- "Mission: Impossible" has always been known for its death-defying stunts.
But in the series' most recent entries,
the set pieces went to a whole new level.
Stunt coordinator and second unit director Wade Eastwood
has been integral to the groundbreaking stunts
of "Mission: Impossible" since "Rogue Nation".
He sat down with us to discuss how the biggest stunts
of Christopher McQuarrie's installments were achieved
and what we can expect from "Dead Reckoning".
This is "How They Shot It - Mission: Impossible".
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We'll use StudioBinder's shot list to look at some of the crew's technical choices.
"- Three, two, one. Action!"
- As a stunt coordinator, Eastwood oversees
the execution of stunts from beginning to end.
"- Certain films you'll come on as a script and
there'll be action there as a car chase and be quite
detailed and you'll rehearse it and deliver it.
The movies that I do aren't that way.
We have characters that need to get from point A to B
and we have to come up with a sequence that gets
in a most visually stunning and challenging way
of getting from point A to B.
And that's just how we do it. So I get involved very early on in the movie
months or even a year out.
So there's a lot of involvement to get all those boxes ticked."
- Of course, above all else, a stunt coordinator ensures no one gets hurt.
"- My job is to eliminate the risk.
So, look at the sequence as a whole
and see what I can do to deliver the best visual sequence
and make it look as dangerous as possible but not be as dangerous as possible."
- For Eastwood and many other stunt coordinators,
the role of second unit director feels like a
natural extension of their coordinator duties.
"- Being a second unit director and stunt coordinator is very common these days.
You basically get to control more on your action
so you start as a stunt performer.
If you've been involved in the setup of a lot of different stunts
and you've got the desire and the passion to lead a team
and to create action you become a stunt coordinator.
And then if you really understand camera and character
then you become a second unit director
slash stunt coordinator so you still have your team.
I've got an amazing team. I couldn't do it without them.
But I just get to therefore create the action and also shoot the action
with my second unit, with my cinematographer that understands my pace
because I'll shoot pretty fast.
And my 1st AD that understands my how to run the set at that speed
and safety and everything and you just have your team and it's like a family.
And you go off and you deliver."
- But being a stunt coordinator on "Mission: Impossible"
is unique because of one man - Tom Cruise.
"- It really is you. I've heard stories.
They can't all be true.
- It's super important that people recognize the difference between a stunt performer
doing a piece of action, a trained world-class motocross rider coming in
and crashing a bike, or jumping in,
and then someone like a Tom Cruise doing it.
- Don't be careful. Be confident. Be confident.
- We got to get him comfortable enough that he can do this done
and then he's going to find the journey of the character
and deliver that to the stunt.
He's got to act it so that we feel the tension of the moment whatever it is
or the jeopardy and we feel the performance."
- For Eastwood and the rest of the "Mission: Impossible" team a truly awesome stunt
is one which isn't simply impressive.
It's one which is driven by character.
"- The thing about Ethan is he doesn't think first and act.
The character acts then thinks.
"- I'm on the plane. Open the door!
- How did you get in the plane? - Not in the plane. I'm on the plane!
Open the door!"
- Someone falls in the river, a kid falls in the river.
I'm not going to think twice a split second I don't care I'm in the river.
And I've got to rescue the kid.
And then we might be getting dragged towards a waterfall over and you're like,
'Oh, I didn't think about that.'
And that's very much Ethan. That's what I think we can relate to.
He has to save the world, has to save the person and he jumps in no matter what,
and then he's like, 'Oh, sh*t. Now what do I do.'
And I think people can really relate to it and relate to him."
- When Eastwood joined the "Mission: Impossible" team for "Rogue Nation",
he was tasked with an extremely complex sequence.
Hanging Tom Cruise off the side of a plane.
And it wasn't just any plane.
The team would be using the military-grade Airbus A400M
which would fly up to 5000 feet in the air
at over 180 miles per hour for nearly 8 minutes.
"- We wanted the audience to just be on that journey
like feel the runway, the sort of steep takeoff
and it was a lot of approval process to get a camera on the side of a plane
where we had to build a very special rig
and get all sorts of approvals.
You can imagine this military aircraft and we had the aircraft for two days.
We had a day to rig and prep and rehearse and a day to shoot.
That's all we were given.
Tom rehearsed and apart from having a bird strike or something that
could have hit him on the outside of the plane
we did all we could to prevent that happening.
But it's a stunt. At the end of the day something could always happen.
"- Cruz was attached to the plane with a harness that was removed in post
and he wore special contacts in case of debris.
The team filmed the sequence on an ARRI 35mm camera
with a Panavision anamorphic zoom lens
which was housed in a Nettman Systems Stabilized head in order to prevent shaky image.
They shot the scene 8 times before they got what they wanted.
Another jaw-dropping stunt from "Rogue Nation" was its lengthy underwater scene.
- We previs the shots and the scene was he's drowning.
The more we got into, we want to hold the shot
longer so the audience are taking a breath with you.
When you go and watch those underwater movies
and you end up taking a breath when your heart starts going and that's really what
they wanted, McQuarrie and Tom wanted."
- Cruz was attached to a spinning rig
and the camera was placed on a track to create the illusion
that Ethan was being thrust around the Taurus.
Although this movement was simulated Cruz holding his breath was very real.
"- We gotta hold the shot longer.
We're not moving the cameras. We're not doing a cheak pass that look like a one-er,
we are not doing a little morph, blend.
He's there in frame so there's no blend, there's no malt, there's no CG.
Well, how do we do it? We just gotta have to hold his breath longer.
So we start the training process baby steps.
And we do it until one and a half minutes becomes two and a half becomes four
becomes five, so just keep going.
- Five, four, three, two, one. Breathe."
- For "Fallout", Eastwood and the crew raise the bar once more.
Cruz became the first actor to do a halo jump on camera.
Halo stands for 'High Altitude Low Opening'
and is designed for undercover military missions
where a skydiver will open their parachute below 2000 feet
in order to not be detected.
Executing the stunt meant lots of practice.
"- Multiple, multiple hundred jumps.
The body's going through a lot.
And you see it when skydivers working with Tom and cameraman
the guys with like 15 000 jumps, you know, 16, 18 000 jumps.
And but then Tom's like, 'Yeah, that's not it. Let's go again'.
And I think, 'He's serious? We've done 10 already like'.
I was all going slowly, it's like,
'Yeah, I think that was a shot. Don't you think? That was the shot.
I think we got the shot' and he's like, 'No, no, I don't think so.'
He's just ready to go as if it's the first take."
- Aerial sequences like this one were shot on a Panavision DXL.
The jump took place at night
so the team specially designed a helmet which lit Cruz's face.
To capture the jump, a stunt camera operator
followed Cruz with a camera attached to his helmet.
The operator needed to pull focus by eye and Cruz needed to hit his marks in midair.
The jump sequence was split into three parts.
The 'Initial jump', the 'Flips', and the 'Oxygen Tank Transferral'.
It was a demanding shoot.
"- It was at night. Tom had to fly up to him
within a sort of foot and a half two foot of the lens
and stopped there at 30 000 feet.
The physicality of what Tom does is immense.
I mean he really was connected physically to these roles."
- Another highly complicated stunt sequence in "Fallout" was the helicopter scene
which begins with Cruize outside the helicopter and then flying it himself.
"- He wanted to do a helicopter chase
that we thought it hasn't really been a great great one in film for many many years.
And we wanted to do something different again, shoot it more subjectively.
Not two helicopters is that objectively from another camera ship.
Probably one of the biggest challenges on the helicopter sequence in "Fallout"
was when Tom drops to the ball.
Normally that would be done on a studio back lot
with a hanging helicopter gimbal off a crane
and a ball with the rigs, the wire rigs,
all through the helicopter gimbal and down to the ground
with a nice descender and everyone on the ground with a cup of coffee.
We in "Mission" style had to do that 2000 foot of the ground in a real helicopter
an a-star Écureuil helicopter is not big.
So we had to design a special rig that could do a compound of wires and cables.
And I was leaning out the helicopter.
They actually had to remove me. I was leaning out giving commands
and cues to my riggers in the helicopter and to Tom.
And the line had to be flaked in a way that when he dropped
wouldn't catch and tangle because it would rip him apart.
So that was hugely challenging.
When you see Tom let go of that helicopter.
He's in free fall. He drops the 40-foot down to that ball.
And he hits that ball hard in the film.
And even if you make it a bit soft, it's still hard.
I always try and make stunts that aren't so dangerous but look dangerous
but with "Mission's" we tend to
always end up doing stunts that are really really dangerous
and sometimes the audience would never really know how dangerous they are
or how much skill you need in order to do it so it's not dangerous.
The amount of training to do that.
A lot of people can fly helicopters.
A lot of people can fly helicopters in the mountains.
If I was doing that, I'm obviously looking at the cockpit.
I'm flying, I'm pitching the nose,
I'm watching my rudder up here, I'm hearing the noise.
And that's all I'm focused on.
But in a situation like that Tom is doing that and thinking.
And I remember when he landed he told me,
'Oh, I just thought if I did one more turn that
way I could get the light flaring perfectly
when I deliver that look or that line you think,
'How are you thinking about that?'
I was just hoping you're looking at your dials
but he can't just look at his dial
because then the audience are just looking at Tom Cruise's
or Ethan Hunters looking at the cockpit and he can't.
He's gonna sell it to us the jeopardy of the situation.
And that is the very very difficult thing to do."
- Figuring out the stunts was only half the battle.
"- We can't capture it in the right way.
Then there's no point in doing a sequence.
So we had to develop again specific pieces of equipment unique to this film.
There's a lot goes on behind the scenes
if the shot looks dramatic in the cinema
believe me the behind the scenes is five times more dramatic.
- Really well done. - Yeah, everyone, the whole team, you guys did a great job.
You just see the close-up. Look at that.
- You did a pretty good job too?
- Yeah, average, pretty average. That's all I want.
As long as I'm just average I don't mind.
- People are chasing us. - Yes, they are. You're driving."
- "Dead Reckoning" continues to push the boundaries of stunt work.
Perhaps the most complex and dangerous sequence from the newest entry
is the Bike Cliff Jump.
"- The cliff jump came about Tom's always wanted to do a base jump
and he loves motorbikes so why not ride a motorbike off a cliff and do both in one go?
We wrote in this chase sequence on a bike that he ends up at the top of the cliff
and worked out all the parameters, we did a lot of rehearsal on this.
We have built a our own motocross track
and Tom was doing motocross all day.
I mean, he would go skydiving in the morning
or skydiving often depending on the weather,
and then motocross the opposite.
His motocross in the morning and skydiving in the afternoon.
We had the helicopter next to the motocross tracks.
He would do motocross, finish the bike,
get in the helicopter go up, and just do tracking runs with the team.
Just getting perfect tracks, perfect tracks.
- That's what we do.
- I mean we're talking hundreds of jumps
jumps on the motorbike too until he was so confident of both
and then we put everything together."
- Oh, it's gonna be fun. - Oh, it's great."
- Capturing the stunt was equally complicated.
"- We did all sorts of crazy stuff.
I mean we even we put cameras on motorbikes with selfie sticks out the front.
We wanted to try and be right there where he came off
so we had to have the drone right there
and obviously, if we hit that we're in trouble."
- The team charted out the trajectory of Cruz and the bike during multiple test runs
so that they could place the cameras in the right areas.
"- I set up a proxy rehearsal assimilation of exact arc with cables
and we put the drones there and we had a little GPS trackers and we measured
so that out of 50 jumps this was our path within a meter of this path
so we could put the drone right there then it would be perfect.
But obviously, he's got to ride the bike off the mountain as Ethan
so he's got to forget that he's just riding a motorbike as a base jumper.
Then he's got to make sure the bike doesn't break down.
If the bike sputted before the end of the ramp, we're in serious trouble.
If the crosswind comes and blows him off the ramp, we're in very serious trouble.
He has to come off the ramp
see these cameras right in front of him but believe he's not going to hit them,
not look at them.
He's got to separate from the bike without getting caught up in it when it rotates
then he's got to do the perfect track away from the bike and the cliff,
have the perfect delay time for opening,
and then once he opens, make sure he's got a line twist or a line over
or anything like that so he doesn't turn and go straight back into the mountain
and he can get a clean exit out
and fly into the valley.
So again in the movie, everyone goes, 'Ah'
but really there are so many other things going on
that the audience won't be aware of to make that 'Wow' factor.
And yeah he delivered.
It was in my 32 years the first time I've had an emotional
onset moment for sure. It was breathtaking."
- Wade Eastwood's work on the "Mission: Impossible" franchise
illustrates the power of a great stunt coordinator
and second unit director.
Stunts are all about preparation.
The more prepared you are the better and safer the stunt.
Start planning your next great action sequence with StudioBinder's storyboard software.
For the complete interview with Wade Eastwood,
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