“Everything was built around the script. We had six months of rehearsals where Sam was working with the actors and performers. I was working, tweaking the script so that it sounded right. And then after we had the movement of the scene and the dialogue mostly down, [cinematographer] Roger [Deakins] was coming in and working out where the camera was going to go, and we would play the scene over and over and over again. After that, Dennis Gassner would come in to figure out things like this is the exact length of trench that we need. We would literally walk these trenches in-field with stakes, and we would measure, ‘This is where we see the bombed out trees,’ and ‘This is where we meet this guy; this is where we do this; this is where we do that.’ A few weeks later, we'd come back and trenches had been dug. Every single line had a purpose, had an action, which is why there's not a huge amount of dialogue, because we were trying to make it feel like reality, and we were trying to fill every frame of the film with information. It's surprisingly difficult, harder than I thought it was going to be.”