Vanity Fair
Military advisor
F
rom staging the Battle of Waterloo for the ITV adaptation of Vanity Fair to recreating trench warfare for the Oscar-winning 1917, Paul Biddiss ensures that battle scenes in TV and film are as authentic as possible. What does the job involve? My job is to support the director and make films realistic from a military perspective. On Sam Mendes’ First World War movie 1917, I was running up and down the trenches with 500 men, checking they were holding their weapons and equipment the right way. When do you start work on a show? Ideally, I’m brought on to a production as early as possible. On the Sky 1
8
action series Strike Back, I was actually in the writers room, helping to make the stories authentic. When I have the script, I advise the costumes and props departments on military uniforms and equipment. Then, I train the cast and supporting artists in how, for example, to use weapons realistically and safely.
suggestion for a scene. I didn’t know that extras on set were meant to be seen, not heard. The director, George Clooney, liked my idea. Word got around and I got called in to run the extras’ boot camps for Fury, starring Brad Pitt as a Second World War tank commander. It all took off from there.
How did you become a military advisor? It wasn’t planned. I served 24 years as a paratrooper in the British Army, stationed around the world. After leaving the army, I worked as a private investigator and a bodyguard. I had a lean period before answering an ad for a job as an extra on the 2014 Second World War movie The Monuments Men. The military advisor was with the main film unit, so I made a
What was your first TV work? BBC One’s 2016 adaptation of War & Peace was my first big TV project as a military advisor. I wanted to show guys knocking seven bells out of each other, because that’s what the battlefield was like back then when you got to close quarters. There were 500 Lithuanian extras. I had three days’ notice to study Napoleonic warfare. Then, I had to carry out
ITV
WORKING LIVES
