Building a Better Battle

The Real Story Behind the Make-Believe Mayhem

When The Bow ramp of their higeins amphibious landing craft first opend on July 24, 1998, Tom Hanks and the rest of the actors playing alpha company soldiers in saving private ryan weren't the only ones shocked by the Ensuing horror. Moviegoers were Yanked full force into the hurricane of sand, metal and violence. Blood and sand splattered the screen. There was no music; instead, a relentless digital orchestra erupted from the speakers. Men screamed. Limbs cartwheeled. holes snapped open in helmets. there was no place to hide; even soldiers cowering behind obstacles and berms were blown apart.

The Omaha Beach we saw in Saving Private Ryan was not real, of course, but you'd never guess that from the reaction of the audiences who experienced the first 25 minutes of the film. Even combat veterans--no, combat veterans especially--were overwhelmed by the verisimilitude that a filmmaker who had never been in uniform managed to put on the screen. World War II veterans across the country paid respect to Steven Spielberg's accuracy. "It couldn't be more real," said John harrison, a judge and veteran of D day, on NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, echoing countless other.

It was not a generational phenomenon. I saw Private Ryan on opening night with my father, a former marine who fought in Vietnam, in a packed theater in a navy town. " Absolutely incredible realism," he said, agreeing with other men around us. "Wonder how they did it." I saw the film again two weeks later with a Gulf war veteran, and all he said was, " I don't know how, but it was right on." I had two questions: How did they do it? and if on-screen combat cannot "be more real," would any other film ever equal Spielberg's achievement? Three years later, the first rocket-propelled grenade hissed toward a helicopter full of Rangers in Black Hawk Down. For all the praise Saving Private Ryan garnered black Hawk Down proved its equal. "It's just as realistic as Private Ryan," says Dan Schilling, a former Air Force special operator who fought in the battle of Mogadishu (on which Black Hawk Down is based). "I don't think it's possible to do it better."

In 1998, Mike Clark of USA Today wrote that Saving Private Ryan was "the rawest screen portrayal of 20th century combat." Clark said of Black Hawk Down: "No war movie I have ever seen so vividly shows battle from differing perspectives."

We Were Soldiers, based on the 1965 battle in the la Drang valley, continued the tradition. According to UPI reporter Joseph Galloway, who took part in the battle, Soldiers is "extremely realistic. When I saw the hundreds of Vietnamese extras rise out of the grass with their AKs blazing, it gave me the willies." Clearly a standard of excellence has been established for realistic war movies.

Video game designers have also made enormous strides in simulating battle. Some of the games you can play at home are so realistic that the military now uses the skills of video artists to prepare its soldiers for actual combat.

Technological Leaps

There's an astonishing sequence in Saving Private Ryan: The camera follows soldiers as they leap overboard to escape the rain of bullets. Underwater now, it's quiet for the first time, almost soothing. Soldiers struggle to free themselves from their anvil of gear. Suddenly, bullets cut through the water, leaving tiny contrails of bubbles behind. One bullet buzzes past but quickly decelerates, dancing harmlessly to the bottom. Others slam into the soldiers, who react with silent screams. Then, clouds of blood bloom from the torsos of the dying men.

In the Marines, where I served for six years, we learned that a bullet has about 10 feet of killing power underwater. Here we were watching a celluloid bullet do the same thing with incredible accuracy. Were they real bullets? Of course not. And yet the way their trajectories dipped, the way the bubbles expanded, the way they careened into soldiers, the way the audience reacted. . . .

Computer-generated imagery has steadily improved since the Seventies, but in the Nineties, with most of the money from a sanguine economy being pumped into high-technology companies, the advances in CGI were explosive. Physical special effects, once the only option for filmmakers, were bolstered by computer artists. Dean Semler, cinematographer for We Were Soldiers, says, "You can put anything on-screen you require. Harry Potter flies around on a broomstick. The level of realism today is just a question of money."

The underwater bullets and bubbles in Private Ryan were, in fact, painted on the film with the powerful computer imaging tools at Industrial Light & Magic, the special effects company George Lucas founded in 1975. Industry leaders, ILM wizards blend their computing skills with spectacular artistry to trick the audience. Using film shots of stuntmen struggling underwater, they layered the digital bullets into the film frames via computer, drawing not only the rounds themselves but also each bubble, going so far as to enlarge them as they rose shimmering to the surface. While the effect wasn't entirely digital--the blood clouds were triggered by tiny blasting caps called squibs packed inside red dye pouches and stitched into the actors' uniforms--it was authentic. In the dark theater, those were real rounds hitting real soldiers.

Black Hawk Down employed a similar mix of digital and physical effects. As the heavily armed Somali crowd closes in on the Delta and Ranger forces, rounds snapping and skipping in the Mogadishu alleys, veterans of the actual firefight swore the scenes could have been documentary footage. Says Schilling: "The daylight combat scenes are as real as you can possibly (continued on page 161)Battle (continued from page 121) re-create them. The detonations, the way that guys shoot and get shot, the depiction of wounds are all incredibly realistic. Hollywood has always been great at gratuitous violence, but it's gone from gratuitous to realistic."

Black Hawk Down's title stems from the moment when a Somali militiaman brings down a multimillion-dollar Black Hawk helicopter with a hundred-dollar RPG. The bulbous, mushroom-shaped dart streaks skyward and detonates in the tail rotor, and the helicopter goes into a death spiral. Cutting between scenes inside the spinning Black Hawk--soldiers screaming and barely holding on for their lives--are external shots of gravity yanking the helicopter down into the streets.

"It was a combination of shots using the real-size model and three-dimensional computer graphics," says Pietro Scalia, film editor of Black Hawk Down. A Black Hawk mock-up was dropped from a crane to simulate the crash. But because the enormous model had to be dropped flat instead of in a full spin, Scalia was challenged to design computer-generated effects that would blend seamlessly with the real helo impact. "It was pretty complex. The rocket hitting the tail is three-dimensional, then we have a real shot of the pilots inside the mock-up hanging from the crane, then we have aerial shots of a real helicopter spinning. We sped up the footage to get it twirling faster, then got a point-of-view shot from the ground with some CG smoke added, then another internal shot with the Delta Force soldier photographed against a blue screen. We put the spinning city behind him later."

And Scalia was only halfway home at this point, further employing a CGI tool kit to cut between the computer-generated helicopter and the real thing until the latter slammed to the ground and sprayed dirt all over a remote-controlled camera--and, it seemed, over those of us in our seats.

Gamers Join the Fight

Powerful computer design tools have meant commensurate gains for video war simulations. By the late Nineties the efforts of the Department of Defense--which had been building big war simulators since the Forties--had been overtaken by video game designers. Because of their penchant for games with conflict, designers have always produced military scenarios. With the explosion in Silicon Valley, however, civilian simulations available on the shelves were suddenly superior to some Defense Department simulations marked Secret.

"Military training officers approached us all the time," says Brian Upton, chief game designer for Red Storm Entertainment, a North Carolina-based video game company that includes Tom Clancy on its list of founders. "But in the end they didn't have the budget to participate." So the gamers charged ahead with the new reality.

How good are they? I tried Upton's newest game, Ghost Recon, and Electronic Arts' latest offering, Medal of Honor Allied Assault. In Recon, you are in control of an elite American Special Forces unit on a peacekeeping mission in 2008 that goes awry. Unlike earlier games such as Beach Head 2000--termed "first-person shooters" because the object is to point your weapon and destroy everything on-screen--the key to Recon isn't controlling yourself. It's controlling others. During a mission, even in the midst of a firefight, you can send orders to your platoon by calling up a command interface. New computer engines allow game designers like Upton to program characters with artificial intelligence so they act and think somewhat independently; once tasked, AI takes over and your virtual teammates move out on their own. "The great thing for the military is that we can create many tactical situations. If you want to teach someone to shoot a gun, go to the range. But we add value by creating scenarios. We can throw people into tactical situations," says Upton.

Indeed, in Recon you can walk your team into Moscow's Red Square, where you'll find a virtual replica, complete with accurate maps and scenes digitized from photographs shot only months earlier. Powerful design tools and faster speed in personal computers have made dreams credible. "Three-dimensional modeling and lighting have come so far," says Upton. "Subtle shadows, real lighting, actual scenes from streets. It basically lets the artists do whatever they want." The same technology that was used to produce fake helicopters is now producing entire worlds.

Steve Townsend is a producer of Medal of Honor, a game inspired by Steven Spielberg. "The important advancement in technology is the increased central processing unit speeds and better video cards for computers," Townsend said. "The draw to consumers is that everything looks more realistic. The technology allows artists and engineers to now express that which they only dreamed about less than a decade ago."

Medal of Honor is a World War II game that boasts powerful cinematic graphics and combat scenarios modeled from history. You play an Army Ranger who fights in several battles in the European theater. The terrain, weapons and equipment look realistic, and the sound is extraordinary; this is a millennium removed from the beeps of Atari's Pong.

Perhaps the best effect in these games is how fluidly the virtual soldiers move. They perform immediate action drills like teams trained under fire, down to proper weapons carriage, firing stances and frantic searches for cover when ambushed. Motion-capture technology is responsible for much of this detail. Actors don black bodysuits sprinkled with pieces of foam encased in reflective coatings, and then they run through their "moves," as Upton refers to them, while six cameras capture the motion in 3D space and digitize it. "We use real soldiers instead of hand animators. The soldiers fall down. They raise their weapons. They run. They dive."

Counterattack By the Artists

Although CGI has given directors new technological prowess, they still have to work with actors who are closely scrutinized for their reactions to each other and the cinematic world around them. "Real physical effects are the key," Semler says. "If you want to simulate a battle, all hell needs to break loose in 360 degrees, and you need to include your principal actors in it so they're really reacting." Realistic war films employ a minimum of CGI around the actors so they can experience actual fear and waves of adrenaline. "With real gunfire, actors perform differently," says Black Hawk's Scalia. "It's better to create as much as you can physically. Sometimes you add gunfire just so actors have to scream to be heard."

The object, then, is to make the actors feel like they are on the receiving end of an onslaught. The effects team in Private Ryan used a series of air cannons buried in the sand and placed below the surface of the water to keep the terrain stitched with bullets. The Black Hawk team planted several tons of explosives in the ground and walls, and detonated them within yards of the actors. Says Semler of We Were Soldiers: "Most physical effects are real. Fifteen tons of explosives are real. The napalm boiling just behind the tail of that airplane is real."

Beyond physical effects, filmmakers have experimented with a variety of camera shots--new ideas and some old tricks--to complement CGI capabilities and bolster realism. The jerky handheld camera work in Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down yanks the viewer into the microterrain. With blood spraying camera lenses, the films smack of documentaries; the unsettling effect is that you are among the beleaguered soldiers. Says Scalia: "We even had some unmanned 'crash cameras' set up near big explosions." The long lenses used in We Were Soldiers, on the other hand, provide depth of field for a fight that raged on the battalion level. The soldier 50 meters down the line is as clear as the one next to the camera. "That way the people aren't portrayed as beautiful," says Semler, "but the shots are. When napalm erupts behind North Vietnamese army soldiers who are running, the explosion looks like it's right behind them."

The Advisors

Combat correspondent Galloway is careful to note that technology and camera wizardry do not solely account for the reality. "It's true that the technical caps of 10 or 20 years ago are no longer there," Galloway says. "It's also true that there's a willingness to cleave more closely to the bone in terms of what is shown. It's brutal and realistic. But you can't forget the training of the actors--it ought to be a prerequisite."

Retired Marine Captain Dale Dye, Hollywood's top military advisor, is largely responsible for making thespians more closely resemble warriors. Thanks to Dye and other advisors, actors have the chance to tread in the boots of the infantrymen, to gain understanding and appreciation for the men they are portraying. Advisors also aid filmmakers with everything from the script to the set. "We rarely did anything without the advice of our military advisors," says Semler.

The advisors' contributions were not always so eagerly embraced. "Prior to Platoon," Dye recalls, "the military advisor on movie sets was reactive rather than proactive. He was considered a simple soldier and not a filmmaker. He was generally asked to speak only when spoken to, and even then was generally ignored. That changed when Oliver Stone and Arnold Kopelson invited me to become involved in all aspects of making Platoon."

Spielberg cemented the importance of the military advisor when he commissioned Dye to design the notorious "boot camp for actors" on the set of Saving Private Ryan. Today, it seems that every war film mandates preproduction military training for its actors, who then swap stories from "boot." Some even compare training from different films, miniature versions of interservice rivalries. Dye and his crew loaded down Tom Hanks and other actors with 40-pound packs, sending them on forced marches. Former Seal Harry Humphries and a slew of soldiers taught Josh Hartnett and others how to shoulder their weapons and break their triggers in Black Hawk Down. Rangers drilled Mel Gibson for We Were Soldiers. And Randall Wallace, director of We Were Soldiers, may have set a precedent when he offered up his body to Ranger School sergeants for two weeks.

"Randy learned a lot, and I think it shows," says Galloway. As for the actors in Wallace's film, "They had their asses up at 5:30 doing push-ups and PT. They even did the obstacle course for graduation. It was good stuff."

Does this immersion bring about better performances? "It actually helped me feel more authentic--not like a complete fraud putting on a uniform," said Ben Affleck of his week of training prior to making Pearl Harbor. Filmmakers agree. "It's classic dramatic preparation," says Semler. "We had no wussies in our group of actors." It's this coaching, then, that's responsible for the other half of the modern war film's realism; advances in CGI and raw filmmaking ingenuity have created a far more realistic battleground, and the military advisors have helped put close approximations of real warriors on-screen.

"These days, military experience is as foreign to most people--especially actors--as is a trip to Mars or Venus," Dye observes. "They have no frame of reference--other than the last war movie they saw--so they fall back on stereotypes and clichés when they are asked to portray soldiers. And there's more to it than physicality. I want actors to understand what's going on in a soldier's mind and heart, so I spend a lot of time getting to those issues. Most good actors find that particularly valuable."

Even video gamers have caught on. The Recon crew visited soldiers at Fort Bragg for advice. The developers of Medal of Honor Allied Assault not only hired Dye to serve as the primary technical advisor on the video game but also subjected themselves to one of his grueling wannabe-grunt training sessions. "To start with," Townsend recalls, "we all went through his crash course in field tactics--weapons abilities and various attack formations. We put this into practice on a huge paint ball course. Although the gumball-sized pellets only stung on impact, the training was intense. Even some of the simpler concepts we learned, like staying low when moving past an open window and trying to stay with our squad, had a big impact on the way the levels in the game were designed."

The Military Takes Notice

Once routinely discouraged during training time because they were considered to be mind-numbing distractions, video games and war movies are now essential tools for training soldiers in rapid decision making. Every service is entering the virtual world. The Marine Corps has fielded an infantry training simulation called the Combat Decision Range that is "a rifle range for the mind." The Air Force, in addition to all its video flight training, has sponsored a national video game contest to recruit gamers. The Navy is experimenting with Microsoft's popular flight simulator in its flight school. And the Army has taken perhaps the boldest step: In 1999 it invested $45 million with the University of Southern California to develop state-of-the-art training simulations through an entity that's called the Institute for Creative Technologies.

According to Cathy Kominos, then deputy director of Army research, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, the Army chose USC in part "because of its close ties with Hollywood." On the ICT staff are the co-author of Apocalypse Now and the director of Big Top Pee-wee and Grease. In addition to large-scale simulators, ICT plans to launch two video games, C-Force and CS-12, which will be available to both troops and civilians. The games will be produced by Rob Sears, the man responsible for the civilian robot war game Mech Warrior 3. And these artists aren't just designing games; they're training our soldiers.

In October 2001, ICT announced that "the Army and USC's ICT have worked together to coordinate ongoing discussions with some of Hollywood's top talent" concerning the nation's war on terror. Who are these new Army advisors? They included Spike Jonze, the director of Being John Malkovich, and David Fincher, director of Fight Club. Has the Army overreached?

"The problem with paying creative people in Hollywood to help you with concepts in the video production arena is that Hollywood has no idea how the military works. I think our military has talented, creative people who can--and should--be the ones who are consulted," says Dye.

Meanwhile, there is no argument that realistic video simulations and movies like Black Hawk Down are valuable training tools. All services would prefer live-fire exercises to simulations but they simply can't afford it. (The Marines have already fielded some 60 Combat Decision Range vignettes and add five scenarios a year for less than $500,000.) In 1997, General Charles Krulak, Commandant of the Marine Corps, reversed the policy that discouraged Marines from playing games on government computers to allow for what was, at the time, a radical new training method: using video games as decision-making tools. In his order to all Marines, Krulak stated: "The use of technological innovations, such as PC-based war games, provides great potential for Marines to develop decision-making skills, particularly when live training time and opportunities are limited. This order authorizes Marines to use government computers for approved PC-based games."

So the senior leadership is convinced. What about the target audience of these new training tools, the young soldiers who have grown up on a steady diet of video games and movies? They have known all along. Says Corporal John Howard, after fighting a virtual Three Block War (feeding refugees, then ducking snipers, then a full firefight) on the Combat Decision Range: "This is good to go. Marines don't know what stress is, what pressure is. Games force them to make decisions. They're not all right, but they've got to make things happen. This is as realistic as we can get without putting rounds downrange."

The Black Hawk Down Team Planted Several Tons of Explosives in the Ground and Detonated Them Within Yards of the Actors, Spraying them with Special Dirt that had Been Picked Frel of Large Chunks and Pebbles. The Object, then, was to Make the Actors Feel Like they are on the Receiving End of an Onslaught.

"This is as Realistic as we can get without Putting Rounds Downrange"--Corporal John Howard, Squad Leader, USMC

Games and movies are now essential tools for training soldiers. Every service is entering the virtual world.