Pages Menu

Categories Menu

Posted on Feb 25, 2006 in Armchair Reading, Front Page Features

Band of Brothers – A Few Nostalgic Words and a Photographic Retrospective

By Roach

Finally, on a lighter note, a few pictures to show that dummies sometimes do get their revenge and that it is never really such a good idea to go to sleep on set when time is dragging and people are bored…

BOB_075.jpg
A weary trooper has decided to catch up with his sleep in between scenes; one of his ‘mates’ has decided to sprinkle a few pieces of grass and flowers on him…

BOB_076.jpg
And as that didn’t wake him up, a few sods of earth followed…

BOB_077.jpg BOB_078.jpg
And some other ‘mates’ decide to join in…
A makeshift cross is added…

BOB_079.jpg
And because our man is still oblivious, some fencing materials and a dummy too!

BOB_080.jpg
Yep, now he gets the picture!

In conclusion…

High jinks (and low jinks) aside, all in all, throughout the production, very few major hitches seemed to occur; there were obviously occasional hiccoughs (eg: the character playing Toye whilst filming the scene where he loses his leg lowered himself down into the specially dug hole which concealed his ‘missing’ leg only to discover the whitewash ‘snow’ was still wet – oops!), but no major problems really presented themselves.

{default}

Pre-production to the end of filming took approximately one year, and so it was no surprise that the constant repetition of shooting scenes in what were basically the same locations for month after month eventually started to take its toll on the crew, if not the cast as well. So it was that by the time the final scenes were shot and the production wound down, the majority were looking forward to that moment when the last episode was finally in the can, and a well-deserved break could begin.

When the finished product hit the TV screens around the world, it was deservedly applauded, receiving much praise and few criticisms. Although it was almost an afterthought to Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers is so much more than that and, in all probability, is a far superior production. That it was essentially produced by virtually the same crew as SPR no doubt helped to achieve that superiority. The attention to detail far exceeded that of SPR, and possibly because the story deals purely with fact and not a fantastic interpretation of events as in SPR, it is hard to criticise its content.

Obviously some artistic licence was taken in some areas but that is virtually impossible to avoid in the business of movie making; but the fact that it did so and yet did not in any way detract from the telling of the story of heroes was surely a triumph in itself.

* * *

Band of Brothers was made in 2001 by Home Box Office, a Division of Time Warner Entertainment Company, L.P. Click the link below to purchase a copy of this excellent mini-series on DVD.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11