This was three miles from the site of the fictional tunnel in which Wraysford worked. Just before filming started, Barton took the actors who play the book's protagonist Stephen Wraysford and his comrade Jack Firebrace – a miner, employed to listen for the enemy and plant mines under the German trenches – on a guided tour around a newly opened tunnel at La Boisselle on the Somme battlefield. The network they created stretched for 300 miles said Barton. We were filming the tunnel scenes in a very small space, it was incredibly tricky."īy 1916, the British had 25,000 tunnellers, mostly former coalminers, some from the dominions. "I really suffer badly from claustrophobia, I would rather walk than go on a tube. You have to remember, this was a massive industrial process, they were sawing beams and planks to exact proportions above ground. We tried very hard to get the details right. Martin said: "The tunnelling was not something I'd seen on screen before. Only then could a set of tunnels be built in a Budapest studio. Barton, employed as a consultant on the drama – judged too difficult to film for years – supplied Birdsong's director, Philip Martin, with scale drawings and plans from his excavations. The detailed reconstruction was aided by Peter Barton, a first world war archaeologist and historical writer, who has made the subject his life's work.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |