Background and development , the author of the novel on which the film is based
Michael Morpurgo wrote the 1982 children's novel
War Horse after meeting
World War I veterans in the Devon village of
Iddesleigh where he lived. One had been with the
Devon Yeomanry and was involved with horses; Captain Budgett, another veteran in his village, was with the
British cavalry and told Morpurgo how he had confided all his hopes and fears to his horse. Both told him of the horrific conditions and loss of life, human and animal, during the Great War. Morpurgo researched the subject further and learned that a million horses died on the British side; he extrapolated an overall figure of 10 million horse deaths on all sides. Of the million horses that were sent abroad from the UK, only 62,000 returned, the rest dying in the war or slaughtered in France for meat. The Great War had a massive and indelible impact on the UK's male population: 886,000 men died, one in eight of those who went to war, and 2% of the entire country's population. After observing a young boy with a
stammer forming a fond relationship with and talking fluently to a horse at a farm run by Morpurgo's charity
Farms for City Children, Morpurgo found a way to tell the story through the horse and its relations with the various people it meets before and during the course of the war: a young
Devon farmboy, a British cavalry officer, a German soldier, and an old Frenchman and his granddaughter. Morpurgo tried to
adapt the book into a film screenplay, working for over five years with
Simon Channing-Williams, which would ultimately go unproduced. The book was successfully
adapted for a stage play by
Nick Stafford in 2007. From 2006 to 2009, Morpurgo,
Lee Hall and
Revel Guest worked on a proposed film version of
War Horse, which Morpurgo and Hall would write and Guest produce. Lack of finances meant that it was an informal arrangement, with the film rights not formally sold by Morpurgo to Guest's production company and no one being paid for the work they undertook. In 2009, film producer
Kathleen Kennedy saw the critically acclaimed
production of War Horse in London's
West End with her husband, fellow producer
Frank Marshall, and their two daughters. They were very impressed by the story, and Marshall recalled how he was amazed that no one had already bought the film rights to the book.
Steven Spielberg was told about
War Horse by several people, including Kennedy, his colleague at
Amblin Entertainment. After discussions with Revel Guest, on 16 December 2009, it was announced that
DreamWorks Pictures had acquired the film rights to the book, with Spielberg stating: "From the moment I read Michael Morpurgo's novel
War Horse, I knew this was a film I wanted DreamWorks to make … Its heart and its message provide a story that can be felt in every country." Spielberg saw the London production of the play on 1 February 2010, and met some of the cast afterwards. He admitted to being moved to tears by the performance. DreamWorks executive
Stacey Snider suggested
Richard Curtis to work on rewrites for the screenplay; she had worked with Curtis during her time at
Universal Pictures, and Curtis had previously written the World War I-set BBC comedy series
Blackadder Goes Forth along with
Ben Elton. Spielberg was a fan of
Blackadder but had never met Curtis, who was initially reluctant to take part, but on meeting Spielberg, he rethought and committed to work on the script. Curtis produced over a dozen drafts in three months, and has spoken of the close collaboration he had with Spielberg while working on the script. Having previously only been slated to produce the film, Spielberg decided to direct "the second [he] read [Curtis's] first draft. It happened faster than anything else we've [Spielberg and Snider] done together." On 3 May 2010, it was announced that Spielberg was to direct the film; the cast was announced on 17 June. Within weeks of hearing from Kennedy about the London theatre production, Spielberg had seen the play, and decided this would be his next film. Spielberg was able to act so quickly because he was on a hiatus, waiting for the animation on his other 2011 film
The Adventures of Tintin to be completed. as he admitted that, prior to learning about the
War Horse book and play, "I had never been that interested in World War I".
David Kenyon and
Andrew Robertshaw of Battlefield Partnerships were military advisors on the film.
Casting After some speculation, the cast for
War Horse was announced on 17 June 2010. It had been rumored in the previous week that
Eddie Redmayne had been cast in the lead role as Albert Narracott; however, relatively unknown stage actor
Jeremy Irvine was chosen instead. Spielberg commented that after seeing hundreds of young boys reading for the role, Irvine had come in and done a cold reading and that "his performance was very natural, very authentic." The cast is European, with British, French and German actors playing characters of their respective nationalities.
Robert Emms, who played the lead of Albert Narracott in the West End production of the play, was cast as David Lyons. Casting for
extras took place in Devon in late July 2010. In all, some 5,800 extras were used in the film. and Morpurgo himself filmed a cameo role there, along with his wife
Clare.
Filming on Dartmoor, which served as the Narracott family farmhouse in the film Filming took place under the codename
Dartmoor to maintain a level of secrecy during production, and took about 64 days in total. Scenes involving the cavalry were shot first at
Stratfield Saye House in north
Hampshire, the estate of the
Duke of Wellington, where incidentally Wellington's war horse
Copenhagen is buried; a cavalry charge involving 130 extras was filmed here. Filming on location in
Dartmoor,
Devon, started in August 2010. Initially, Spielberg was only going to have four or five days' worth of
second unit material shot in Devon, but after Kathleen Kennedy sent him photographs of the various locations she had scouted, he decided to cut other elements of the story to enable more filming to take place in countryside that Kennedy described as "so extraordinarily beautiful and absolutely perfect for the story". Dartmoor locations included the small villages of
Meavy and
Sheepstor,
Burrator Reservoir, Bonehill Rocks and the surrounding area near
Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Ringmoor Down, Combestone Tor and the surrounding area,
Haytor, Hexworthy Bridge, and Cadover Bridge/Brisworthy.
Ditsworthy Warren House, an isolated Grade II
listed building near Sheepstor on Dartmoor, served as the Narracott family's farmhouse, and many scenes were filmed in the surrounding area. On 11 September 2010, the annual
Dartmoor Yomp was rerouted to allow filming to continue undisturbed. Spielberg praised the Dartmoor countryside's beauty: "I have never before, in my long and eclectic career, been gifted with such an abundance of natural beauty as I experienced filming
War Horse on Dartmoor… And, with two-and-a-half weeks of extensive coverage of landscapes and skies, I hardly scratched the surface of the visual opportunities that were offered to me". Spielberg felt that the landscape was very much a character in the film. When actor
Peter Mullan won the
Golden Shell Award at the
San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain for his film
Neds, Spielberg insisted that Mullan should attend the ceremony to accept his award in person on 26 September 2010, and rearranged the
War Horse shooting schedule accordingly. in Wiltshire, another filming location Although Devon rural locations were used, scenes in the main village in the story were filmed at the
Wiltshire village of
Castle Combe near
Chippenham, despite the
vernacular architecture of Devon (predominantly
cob walls and
thatched roofs) being very different from that of Wiltshire (stone walls and stone tiled roofs). Filming began there on 21 September 2010, and continued until 1 October. Some residents of Castle Combe were angered by the imposition of tightened security within the village, claiming they could not enter without waiting at perimeter barriers until breaks in filming. Production moved on to
Wisley Airfield in
Surrey, where
no man's land battlefield scenes were filmed. Shooting of wartime camp scenes also took place at
Bourne Wood near
Farnham in Surrey, a frequent location for filming, for about two weeks beginning on 4 October 2010. Scenes were shot at the
stately home Luton Hoo between 13 and 14 October 2010. Filming was also scheduled to be undertaken at
Caerwent in Wales. Studio filming was undertaken at
Longcross Studios,
Chertsey in Surrey, The film shoot was completed in the last week of October 2010, Spielberg commented on how he and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński developed the "look" of the film: "…it doesn't feel like
Ryan at all … it has a much more
daguerrotype feel, much more brownish. We're not using any of the techniques we used on
Ryan. The only similarity is that it is war and it is
handheld." "On set, he'd come in, in the morning, and say, 'I couldn't sleep last night. I was worrying about this shot!' Which was great! He's human and he's still working in an impassioned way, like a 21-year-old, trying to make the best out of everything".
Horses The pre-production period only allowed for three months to train the horses before shooting commenced. The main horse trainer was Bobby Lovgren, and Zelie Bullen. During filming, fourteen different horses were used as the main horse character Joey, eight of them portraying him as an adult animal, four as a colt and two as a foal; four horses played the other main equine character, Topthorn. Extra filming involving a bay foal took place in California in March 2011. An
animatronic horse was used for some parts of the scenes where Joey is trapped in barbed wire; the wire was rubber prop wire.
Post-production Editor
Michael Kahn spoke of his work on the film: "We have some shots in
War Horse that are just fantastic … We shot it in Devon, and you know it's gorgeous down there, and the horses are beautiful and the farms are beautiful, beautiful scenery and every shot is gorgeous, and eventually you get to the war part of it and it's really, really something." Kahn had a trailer on set and edited the film during filming. Kahn and Spielberg cut the film digitally on an
Avid rather than on film, a first with this technology for Spielberg; "He decided that he'd like to try it", Kahn commented. After filming, further editing was undertaken at the UK's Twickenham Film Studios, with the production moving back to the U.S. in November 2010. According to Spielberg, the film's only digital effects were three shots lasting three seconds, which were undertaken to ensure the safety of the horse involved: "That's the thing I'm most proud of. Everything you see on screen really happened." ==Soundtrack==