does it? For example, towards the end of the sequence, Pvt. Mellish (Adam Goldberg) breaks down in tears after the main portion of the fighting is over. The sound concentrates on his weeping while most of the sounds of battle have all but disappeared. A gentle atmos of distance gunfire is still heard, but the audience’s attention has been focused on the tender moment of a man crying. In this short scene, the audience is expected to really feel the emotion of how horrendous it is to experience war. A soldier crying because he has survived (physically if not mentally) such terror is the last emotional signifier in the sequence. The sound works to increase the drama and therefore the audience’s response. On the other hand, the battle is drawing to a close, so the intensity and volume will have naturally decreased by this point in the film. Another possible explanation is that the human ear filters out background noise automatically after being exposed to it for a while. Has Rydstrom recreated this effect? The sound is actually ambiguous as to its state. On one side it is drawing our attention to a dramatic point, on the other it is following the narrative and behaving in much the same way as hearing normally works. It could also be said that Rydstrom has used this automatic effect of our hearing as a simple technique to produce focus.

This is a point in the film where the sound is working directly for the narrative. The film is about how ordinary men cope with being soldiers. They have not chosen a career in the Army, but have either chosen to fight for their own freedom or have been drafted against their will. They are not men who are eager to see combat and kill, but people who are doing what they must in such a dangerous time for the world. Mellish is overwhelmed by the nightmare he has just survived. We never really know whether he is crying because he is glad to be alive or whether he has been irrevocably scarred for the rest of his life. We need to hear his crying clearly to understand one of the important messages contained within the film.

This small (but very important) scene is also a very good example of how the sound turns the camera into a person observing the battle. Throughout the sequence we are treated to numerous forms of perspective sound. Ryan uses three different perspectives during the D-Day sequence. The 3rd Person is used for the vast majority of the soundtrack. The audience is participating in the action via the point-of-view of the camera. We hear in the correct standpoint according to location of the camera in relation to the action. What is seen in the distance is matched by the appropriate perspective in sound. The other two types of perspective sound are interesting in that they are the same but also slightly different. This refers to ‘Internal Sound’.

Chion defines ’Internal Sound’ as “diegetic sound that corresponds to the physical and/or mental interior of a character”.23 For the purposes of this essay we need to expand on this definition because it is too broad a description. What a person hears is a subjective experience. What one actually hears will change depending on the situation they are in. For example, a person will focus on something, e.g. a rock concert, a person will not be aware of the sound the crowd is making because they are concentrating on the music. Shock is another example of how hearing can change depending on situation. Speaking from personal experience, when a person has suffered from shock they do not remember hearing anything. For that person, the world shuts down and becomes distant. In film, sound can either be removed entirely or can appear distant to portray this effect. I would like to call this type of sound ‘Subjective Internal Sound’. This is the effect Rydstrom has produced Ryan. He discusses this in David Sonnenschein’s book, Sound Design;

22 Norval Crutcher, Sound-On-Film, p. 58

23 Michel Chion, Audio-Vision, p. 222

When you are in intense experiences, you have this sense of closing down, almost more aware of your own sounds than the sounds around you. The blood in your ears is going so fast you’re more self-aware than outside aware. Those moments are simple, but work remarkably well to help the audience identify with the character even more, because they feel like they’ve been in his head for a short period of time.24

Earlier in the film we get to hear what Miller is subjectively hearing, what he is experiencing and perceiving. When Miller finally makes it to the beach from the sea his mind shuts down in shock. We hear the sound of wind - the sound is not clean wind, it has been processed and sounds more like wind in a very large tunnel. The shot of Miller’s face cuts to a man cowering behind a beach obstacle. We now start to gradually hear a bit more from inside Miller’s mind. Very strange sounding bullet impacts are heard in synchronisation with the image of those small detonations of flesh. Then we see three men go up in flames when a flame-thrower explodes. Again, the sound is strange, it has a distant quality. Rydstrom has avoided a cliché here. The cliché being huge amounts of large sounding reverb to create the impression of a sound being distant. He has created the same effect by muffling the sound and letting us hear it clean, without any reverb at all. The background wind is what creates the spaciousness to the overall sound.

The other form of ‘Internal Sound’ is ‘Actual Internal Sound’. We hear sound from a character’s perspective but not what they are hearing in their mind. This is similar to a Point-Of-View shot in Cinematography. It shows the audience what the character is seeing from that standpoint, but not what they are seeing in their mind. A little later in the sequence, Miller orders his men to move off the beach toward the German fortifications. There is a shot where the camera shows what Miller is seeing as he runs towards the shingle. We hear what he is doing, but is it what he is hearing? We hear the sound of his footsteps and the rustle of his clothes, the rattle of his equipment, his heavy breathing as he is excerpting himself. The ever-present battle atmos is still heard. This is where the ideas about ‘Internal Sound’ become confused. We are not hearing what Miller is himself hearing, but what he is doing from his standpoint, it is ‘Actual Internal Sound’.

Point-of-view extends to the sound design as a general entity. Hymns says,

[It’s] all about being on the receiving end. There isn’t very many shots of machine guns being fired by the Germans, just enough to let you know where they are. The rest is all on the beach where the bullets are hitting sand, they’re hitting those metal things they had on the beach, or people, bodies or equipment or the sides of the boat or in the water or under water… Most war films are of the opposite way round. Not shot from the receiving end.25

The sequence is completely told from the point-of-view of the assaulting Americans, both visually and through the sound. We only ever see a small section of what was in reality a huge battle containing thousands of men spread over miles of beach. Apart from a couple of shots of the beach from up in the German gun towers, the story is told entirely from the attacking American soldiers. The vast majority of the battle atmos is comprised of the sounds of bullets impacting on metal, wood and flesh instead of the guns being fired that we would normally expect to hear. “When a rifle is fired at you, never hear the shot fired. All you hear is the bullet [whooshing past]”26 The ‘whooshes’ Gerald Jerram mentions make up a large quantity of the sounds heard in the battle atmos.

The general atmos of the sequence (while the action is on the beach) is comprised of gunfire, ricochets, explosions and screaming. The atmos is relentless in its assault on the audience. It really helps to draw an audience into a film because after the first assault (when the landing craft lowers its ramp) we start to block it out. We subconsciously still know it is loud, but we begin to focus in on small details. It aids the camera work which, for the most part, emulates a documentary.

Another way the sound has worked in direct relation to narrative is when film stretches and compresses time. The actual Omaha assault took about twelve hours for the Americans to start winning the battle. Ryan plays itself out in what appears to be real-time. In this respect it is completely unrealistic. The sound in general is extremely intense. For example, once the landing craft lowers its ramp, the sound hits the audience and does not relent until the soldiers have made it to the top of the cliffs. Spielberg and Rydstrom have decided to heavily compress the time of the sequence. This could be for a number of reasons. The film needs to have impact to put across its main points – the film would lose its impact if the sequence was the same length of the actual assault. Geoff Slater agrees;

24 David Sonnenschein, Sound Design, p. 178

25 Dancing Shadows, BBC Radio 4 documentary on film sound. Part 2 - ‘Sound and Fury’

26 Gerald Jerram, interview, 18th Aug 02

I think it was too concentrated. There was too many people too close together with a lot of rifle fire…it’s not like that actually. You’re usually more spread out. They were bunched together in great lumps of humanity. From that point of view I didn’t think it was very realistic from what I’ve seen in battles.”

This macrocosmic idea about the compression and expansion of time extends to the smaller elements of the sound design. In two instances we see and hear what Capt. Miller sees and hears. The first example is when we experience what Miller is subjectively seeing and hearing. The film does not appear to be in slow motion, but considering the intense feeling of the rest of the sequence; this scene is very relaxed. Amid all the gunfire and explosions, Miller has time to look around and see what is happening. As previously stated, the sound is distant, it is what Miller is experiencing and not what he is hearing. The tranquillity in the sound represents time being stretched out in Miller’s mind as he looks around him. The scene probably only takes a few seconds in reality, but in Miller’s head it appears much longer.

Dialogue is another way that Rydstrom and Spielberg have allowed the audience to experience D-Day through the eyes/ears of the American troops. It is noticeable that to keep the film realistic we only hear German-speaking characters speak in German. The major difference in Ryan is that we never understand what they say because there are no subtitles for audiences who do not understand the language. The fact that we have no idea what the Germans are saying is an important one throughout the film. In the D-Day sequence it increases the sense of showing the battle from the point of view of the attacking Americans, mentioned earlier. The American soldiers do not understand what they are saying, therefore we do not either. In this part of the film what they are saying is not very important, we can almost guess from their actions. Toward the end, two German soldiers approach two American soldiers with their arms in the air. The way the are talking indicates they are pleading not to be shot. The two American soldiers mock that they cannot understand them and shoot them in cold blood. After a further joke about the American’s not understanding, we then cut back to Miller who has a look of anguish and upset on his face. He does not approve of what he has just witnessed: murder.

The lack of understanding in the D-Day sequence enables Spielberg to show that we are not much better than the Nazi’s in our actions in battle. It is also to show the German soldiers as being misunderstood. Just like the Americans, not all of them would have been willing to kill another man. This effect is brought to bear in its full effect in the final battle sequence when Mellish is slowly stabbed by a German soldier. Whilst killing Mellish he speaks tenderly to him. We never get to understand what he is saying.

Most American viewers seem to think the German’s words are another kind of torture for Mellish, threatening him or cursing him, because the harsh guttural sounds of the language strike the ear as dreadful, even evil. This is merely a problem of perception, because what the German is saying Mellish is actually quite different: ‘Lass uns es beenden…’ (Let’s just end it all).27

This misunderstanding of the German’s intentions is important to show us how men do not all necessarily want to be soldiers in such times. The German does not want to kill Mellish, but he has to. Therefore he tries to do it in the most humane way possible; he comforts Mellish with words as he kills him.

The other noticeable feature about the dialogue is that we only hear shouting. As mentioned before, the battle atmos is relentless in its volume throughout the sequence. The changes in volume will change depending on the battle. There will be loud and quieter moments. This is true of Ryan, see Appendix B for a graphic representation of the relative volumes throughout the sequence. The volume of the shouting matches the relative volume of the sequence. Both Cecil Newton and Gerald Jerram disagree that there would be that much shouting. Cecil: “I didn’t hear all that shouting, it wouldn’t have been like that.”28 Gerald: “When I was in action we never did as much shouting as that. No I can’t say it was as bad as that.”29 The shouting is a result of Rodat’s script and Spielberg’s direction. We need to have shouting because it creates tension in the film. People shout to make themselves heard for a reason, in this case a very important one; men’s lives counted on being able to hear orders.

A final way Spielberg has used sound to create authentism is through the use of music. What makes the sequence even more realistic is that we hear no music at all (until the final shot). The absence of music also adds a subconscious emotion in the audience. David Sonnenschein says that

27 Karen Jaehne, Film Quarterly, Vol. 53, 1999

28 Cecil Newton, interview, 17th Aug 02

29 Gerald Jerram, interview, 18th Aug 02

Psychologically, humans like to make sounds and surround themselves with them to nourish the concept of perpetual life, so that silence can represent aspects of negative attitudes such as oppression or solemnity. Silence can remind people that they are alone, that they have been rejected, or that there is no hope. The absence of sound can evoke the fear of the absence of life.30

This quote can explain why music has not been used. It creates an empty feeling in the D-Day sequence that represents silence, which implies emptiness and death. Silence also relates back to when we experience what Capt. Miller experiences; the sound is minimal in its use.There are many smaller reasons as to why music has been omitted from the sequence; mixing for example. Due to the sheer amount of sound in the sequence, there is little or no room to include music in the sequence. Also, stylistically music would not fit the sequence. As previously quoted, the cinematographer has imagined the film as a documentary of the action. Because Spielberg is trying to show the audience an authentic record of the events on 6th June 1944, music would detract from the film’s objectivity. Music creates an emotional springboard for the audience. It provides on a plate what emotion the audience should being feeling.31 In Ryan, this would be inappropriate. The audience should be so immersed in the film emotionally, and music would only distance the audience. The impact of the film is so powerful with its use of sound and image that it needs no music to create any form of shock or horror the audience should be feeling.

When we do finally hear music, it accompanies an overhead tracking shot of hundreds of men dead on the sand. The music is patriotically American sounding, it is also saying what heroes the dead men are and how brave they have been sacrificing their lives. It creates a moment of reflection on the previous events for the audience. It calms us down and gives us a way of digesting the horror we have just witnessed. Cecil Newton talks about when he saw Sword beach after the actual assault, “when I saw the bodies in the sea, of course I was looking at it with sadness, I was divorced from it. The music [comes] out [in Ryan] to give that sadness. The music was trying to bring out the romance of it and all that business.”32

30 David Sonnenschein, Sound Design, p. 125

31 Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, p. 73

32 Cecil Newton, interview, 17th Aug 05

Concluding private ryan“Fairly true to life but depicted, in a way, over the top” (Gerald Jerram)

“I find it so theatrical, I find it embarrassing.” (Cecil Newton)

“Remember the Errol Flynn movies…swashbuckling. It was brought up to date, gorey and all the rest of it. I thought it was over the top.” (Geoff Slater)

From the quotes above it appears that the people who have seen action do not think Ryan is that realistic. They clearly say the opposite of the quote at the beginning of the film’s analysis; “Tales abounded of World War II veterans breaking down as the sheer realism and authenticity brought awful memories flooding back.”33

Evidently, veterans are in disagreement about the films authenticity. A problem we have to think about now is one of memory. Memory is not a reliable source of information, especially as one ages. It is commonly known that the brain blocks out bad memories as a mechanism to allow a person to function without too much mental trauma. On the other hand, one would not forget being in such an event as Omaha beach on D-Day. Every person who fought in WWII will have different memories based on their experiences, some will not have faced such horror as the American soldiers did on Omaha. Cecil says that “you wouldn’t experience all that activity, it was very laid back.”34 Comparing his experiences to Ryan he says that “Troops used to go forward and fall down [dead], it might have been like that…it was nothing like that on our beach.”35 Cecil landed on Sword beach where the Germans did not put up much of a fight. All the other beaches were easily captured apart from Omaha, therefore there would have been less fighting involved.

If the film has blown the events up out of proportion to the actual assault, it does not matter. Spielberg wanted to show the public how horrific war can be. To do this the film needed to make an impact on the audience. McCallion states that;

Some might argue that the function of films [is] to allow you to escape from reality; personally I felt then, and do now, that the cinema must provoke people and make them think. You can’t do that if films are so sanitised they lose the ability to shock.36

The point to be garnered from this essay is that even though some aspects of the film are not completely authentic, it does not matter. Most of the audience will never have seen combat, certainly not back in WWII. What is important is that the audience believes what they are witnessing is authentic. They will already know from various forms of publicity that the film is trying to be authentic. From the outset they will believe that what they are seeing and hearing is authentic, especially after all the points made in this essay have been considered.

Now we have drawn our conclusions about the sound in Ryan we can pursue further avenues of investigation based on the ideas contained in this essay. Going back to the notion of authentism, it would be useful to analyse in full the other aspects of Ryan. The acting, mise-en-scene, cinematography and editing could all be examined with regards to how they create or reinforce authentism in film.

From here, the ideas about how sound can create or reinforce authentism should be explored further with other genres of films. Science-Fiction or Fantasy films would be a very interesting area of discussion in this context. As they are films normally set in a different reality to our own (the future – Blade Runner - an alternative reality – The Matrix - or dimension – Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring) they are an area of film that is greatly in need of analysis with regards to authentism. Work on films such as Alien has already been made, but not really with a view to finding out if it they are authentic, only realism or plausibility have been looked at.

Another area of research based on the ideas presented here would be how Television is trying to become more film like. A detailed analysis and comparison between Ryan and Band Of Brothers would be useful because of the common factors they share, such as Spielberg and the technical crew used in both projects. They have both been made in the same style, even down to the way in which the production was

33 Empire - The Director’s Collection; Steven Spielberg, p. 112

34 Cecil Newton, interview, 17th Aug 05

35 Cecil Newton, interview, 17th Aug 05

36 Harry McCallion, Screen Violence, p. 208

managed. Both productions were designed to create an authentic performance from the actors by re-creating the atmosphere of war on the set. Mark Lawrence (actor, Band Of Brothers) says that he “was getting blown up, getting shot at a few times. It is frightening, like you said the noise really takes over and your adrenaline rushes and you feel part of it for a moment”37

Authentism and games is another area that should be discussed in detail. As mentioned after my Bibliography, I have used two games as research for this essay. Medal Of Honour: Frontline is based on and after the Omaha beach landings. The game begins (after a short introductory animation) with the player just getting out of the sea and onto the beach in the same way as we see Capt Miller’s first steps on the beach. The player is thrust into the middle of the battle, having to run and duck to avoid being killed by the MG34’s in the German bunkers. John Broomhall (head of audio, Infogrames: games developer/publisher) said in a recent masterclass that the sound design in the game was based on Ryan.38 The recordings made of the guns as mentioned by Hymns were utilised here to create an authentic gaming experience. Again, this game has a close link with Ryan and its makers. Further investigation into how authentism works in other types of games should be explored. Using Frontline as a benchmark, other FPS (First Person Shooter) games should be analysed first as a means of branching out into this area of study as a logical path of investigation.39

37 Mark Lawrence, interview, 25th Aug 02

38 Masterclass took place in Bournemouth University, 22nd May 02

39 Half-Life re-creates the acoustics’ reverb depending on the room size, material etc.

Appendix AINTERVIEW

� What I’m doing.� What I need this interview for.

� Name?� What you did in the war?� When were you in service?� Where were you stationed?

� What do you remember about what war or battle sounds like?� Have you seen Saving Private Ryan or any other war film?

PLAY CLIP

� What are your first thoughts and reactions to the clip?� How realistic is it compared to your own experiences?� Were there any mistakes or inaccuracies?

GUNFIRE� Do the guns in the film sound the same as those from that era? (The “higher calibre law of film sfx”)� More emphasis is applied to the ricochets than to the actual gun firing. Is this what you would hear

in such a situation (ignoring the fact that sometimes you will be too far away to hear the guns clearly).

� Does the gunfire in general create the same effect as what war is really like?� Do questions 1 & 3 but with relevance to EXPLOSIONS.

FOCUS� We hear what Tom Hanks hears. In such a situation does your mind shut down or off? What actually

happens when this occurs?

MISCELLANEOUS� Does the sound accurately portray the chaos and the effect of what being in this situation is like?� The sound in the clip is crisp and clear, is this what war is really like?� In the film the sound of men crying, screaming and shouting is relentless, is this true to real life?� On your accompanying piece of A4 is a graph depicting Time against the relative volume of the

sound throughout the clip. It has distinct peaks and troughs, paralleling the action of the story, does this reflect reality?

� Are there any sounds that you remember that were not in the clip?

Appendix B

Appendix CInterview with Cecil Newton10:00 am, 17th August 2002

Biographical Details - Set sail for France 4th June, landed 5 minutes before the main assault. Landed on Sword Beach, King/Green Section. 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards. Was the “Operator” of a Sherman Tank.

Commentary while watching clip.“You wouldn’t see anyone shake like that.”“That is ridiculous, no-one shouted” – Shouting “30s away” from shore”“I find it so theatrical, I find it embarrassing.”“It’s very good that it’s black and white, very little colour.”

What are your first thoughts and reactions?“I didn’t hear all that shouting, it wouldn’t have been like that…you wouldn’t experience all that activity, it was very laid back. Troops used to go forward and fall down, it might have been like that….it was nothing like that on our beach.”

“Didn’t hear any of that shouting, the orders were given by the NCO’s…everyone was strung out, in rows, advancing.”

Any mistakes, or anything missing?“No there weren’t any mistakes really”“Never saw the blood in the sea.”“There wasn’t the amount of activity on our beach, like that one [Omaha]”

Do the guns/explosions sound realistic?“Difficult, again we were in a tank. When we were out of the tank, we’d hear the German Smeizers (spelling) going, yes can’t fault it in a way. About what was the noise of a rifle going off, and shells, reasonable I suppose.”

“Too much of that flames, and too much earth being thrown about…you didn’t see much of that going on.”

”You wouldn’t have been so close, if you were someone might say ‘Oh my God’, Sgt would say ‘come here’ or something like that. There wasn’t that intensity…all that noise and kafuffle.”

If a bit OTT it’s the right effect of being there?“Yes, well you couldn’t do anything else, that’s the trouble. You’ve got to put a hell of a lot of theatre to make it, it’s entertainment. If you look at a documentary, of action…totally different from that film. You wont see that in a documentary. People want to be entertained, horror stuck really. Human being loves to be frightened, anything gory with guts hanging out, absolutely gorgeous. Spielberg knows that, he put the theatre on to do it. That’s why I don’t watch it… I can’t relate to that film to what really happened as far as my experiences go.

“I think the majority of men who’ve seen action would not find it authentic in a way, find it very strange really. If you saw someone with there guts hanging out, you’d see an MO to look after them. I had to attend to someone shot in the neck, I didn’t look too closely I just bandaged him up quick. It was quietly done…[makes sound of bullet flying through the air] ‘I’ve been shot’ and he was shot. I bandaged him up, without any shouting or yelling, no fuss.”

When we hear/see Tom Hank’s character shut down in shock, is this realistic?“You’d be too concentrated in what you’re doing, but of course he had to put that in to try and bring the fact of that atmosphere.”

What happened when you were shot?“I stood on top of the tank, at the time I though how am I going to get out of this? I was thinking at the time, cause my leg was waving about, of holding a rabbit by its ears. Then I fell off the tank by the track. Now I’ve got to get to the house, then I saw the two blokes rush out, then a grenade go down. They got wounded, I crawled into the house. I lay on the bed, coughing up blood, one of them went and got morphine. I got a parachute scarf and bandaged my leg up.”

The sound is crisp & clear.“When I was out of the tank, there would have been no shouting as such. You’d have heard the shells going off. You’d have heard the German guns going off. It’s alien to me, it’s may have been authentic for the situation, we were usually spread out.”

Showed Cecil graph“Yes, that line would be more of straight line. Very difficult I’m afraid to explain it all, you have to be there.”

General Chatter“When I saw the bodies in the sea , of course I was looking at with sadness, I was divorced from it. The music came out to give that sadness. The music was trying to bring out the romance of and all that business. That’s the word for it, romance.

“It’s theatre, entertainment”

Interview with Gerald Jerram6:00 p.m., 18h August 2002

Biographical Information - Landed in Normandy D-Day +5. Juno beach. Radio Operator (Signaller) in the Infantry. 23rd MGTC at Chester.

What does war/battle sounds like?“It’s noisy. You get a feeling you’re not actually attacking a person, you’re attacking a machine.”“had quiet a few close calls myself.”

Commentary while playing clip.“That’s what those guns sounded like. Have a small blip, then [gun sound]”“See what I meant about the soundtrack, it’s good innit”

What are your 1st thoughts/reactions to the clip?“I thought it was over done and noisy…shouting…unnecessary. Far fetched is the word.”

How realistic is compared to your own experiences?Well, it was a bit too far fetched. We had plenty of space to move.

Any mistakes/inaccuracies?No

More emphasis on ricochets?When a rifle is fired at you, you never the shot fired. All you hear is the bullet {makes whooshing noise].

Were the explosions realistic?“Well they have to make the explosion real, an explosion’s an explosion.”

Tom Hank’s shock?“They’ve made the sound pretty realistic, you can loose concentration pretty easily in that situation. Accurate I’d say.”

Shouting, screaming & shouting, relentless, is this realistic?“When I was in action we never as much shouting as there. No I can’t say it was as bad as that.”

Graph“From there would be very quiet, normal conversation. Once on the beach would be a lot louder.”

General Chatter“Fairly true to life, but depicted in a way, over the top.”

Geoff Slater Interview3:00 p.m., 25th August 2002

Biographical Information - Paratrooper in D-Day. Mission: to attack the Mervil gun battery. 6th Airborne Division. 660 battalion. 40 men were either wounded or died in the attack.

1st thoughts?“Over the top. I know they had a very rough ride at Omaha. I think it was too concentrated. There was too many people too close together with a lot of rifle fire…it’s not like that actually. You’re usually more spread out. They were bunched together in great lumps of humanity. From that point of view I didn’t think it was very realistic from what I’ve seen in battles.”

“They spread a load of blood and gore over the thing which is partly true but I thought it was over the top for the film’s sake.”

“On a screen you get a concentrated noise. When you’re out in the open it isn’t quite as concentrated. Yes there’s noise, it’s from shells and mortars. Heavy weapons rather than machine guns.”“Remember the Errol Flynn movies…swashbuckling. It was brought up to date, gorey and all the rest of it. I though it was over the top.”

Gunfire, more attention paid to ricochets.“Yes that was true. You do get some ricochets in a battle. Most of those bullets were hitting sand, you don’t get any ricochets off sand.”

Was the sound of guns themselves authentic?“For that sort of weaponry, yes. A sharp crack. There seemed to be a lot of automatic fire, we had a lot of single shot fire from rifles. There seemed to be a lack of heavy artillery fire which the ships off shore would have fired.”

Graph, peaks and troughs“Yes that does happen. In the battle I was in, it started off with a crescendo, our guns firing over the top of us onto the German positions. Then it was deadly quiet. Then when we into attack I thought we’re all gonna get slaughtered in a minute. Then it started to open up again, or machine guns opened up. So you do get lulls and bursts all the way through.”

Chaos, so much noise.“That is true. That basically is right, it is chaos. I can remember just before the battle, our Brigadier, who’d been in North Africa, we’d been practising for weeks for our particular task. He said “Gentlemen, you’ve done all this work, on the day chaos will reign. It undoubtedly will and you wont know what’s happening.” It went completely wrong, it always does. No-one knows where A or B is, C doesn’t turn up.”

Music“You wouldn’t put music to that. [The director tried to put across the horrificness of war] Well, he achieved that. Even if it was over the top, he still achieve that. I don’t know what music you could possibly put over the top. They used a lot of music in The Longest Day but you didn’t get that cacophony of gunfire sounds, so the music was able to be played.”

“I think [Rydstrom] did a lot with his imagination. It works though. What he was trying to display, he did, that I think it was way over the top, he still portrayed it.”

Miller’s POV“That usually comes way afterwards, not at the time. When you’re actually in an attack, you, at least to my experience, don’t suffer that sort of shock. You’re just so gemmed up, well your frightened. Your forcing yourself to do things you normally wouldn’t want to do. The reaction comes afterwards, when it’s over.”

BibliographySound Design

Altman, Rick, Sound Theory Sound Practice (Routledge, London: 1992)Chion, Michel, Audio-Vision (Columbia University Press, New York: 1990)LoBrutto, Vincent (Ed.), Sound-On-Film: Interviews with Creators of Film Sound (Praeger, Westport: 1994)Sonnenschein, David, Sound Design (Michael Weise Productions, Studio City: 2001)Weis, Elisabeth & Belton, John (Ed.), Film Sound And Practice (Columbia University Press, New York: 1985)

Film TheoryBordwell, David & Thompson, Kristin, Film Art (McGraw-Hill: 1979) 1997 EditionButler, Ivan, The War Film (Tantivy Press, London: 1974)French Karl (Ed.), Screen Violence (Bloomsbury, London: 1996)Gorbman, Claudia, Unheard Melodies – Narrative Film Music (British Film Institute, London: 1987)Hallam, Julia & Marshment, Margaret, Realism and Popular Cinema (Manchester University Press, Manchester: 2000)Kaplan, E. Ann, Psychoanalysis & Cinema (Routledge, London: 1990)Martin, Nick & Porter Marsha, Video Movie Guide 1997 (Ballantine, New York: 1996)Neale, Steve & Smith, Murry (Ed.), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (Routledge, London: 1998)Rubin, Steven Jay, Combat Films 1945-1970 (Mc Farland, Jefferson: 1981)

World War IIAmbrose, Stephen E, Band Of Brothers (Simon & Schuster, London: 1992)Gilbert, Martin, Second World War (George Weidenfeld & Nicholson Ltd, London: 1989)MacDonald, John, Great Battles Of World War II (Marshal, London: 1986)Desmond Hawkins (Ed.), War Report: D-Day to VE Day, (Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1946) 1985 Edition. Neillands, Robin & de Normann, Roderick, D-Day 1944: Voices From Normandy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London: 1993)

Journals/MagazinesHistories Eyes – Saving Private Ryan, Film Comment, Sept/Oct 1998, Richard T. JamesonSaving Private Ryan, Film Quarterly, Vol.53 No.1, Fall 1999, Karen Jaehne Empire – The Directors Collection: Steven Spielberg

Filmography

A Bridge Too Far (1977)Warner BrothersDir. Richard Attenborough

Alien (1979)Twentieth Century FoxDir. Ridley Scott

All Quiet On The Western Front (1979, TV Movie)Norman RosemontDir. Delbert Mann

Apocalypse Now (1979)ZoetropeDir. Francis Ford Coppolla

Band Of Brothers (2001, TV Series)Dreamworks/HBODir. (various)

Black Hawk Down (2001)RevolutionDir. Ridley Scott

Forrest Gump (1994)Paramount PicturesDir. Robert Zemeckis

Gladiator (2000)DreamworksDir. Ridley ScottThe Longest Day (1962)Twentieth Century FoxDir. Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Elmo Williams & Daryl Zanuck

Saving Private Ryan (1998)DreamworksDir. Steven Spielberg

Schindler’s List (1993)AmblinDir. Steven Spielberg

Starship Troopers (1997)Touchstone/TristarDir. Paul Verhoeven

Terminator 2 – Judgement Day (1990)MomentumDir. James Cameron

We Were Soldiers (2002)IconDir. Randall Wallace

Web Sitesuk.imdb.com, Internet Movie Database, visited numerous times between June and October 2002.

InterviewsRichard Hymns, Supervising Sound Editor on Saving Private Ryan, Dancing Shadows BBC Radio 4 documentary on sound for film. Part 2 - Sound & Fury.

Various members of the GI44 Living History Group, 101st Airborne re-enactment in Aldbourne, 25th August 2002.

World War II Veterans;Cecil Newton Aldbourne, interview on 17th August 2002Gerald Jerram Aldbourne, interview on 18th August 2002Geoff Slater Aldbourne, interview on 25th August 2002

Actors;Tom Hanks interview on Parkinson, BBC1, 21st September 2002.Mark Lawrence, actor in Band Of Brothers, 101st Re-Enactment, Aldbourne, 25th August 2002.

GamesMedal Of Honour: Frontline, Electronic Arts, 2002Half-Life, Valve, 1998