the ACTION in Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever
TuxedoJackie
ACTION!
Kaos wanted to shoot Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever in the style of the films that
inspired him, opting for action as realistic in execution as it was spectacular
in effect – that is, effects and stunts choreographed in real time, without
reliance on green-screen techniques, CGI or extensive post-production editing
for enhancement. This was something that Chris Lee understood completely,
saying, “There is definitely a place for those kinds of stylized visual
effects but we were going for another look. We wanted to tell this story the
way they did in the 70s, where you saw a full scene in each frame and there
wasn’t a lot of quick cutting or arbitrary camera movements.”
“In essence, we aimed for the noir-ish style of a graphic novel,” Kaos
explains. “Unlike comic books, where imagination runs wild, graphic novels
are grounded in realism, which is why we kept the action in a practical realm
– no miniatures, and minimal green screen.”
This goal was achieved through the selection of camera lenses and placement.
Shooting in super-35 format allowed him to approximate a wide screen.
“You see more of the world the characters inhabit,” says Kaos of the wider
effect. “If we have a shot of a character walking through a landscape, we
have a bright and clear focus on him in the foreground, but, at the same time,
the background is also bright and clear, giving us a better sense of where all
of this is taking place.” Director of Photography Julio Macat (Crazy in
Alabama, Cats & Dogs) worked closely with Kaos in realizing the director’s
vision and likens this composition technique to “breathing underwater,”
because “the audience is immediately placed into the story.”
For Macat, organization was key. To capture the action from multiple angles, he
orchestrated the simultaneous movements of several camera crews, which he
compares to “playing three-level checkers.” Describing his maneuvers, Macat
says, “When you have three things going on in three different directions in
the same scene, with actors in the foreground and a huge explosion in the
background, you have to move constantly, do a 360 around two actors, get the
explosion from the back and their reactions at the same time. Lights that are
good for one camera are not good for the second camera, so we put the lights on
dimmers and changed the levels as we moved. It was choreographed with three
crews on top of each other shooting towards a common center. It was a huge
challenge and very rewarding for me because, in this business, you are always
trying to expand upon your craft.”
Kaos’ commitment to realism extended to the creation of practical stunts and
effects. Joel J. Kramer, Second Unit Director and Supervising Stunt Coordinator
on Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever, and Special Effects Coordinator R. Bruce
Steinheimer welcomed the enormous challenge and worked closely together to
coordinate the action sequences, most of which had to be perfect the first time
because they could not be re-created.
“We had car chases, cars flipping into the air, people fighting on
motorcycles, fires, explosions, buses blowing in half, people falling 120 feet
through the air to land on cars that would then explode on impact – all in
one take,” says Kramer. The former stuntman and veteran stunt coordinator,
who has worked on some of the biggest action films ever made (T2: Judgment Day,
True Lies, Total Recall), knew what he was getting into from the beginning.
“Usually, when I read a script, I dog-ear the pages where action is
involved,” he recalls. “This script had about 130 pages and when I was
finished I think four weren’t marked.”
Steinheimer, drawing on more than 20 years of experience with special effects
(Mission Impossible 2; Face/Off), acknowledges the wizardry of computer effects
for certain applications but believes their images can “lack a random order
that occurs in real life, especially with explosions and where the fragments
are likely to go. If you can do everything mechanically, in real time, it lends
a sense of realism and honesty to the action.”
“With the wide screen, effects naturally expand because of the scale,” adds
Kramer. “The proportions of your scene are huge, so the effects have to be
large enough to fill that scale and it can be intimidating. After awhile, Bruce
Steinheimer came up with a slogan we used on the set: ‘Go big or go
home.’”
“The Bus Sequence” and “It’s Raining Cars”
When asked about specific action scenes, everyone’s first choice is the bus
sequence, where Ecks is being transported from a city jail to a remote location
via a prison bus. Bound and guarded, he struggles to free himself while Sever
is on the highway, poised to waylay the transport with a grenade launcher. Her
assault occurs simultaneously with Ecks’ efforts to gain the upper hand from
his captors and sets off a series of explosive reactions that results in the
bus flipping onto its side, being blown in half and sliding down the road,
driverless, at high speed and on fire – all in one take.
The bus stunt idea originated with Kaos and then the mechanics were worked out
by Kramer and Steinheimer. The scene remains a favorite of all three and the
stunt for which they are most proud. “At this point in the story,” Kaos
says matter-of-factly, “we had Ecks trapped in a bus and the problem was –
how do we get him out?”
Getting him out ultimately required four specially rigged buses, two of which
included a driver’s set-up in the rear for control. “We moved the engine to
the rear,” Steinheimer explains, “and had a stunt person driving it with
the help of tiny mirrors and a monitor.”
“The first hit flips the bus onto its side with the assistance of nitrogen
cannons, which blow thousands of pounds of force,” Kramer outlines the
action. “Antonio climbs out and gets on the top just as it explodes from
another mortar hit and breaks in half; so then he’s surfing the wreckage as
it races forward, while waging a firefight with Lucy Liu, until the whole thing
crashes into another vehicle.” In addition to coordinating the sequence,
Kramer doubled as a bus driver and likens the experience to “being in a
NASCAR event, going 100 miles an hour.”
The bus crash is only the kick-off to a motorcycle chase, which crescendos into
a another stunt sequence that came to be known as “it’s raining cars.”
“I wanted it to be kinetic,” says Kaos of the extended chain of action.
“There’s a moment when Antonio, on a bike, is catapulted into mid-air, and
these cars that have been launched into the air from explosive hits are flying
past him, on fire. He falls to the ground just seconds before the cars start
hitting the ground around him. Joel Kramer and I discussed the possibility of
using cranes, cables and wiring, but decided we’d rather see it done without
that.”
“Imagine 6,000 pounds of steel flipping 25 feet in the air over Antonio,
who’s flipping off of a motorcycle,” says Kramer. “That’s the shot Kaos
wanted, to see all those elements up in the air at once. That stunt kept me
awake at night figuring out how I was going to do it, because the timing had to
be perfect or I was going to get someone killed. And we got it. Once we figured
out the geometry it worked like a charm.”
Working in tandem with Kramer, Steinheimer constructed the hidden ramps used to
launch the cars. “They wanted these cars as high in the air as possible, so
we built ramps with an angle that launched them at 60 miles an hour,” the
effects expert says. “It’s a standard procedure, but we added a charge of
compressed nitrogen for extra lift.”
“It’s ingenious,” attests Chris Lee of the seamless sequence. “It
creates a real gauntlet situation, where Ecks is forced to keep reacting to
danger literally all around him. He keeps rolling out of the way as the cars
start plummeting towards him.”
“Feel the back of my head – it’s on fire!”
Aiding the filmmakers in their desire to capture realistic action on a grand
scale was the fact that their leading actors were willing and able to perform a
great number of their own fights and stunts, plus brave fires, explosions and
flying debris.
Banderas and Liu used stunt doubles when necessary but, for the most part, as
Kaos affirms, it was the stars themselves who performed these physical feats.
“They both really wanted to do it and they’re more than capable,” says
the director, who considers himself fortunate that his actors brought such
enthusiasm and skill to their roles. “Of course, I never would have pushed
the issue. But hey, if I have Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu and they’re game
for it, they want to train and do their own stunts, there’s no way I’m
going to say ‘no thanks, I’ll just use your doubles and then shoot for the
back of their heads.’”
For Banderas, this is nothing new. He earned a reputation for plunging into the
physical aspects of a role since his earliest films. Citing the 1995 western
Desperado as the last time he was allowed to perform all his own stunts,
Banderas admits that he is lately restricted, due to production insurance
concerns, from doing as much as he would like to. Still, he tries to get away
with as much as he can -- within reason.
“I’m not crazy,” he says. “I won’t jump if I know I’ll get hurt,
but if there’s something I know I can do, I prefer to do it myself. That’s
part of what I owe the audience as a professional. The more I can fully become
the character and the more realistic I can make it, the better.”
Banderas won’t get any arguments from Joel Kramer. “It’s always an
advantage when you can put the actors up front,” the stunt coordinator
concurs. “Antonio is a very athletic, agile person and really forges ahead.
In this movie we dropped him through trash chutes, he ran on trains with
explosives going off, he surfed on a bus and at one point we even set his leg
on fire. He’s a real pro; his timing is impeccable.”
Lucy Liu shares her co-star’s point of view about stunt work, saying, “If
you’re capable and can do it convincingly, why not? The kind of training
required for me on this movie was no different than if an actor has to learn an
accent or gain weight for a part. It enhances the credibility of the
character.”
Liu, who incorporated some martial arts moves in the 2000 action comedy
Charlie’s Angels, expected that Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever would push her to a
higher level physically but could not foresee the kinds of stunts Kaos had
planned. More than once she found herself caught up in the moment and surprised
by the maneuvers she was able to execute. Having complete confidence in the
stunt and effects crew, as well as in her director, helped. “There was never
a time when I truly felt unsafe,” she says. Still, there were some breathless
minutes…
“I would be taking direction from Kaos,” Liu recalls. “He would outline
the scene and say ‘okay, now you’re going to turn and run that way, then
you get onto the train and jump off,’ and I’d say ‘yes, yes, fine.’
Suddenly they’re rolling and here come the pyrotechnics and I’m staring at
this huge fireball, thinking how did I get myself into this? Afterwards the
producers came up to me and said ‘that looked so real’ and I said ‘it is
real – feel the back of my head. It’s on fire!’”
According to Steinheimer, who set up that scene, “Each train was filled with
120 gallons of gas and 40 pounds of black powder, in order to fill the wide
frame with the resulting explosion. Sever jumps from one car just as it bursts
apart and is in the air with the explosion filling the space behind her. Timing
was critical.”
In addition to participating in many of the stunts, Banderas and Liu, as well
as Ray Park, trained extensively to take an active part in many of their fights
scenes, which involved a combination of martial arts and improvisational street
fighting, plus handling knives and chains. “We did not want to create a world
in which everyone has martial arts skills because that’s not realistic,”
says Chris Lee. “We also wanted to avoid using wire work where people are
flying through the air or climbing up walls, for the same reason.”
Although equally matched in strength, training and skill, these adversaries
approach their craft differently in perspective and execution. “Sever is more
precise in her movements, whereas Ecks responds with his own brand of dogged
determination,” Lee offers. “There is once scene in which he’s nearly
blown up and is set on fire and yet he keeps on coming and she just cannot
believe it.”
Sever also clashes with former colleague A.J. Ross, both of them employing the
military/commando techniques they learned from the agency, including knife
fighting. Liu and Park practiced with stunt knives, which proved small comfort
to Lucy Liu. “Even though they were plastic knives they were still sharp and
not at all soft. If he accidentally stuck me in the throat it wasn’t going to
bend like a banana -- it was going to go through my throat! So I really learned
to block and parry,” she says with a laugh. “The speed with which you do
that kind of fighting is incredibly fast. You have to keep the pace or it
doesn’t look real.”
All fight sequences maintained Kaos’ overall commitment to realism. As he
says, “I wanted it realistic enough so that when you watch these two fighting
you feel it on a visceral level.” By letting the actors play out their own
fights as much as possible, he was able to film their scenes wide without
resorting to a lot of cuts and editing that would compromise the effect.
To prepare, Liu began training prior to production with a team supervised by
Fight Choreographer Philip Tan, whose film industry career spans 20 years and
includes stunt work on the recent features Pearl Harbor and Minority Report.
“She trained for three and a half months, eight hours a day, six days a week,
alternating weights with running and fight choreography,” Tan says, “which
brought her standard way up.”
The higher her standard rose, the more of a challenge it presented to sparring
partner Banderas, whose practical concerns were “Don’t get hurt, and
don’t punch the girl in the mouth.” Elaborating, the actor says, “When
you fight in a movie you have to be aggressive and know your timing. You have
to make it believable when you’re hit. In this case, because Sever is
supposed to be so good and because Lucy is in fact, very good also, I have to
make it believable without making myself seem too inferior or the audience
feels it’s not authentic. At the same time, I need to make my own strikes
believable without accidentally hurting her. What you want is for people in the
audience to think, ‘Whoa, look at these guys – they’re killing each
other.’”
Ray Park, who did all his own fighting in Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever, compares
the movements to dancing, adding that, “Like dancing, it takes a lot of
rehearsal. You have to repeat it until you can do it with your eyes closed.”
One would think that someone who had studied martial arts since age seven
wouldn’t require training but, according to Park, it was his experience that
made it necessary. He was so accustomed to executing moves in a particular
style that it took some effort to prevent that muscle memory from overriding
Tan’s carefully choreographed routines. “It was challenging,” he says,
“because sometimes I was moving differently than my body wanted to go.”