Oof.
Ouch!
In the climatic fight scene in "The Hunt,"
you see a lot of falling on the floor,
which should hurt,
but what you don't see is that
under a layer of vinyl made to look like real flooring,
the floor is actually all foam,
according to the director.
To make this elaborate fight scene work,
the filmmakers built an entire set
with each stunt in mind.
A set that was meant to be destroyed.
This left the film's production designer
with the tough job of building sets
that were tailor-made to fit the needs of a scene
without the audience ever noticing.
Warning: spoilers ahead.
In "The Hunt," a group of conservative Americans
is kidnapped by a group of wealthy liberal Americans
and attacked for sport.
No surprise, the satirical film
was met with much controversy.
The film culminates as Crystal,
played by Betty Gilpin,
faces off against Athena,
played by Hilary Swank,
who helped organize the hunt near her sprawling manor
where the fight takes place.
When director Craig Zobel
was given the script for "The Hunt,"
all it indicated was that the climax
would be an epic head to head,
so he worked with the stunt coordinators,
special effects team, and production designer
to choreograph a fight scene
that was a standout moment of the movie.
Craig Zobel: We wanted this whole fight
to just feel more messy and real,
and that drove a lot of the decisions
that we were making.
The production designer and I, you know,
had all these kind of ideas that were built around
building this jungle gym of a set.
Narrator: To map out the fight,
the stunt coordinators constructed
their own version of the home
out of cardboard boxes,
which stood in for the 60-foot-by-50-foot set.
While working with the cardboard model,
the stunt team came up with the idea
of turning the kitchen island into a stunt piece
by having the characters vault across it.
While production designer Matthew Munn
had already planned to have a kitchen island,
he now had to retrofit and redesign it
to ensure it was strong and sturdy enough
to support this one stunt.
To pull off the move successfully,
the island was built out of strong wood
and painted to look like concrete.
Then the top was removed and replaced
with a foam pad,
similar to how they used foam
underneath the vinyl floor covering.
Zobel: Kind of like a kid's playhouse foam floor
for certain parts of it.
Narrator: The two characters also fight
on top of the kitchen table.
Like with the island, they needed something sturdy,
but they also wanted something aesthetically pleasing,
so the production designer and decorator
picked out a rustic-looking table
that fit in with the rest of the set.
But because they knew it would have to handle a lot,
they made sure the solid wood table
also had a steel base.
Even average household items were chosen
and strategically placed
so they could be picked up and used as weapons.
Like this light fixture, which both looks cool
and turned out to be practical.
Athena: That was good.
Narrator: And this food-processor blade,
which was Zobel's idea,
because it's something he has been
afraid of his whole life.
Almost all the props you see,
from cabinets to jars,
are breakaway props,
which means they're built to be safely broken.
Zobel: What I learned is, once you're working
with this many breakaway items,
you do a lot of practice runs
before you break them.
Narrator: The next stunt was perhaps
the most difficult one to shoot:
moving the fighters from the kitchen
to the living room.
To make this transition more dynamic,
the filmmakers decided they wanted to use
this unusual double-sided fireplace,
which the production design team would need to build.
Zobel saw a double-sided fireplace
while location scouting at a real house
and thought it would be perfect for a stunt.
The fireplace was built with your standard
drywall and concrete,
but they laid special propane lines underground
that the special effects team could use
to increase the height of the flames
as the stunt double went through the fireplace.
The opening of the fireplace was originally smaller,
but after some experimentation,
they expanded it so that it was
5 feet wide by 3 feet tall.
It's a dangerous move,
so as an extra precaution,
they soaked the stunt double's clothes
with a fire retardant.
Then, under that,
she wore protective CarbonX and fire gel
to prevent her skin from burning.
Following this, Athena fires at Crystal with her gun
and hits the chimney. For that shot,
Munn said the chimney was altered to fit the move.
They took a piece out of it,
replaced it with hard foam,
and then rigged it with squibs
for the perfect shotgun effect.
Athena then chases Crystal up the stairs,
where they duke it out some more.
But Crystal would eventually need
to get back downstairs somehow.
That's where these big ropes came in handy.
In the manor, they're meant to be large art pieces,
but the team knew they could double as a stunt piece.
For the first part of the stunt,
Gilpin's stunt double was connected to two lines
in a Y shape that were attached to her harness.
The lines went through pulleys above the set,
which were then redirected
to a pole station across the room.
A stunt rigger made sure the stuntwoman
got just the right amount of tension on her lines.
Too much tension, and the stunt would look fake.
Not enough tension,
and she would peel off the rope right away.
For the second part of the stunt,
she dangled about eight feet off the ground.
At the count of...
Director: Three, two, one.
Narrator: She would be pulled forward.
Then, once the rigger heard this sound,
[crack] he had to make sure
to drop her at just the right speed
so she fell directly onto this table.
Knowing that she would land on it,
this had to be built as a breakaway table,
and the legs on the table
had to be constructed in such a way
that they would break immediately on impact for this stunt.
Meanwhile, because the rope had to collapse,
it was held up with specially made breakaway brackets,
which you can see here.
According to Zobel, they had enough materials
to do this fall four times.
In the end, he says he got it done
in just one or two takes.
While the interior was shot on a soundstage,
it still had to match the actual
exterior of the house shown on screen,
a real house in Louisiana.
So one element the production design team
had to match with the real house:
a hallway with big glass windows.
It served as the key part of the set
to move the fight from inside the house
to this small courtyard.
The window turns into an active part of the action
at the moment when Crystal
tries to throw Athena through it.
On the first try, the window doesn't break,
and then it does on the second try.
In reality, the windows were made
out of a tempered glass,
which they chose specifically for this move.
This type of glass is strong enough
to not break immediately, but when it does,
it breaks into tiny pieces
as opposed to sharp shards.
The stunt actresses were attached to a rope,
which was attached to something stationary
known as a dead man,
allowing them to bang up against the glass
without being pulled through it.
Then, for the second attempt,
Munn said the special effects team
rigged the glass with explosives
that were timed to go off at the exact moment
the two characters needed to go through the glass.
The glass was also retrofitted
to allow for this pulley system
put together by the stunt team,
which would then launch the characters
out into the courtyard.
Staging the scene this way
gave them an excuse to move the fight outside
and then come back around the kitchen
for the fight's conclusion.
Their transition from one side of the house
to the other via the courtyard
was captured in one move
by this camera on a track.
Zobel, the cast, and crew
managed to film the entire sequence
over five long 12-hour days
at the very end of the shoot.
Building the set to support the fight
allowed them to shoot everything safely and efficiently,
while still looking spontaneous
instead of overly choreographed.
While big parts of the set,
like windows and the fireplace,
were most crucial,
even the most unexpected objects and set decoration
helped advance the fight,
like this expensive bottle of Champagne.
Zobel knew he wanted it there
for Crystal to grab at the end of the fight as a reward,
but what he didn't know
was how perfect the moment where Athena catches it
would turn out to be.
Zobel: When we go to shoot that portion of the scene,
on the very first take,
Hilary kind of dove and did this amazing football catch
that I certainly did not anticipate,
and I don't think anybody on set anticipated
her really going for it that much.
A cheer erupted on set
as she caught the Champagne.
Hilary Swank: [laughing] Oh! Oh, my God.
The reaction after is funny.
It's like I'm a masochist.
[laughing]
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