"Most of the explosives on that beach were real, so the beach was seriously shaking."
In 1997, the peaceful Kuraklo beach in the southeast of Ireland was transformed into scenes of bloodshed and horror - the famous director Steven Spielberg repeated the events of D-Day there.
It is about one of the key moments of the Second World War, when the Allied forces landed in Normandy, in the north of France, setting out to liberate Western Europe.
A series of commemorations are being held this month to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
What that day looked like is described in the film Saving the ranks of Rajan, which won praise from critics and war veterans alike for its portrayal of the Omaha Beach attack.
The story follows the mission of Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, with the task of locating and rescuing James Francis Ryan, a soldier whose three brothers died on other fronts.
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'We want this to look real'
Mark Huffam, filmmaker from Northern Ireland, assistant producer during filming Rescues rof Ed Rajan, says the scenes of the iconic beach landing sequence, which lasts more than 20 minutes, were "terrible" to see and hear.
"The deal was, 'We want this to look real,'" Huffam tells the BBC.
"We don't want to glamorize the war, but really show what the soldiers went through on that beach."
In practice, this means that only three special effects were used during the filming of those scenes - all the rest were real explosives and fires.
Eight cameras were filming at the same time, capturing the emotions of Hanks' character as he watches his comrades die across the beach, which echoes with machine guns and shells.
Normandy, where the army actually landed, was also considered as a potential filming location, but that option was quickly discarded, Huffam explains.
Instead, after an extensive search, Kuraklo Beach in Ireland was chosen.
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Huffam says much of the planning for the shoot, which took less than 60 days, was in Spielberg's mind, with the crew "trying to see him through."
"Every night we faxed him about 150 questions and in the morning we would get a concise answer to each one," says Huffam.
"How many soldiers will we have in this scene, will they be an airborne division or will they be paratroopers, how many Germans will there be...".
D-Day recreation
So much attention was paid to detail that Irish Army reservists recruited as extras had to be certified swimmers, while ex-servicemen manned the landing craft.
Hanks and the other actors also underwent two weeks of military training, where they learned how to shoot and slept in tents, while only having army rations for meals.
"Sometimes they would try to get away with getting ready-made chicken instead of making it themselves," Huffam said.
Hundreds of gallons of food coloring were used to turn the sea the blood-red color of suffering at Omaha Beach, where more than 2.000 people lost their lives on D-Day.
During the research, Spielberg talked to veterans about their experiences.
Huffam later worked on other films and series that required huge productions, such as Game of Thrones, Napoleon i Martian.
He brought a military identification necklace and a jacket from the set to the BBC interview Saving Private Ryan.
At some point, he also had one of the landing craft used in the film with him.
'Spielberg sought accuracy'
He says Spielberg's standard was "everything has to be right," even if it's difficult to fully describe the soldier's experience during D-Day.
"How exactly do you walk out of a landing craft right into machine gun fire and shells landing all around you, how are you brave enough to do that," Huffam said.
"I think it's scary, even when you know you're just making a movie."
After each day of filming, he adds, that's why he had the feeling "oh my god, we made it".
"The first time I saw those scenes on the big screen, I just thought, 'Wow.'"
The film won five Oscars, including Best Director.
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