Go behind the scenes with the careful stunt choreography, shooting fights with pads and helmets, and meticulous VFX work by Cinesite.
A very early take-way for audiences on Doug Liman’s Road House was just how intense the various fight scenes were, many involving lead Jake Gyllenhaal.
What helped make those moments so brutal was a very deliberate use of things like pads and helmets to film the fights in multiple passes, and then bring them altogether with the aid of visual effects. The director wanted to avoid those typical movie moments where actors and stunt performers often need to ‘pull’ their punches.
Grant Hewlett was the production visual effects supervisor on the film on behalf of Cinesite, and here for befores & afters he breaks down the fight scenes, in particular (Cinesite also worked on a host of other VFX in the film).
There’s lots of fun detail in here about staging the fights and the techniques used to sell a major actor getting completely trashed, and trashing others. Start first with Cinesite’s reel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYQi2y5EFzc
b&a: For the fight sequences in ‘Road House’, what were some of the initial conversations you had with the director and stunt coordinator about how those fights would be achieved on set and then how visual effects would aid in the storytelling?
Grant Hewlett: Before I got onto the show, stunt coordinator and 2nd unit director Garrett Warren had been experimenting with new ways to shoot fights using pads and helmets.
My first call with Doug Liman, the director, was a long phone call. Doug explained why he didn’t like traditional fight sequences as they seemed so carefully choreographed and fake. He explained that he wanted to shoot a fight like he would on his phone, following the action continuously as the fight developed. We also talked about the body dynamics of the performers and how when they pull their punches, not following through, you feel that in the performance.
We discussed a couple of movies that had fight sequences and the recent trend of smashing into the set and breaking lots of props to add action. Due to the nature of the fights in the show, it became clear that we were not going to be able to rely on smashing up the set for added impact, though we did some of this in later fights.
My takeaways from Doug’s were a continuous camera move and visceral impact from both the attacker and defender. The fight needed to feel real and messy; Doug was after that raw experience.
After my call with Doug, I started working with Garrett’s team making early prototypes of the shots for the opening fight of the movie featuring Post Malone. During this stage, we figured out the rules for the passes we would later shoot, and Garrett was adjusting the choreography as we developed the technique. We also identified any red flags that would be impossible to deal with later. This was a highly iterative process.
The stunt team shot DSLR footage and we quickly made mockups of the shots. These prototypes shaped the shooting methodology for all of the fights.
This early work was done via Zoom. Once I landed in the Dominican Republic (DR), we intensified our work together in person at Pinewood studios in the DR. We spent two weeks in prep, making multiple versions and getting feedback from Doug. I am pretty sure our version six was the moment when we all knew it was going to work. Doug was happy with the impact and grittiness of that version and gave us the green light. We then did our planning for the shoot.
b&a: Can you break down the different ‘fight’ passes that were performed for a typical fight scene?
Grant Hewlett: First of all, not all fights were shot using the A/B pad method. Some fights were shot for real with us tweaking timing and passes to create more visceral impacts. The A/B fight method I am about to describe is the most complex of the setups and was only used in some instances.
The fights were initially choreographed in the traditional way by the stunt coordinator Garrett Warren. We called this the “Hollywood pass.” Essentially, this first pass is like a filmed rehearsal; it helps get the actors and camera operator dialed in on the moves.
Within the fights, there are some natural breaks like body wipes and whip pans that were planned to help keep the continuous camera feel but also allow us to break up the fights into smaller beats. Once we had the Hollywood pass, we started work on each beat, filming first the A side. This is the attacker punching a pad in the position where the person being attacked’s head or body might be. We shot multiple passes of this using video playback to get a lineup to our master take, the Hollywood pass.
Once we were happy with the A side, we moved on to the B Side. The B Side is the person being attacked being hit with a pad. We again shot multiple passes using the previous A side takes for our video playback lineup.
Once we were happy with these two passes, we looked at the footage and made a note of any large areas of the actors that were occluded by pads and shot a slow-action pass. The slow-action pass was the A and B side without pads, with the actors fighting in slow motion. These slow-motion passes gave us clean shots with minimal motion blur to use when we later needed to composite passes that contained pads.
After all of these passes, we shot clean backgrounds and any additional background action required for the shots. For example, many fights have people reacting in the background, which we needed clean of the foreground action.
b&a: What things on set were required to be done or could be done, VFX wise, to aid in the post process later (ie. any kind of on-set survey, balls and charts, measurement, scanning etc)?
Grant Hewlett: Regarding the set survey, we had LiDAR of the larger sets and also detailed photogrammetry of the boats that we built in 3D. Terabytes of texture reference and on-set reference were also shot for everything that we might use later, such as beer mats, broken glass, etc.
We also body scanned all the cast so that we could build digital doubles in case we needed them. On a daily basis, I would often shoot fast photogrammetry on my iPhone using Polycam 3D. I also shot 4K 60fps video on my iPhone, which I later processed with Reality Capture for any sets or objects that changed due to set dressing requirements. Additionally, Haley Shepard, our data wrangler, did charts and balls for anything we thought might require CG later on.
b&a: How did your VFX team then tackle a typical fight shot, in terms of taking the passes and bringing them together, and perhaps adding in any elements, to make them as brutal and kinetic as possible?
Grant Hewlett: Most fight shots required extensive tracking, roto-anim and paint to remove pads and other unwanted safety equipment.
For A/B shots with pads it was a question of keeping the best performances and then removing the pads by substituting other takes.
We also did a lot of split screens where we blended two actions together to create a more impactful shot. The splits sound easy but most fights were shot on fairly wide lenses and had a lot of movement. The differences in the perspective of the background were tricky to get lined up. Our main goal was to keep the performance intact just using invisible VFX to clean up and enhance what was shot.
b&a: What was one particularly tricky fight (or even just one particularly tricky punch to land) that you had to deal with in VFX?
Grant Hewlett: Oh wow tough question. I think it’s probably the fight between Jake and Conor at the end of the movie, The Finale. Jake has just had his head smashed on the Piano and he jumps on to Conor’s back.
Conor then runs across the dancefloor and smashes Jake into the counter top and then lifts him up and smashes down onto the table. All of this is one continuous hand held camera move.
The action from Jake and Conor was great but we had some massive pads to protect them on the counter and the table top. Most of the furniture was also cleaned out for safety reasons.
The entire environment had to be rebuilt and projected to reinstate the counter, we also had to build lots of furniture including the table they smash into.
In the midst of that Doug wanted to add a bit more height on their jump before the smash onto the table. This change really hurt our heads as we had so many projection cameras. In the end Doug did say it was one of his favorite shots in the movie. I am not sure how many versions we did but needless to say it was a lot.
