One of the cool things I get to do in my job is shoot action sequences.
Hit them!
Action is tough to shoot, takes a long time.
David insisted on everything being practical.
It just adds a whole other visceral element.
You spend weeks and weeks rehearsing these things and getting the timing right.
So that on the day you can essentially bang it out and get it done.
Shooting the action sequences was my favorite thing about this whole process.
Light it up!
DAVID AYERI Action!
It's a lot of analog, old-school action stuff.
David and the whole stunt team,
they didn't wanna rely on just a bunch of special effects.
Each film, I find, has some nut to crack.
And on this film, it was "How do we get the Adversaries to move?"
And they were all what we call the EA, which are the Eyes of the Adversaries.
So having them be believable, scary, imposing,
dangerous, all of those things.
The first encounter with EAs, I mean,
I've never experienced anything like that before.
NORRIS: The hard work for us was really figuring out, "How could we do this?"
And so we started out doing movement studies.
I'd start about there.
Yeah, yeah.
And then I can start to get off the feet.
We had a whole process of trying sprinters, parkour,
exponents, gymnasts,
and we did a whole bunch of tests with rigs
and replicated movement within the rigs,
jumping and leaping over objects.
But that was kind of a real big testing process for us.
And we spent months doing that,
so that David A yer was happy with the final outcome,
that it looked like real, fast-moving people.
Cut!
Originally, that was all designed to be on the street.
Meaning that we would have had to go on the streets every night
to pull down and put up our rigs and our dressings.
In the end, it was decided that the best way to go was to do it in a back lot.
So the art department designed this fantastic city block
that we had as a back lot.
We then suspended an entire overhead flying system.
So then we were able to have people leaping and jumping over cars,
off the walls, over dumpsters.
So that was a big undertaking, we shot that for about three weeks all up.
Rick, why do they look like that?
RICK: Just stay cool.
Hi1' them!
There were probably 50 people on wires,
with 100-plus people on the sides, working the wires.
And there's a swarm of humanity
that just looks crazy.
And the idea that you could easily have just done it digitally,
but David wanted to shoot it and do it practically.
We were in it, and you had to remind yourself, "Right, I got shit to do here."
'Cause it was overwhelming to just experience it.
And that also brings out truthful performances
because everybody's just reacting to what's actually happening.
The body language of the EAs was a really wonderful collaboration,
and the physicality of some really amazing stunt men and actors
in very restricting costumes and wardrobe,
with this kind of blackened tar look, and wearing these masks.
But at the same time, heightening that in a way
that really wasn't what a human being could do.
There's always gonna be CG, there's always gonna be green screen.
But the less there is, the better in my mind.
Because I think the audience feels when it's real.
Daddy, would you do it again?
(MEN LAUGHING)
Ear protection, eye protection.
Guys, it's gonna be noisy.
Then we had a second encounter in the office building.
Why we really liked the idea of putting into an office building
is it becomes, then, three-dimensional.
So then, it gave us the ability of having attacks come from all directions.
(GROANING)
DEADSHOT: They're after Flag again.
These creatures, they just go through the doors, they go through windows.
We had them coming down through the ceiling.
So it became a really interesting three-dimensional battle.
OLIVER SCHOLL: Aleks, our art director,
she did an amazing job of putting that all together and working
with stunts to coordinate all the logistics that were needed for that.
Because also you need to manufacture stuff, like, three, four times.
The glass walls, they get blown and they fall apart. It's a huge undertaking.
So,
you shoot, you shoot, you shoot, you shoot.
David came in and said, "Squib apocalypse." That's what he wanted.
As many squibs as we could fit in that space,
and that's what we went for. We tried to cram in as many as we could.
There was definitely some destruction in there.
They had to design things in a way that if they were focusing
on Croc in this moment,
that the fight beat that Deadshot's up to in the back of frame
matches exactly when they turn around,
and when you got seven or eight people in the room, all fighting
multiple Adversaries, then you can imagine the chaos.
(YELLING)
Ingrid, who's my stunt double, she's a real life bad-ass.
She can do anything. She's nuts.
They're really big advocates for letting us do all our own stunts,
which is perfect. I didn't wanna hand
Harley over to someone to do half the film.
It was amazing that I got to do a lot of it.
(c; ROWL5)
And then there's this one scene where I...
I kinda save everybody's ass.
That was a massive effects thing, where they had to set up a flamethrower
to burn these guys on this scaffolding.
And they come tumbling down.
It's a great shot.
- MAN: All right, here we go. -(APPLAUSE)
HARLEY: Hey, everyone can see all this trippy stuff, right?
Yeah. Why?
I'm off my meds.
Our third and final major set piece of the film,
the coming together of all the ideas that we've had through the first two.
So in the first encounter they'd been thrown together, not by choice.
And so, we 're designing action that really involves
individuals fighting for themselves.
So then we come to the second encounter,
which is the first time we get a feeling that the characters
actually start working together.
So then we get into the third encounter, the end.
We're into sort of a spiritual world.
Uh-oh.
Who's this?
(c; ROWL5)
What we're doing in the finale is really that blend
between visual effects and what we can do practically.
For me, the magic has to have a logic and a visual progression,
and be part of the world.
So I drew upon the idea that's in the DC Comics Universe
about this character's ability to transport people to other dimensions.
And to have these amazing abilities to transform the environment.
So, how does she do that? How does she manifest that?
And that's really the fun part for our guys,
is designing that visual language. What does that magic look like?
And how do we do it in a way that's fresh,
but shows that she's not to be messed with?
So that was a very long design process for us.
We had to go through a phase of really just exploring, number one,
what fits this movie. The idea of the physicality of their magic
as something you can touch,
and you can reach out and grab it if you were to freeze that moment.
So, in the same way that he develops his characters,
we're gonna develop the visual effects in this grounded style
that still gives you this fantastic vision.
We tried to take it as far as we can practically
and David really wanted a big storm, kind of hurricane wind.
So we set it up and started soaking the set. (CHUCKLES)
We're designing some pretty otherworldly stuff happening in this movie,
and so it was such a cool thing to riff on
creatures and characters and magic and a visual language.
And have everybody just going, "Wow."
Well, the idea is also... Like, the engine...
I figured, the engine sucks the explosion up
as it destroys itself, which is why I don't get freaking killed.
There's a lot of creative firepower that comes together to make a film.
SUTER: Whether it's a director, a DP,
costumes, special effects,
it all comes down to a brain trust sitting around a table,
working out exactly how they're gonna do each shot.
Action!
So everything together is an incredibly visually dense film.
(GUNSHOTS)
(LAUGHING)
We burn people, we crash cars,
we blow stuff up.
It was an epic undertaking.
Whoo! What a ride!