Hi, my name is Roel Reiné, and I'm the director, DOP,
cinematographer and camera operator of this movie Hard Target 2.
So, you have to know this, when I wanted to be a director,
I had a house, when I was 26 years old in Holland,
and in my house, I had a little cinema,
and on the cinema, were five photos of my five hero directors.
And so, that was Ridley Scott, and there was Paul Verhoeven,
and there was Luc Besson,
but also, there was John Woo,
and he was absolutely one of my favorite directors.
So, when I heard that Universal was doing a Hard Target sequel,
I wanted to do this.
At that time, I was very busy
because I just finished this movie called "Admiral,"
which is a big, epic Dutch language movie that I made.
My schedule was very problematic to do this movie,
to shoot this movie, and to post this movie, but I'm happy, we could squeeze it in.
Let's talk a little bit about this opening scene.
So, we wanted to do like a...
I wanted to make an homage to the John Woo movies that I love
and do a version of that.
So, for me, the whole opening sequence is like the opening of Hard Target,
somebody gets chased and killed,
but I wanted to do it with a nice modern kind of camera style.
And this is all handheld rigs, but we also used some CableCams,
but we used a very low-budget CableCam.
I think the CableCam system was only $2,000.
And we put a GH4 underneath it to use it.
And that's also what I really like.
I like to use all these kind of toys and small things to figure out new stuff.
So this is that CableCam shot, with just the GH4,
and it was a $2,000 thing.
We put a Ronin-M underneath the CableCam system.
Ronin-M is a stabilization... Like, a movie rig, stabilization rig.
This is the same, also the CableCam,
and then with the computers, we took out the cable, and cleaned out the cable.
And of course, there's one of my favorite actors, Temuera Morrison,
he's been in three of my movies.
I always like to have him on set, he's just a great actor,
and he's always so present, and great ideas.
Anyway, Hard Target 2,
we made this movie for four and a half million dollars,
I shot the movie in 20 days, in Thailand,
I did, now, four movies, I think, in Thailand.
Which I'm really proud of, because shooting in Thailand is such a blast.
The crews are so good, and they're fast, and the stunt guys are amazing.
Welcome, everybody, to tonight's weighing in!
And all these movies that I've done in Thailand
are produced by Chris Lowenstein
and with his company, Living Films.
And there of course Scott Adkins, I'm a huge fan of Scott Adkins.
I always wanted to work with him,
and also Robert Knepper, and Rhona Mitra,
those are the three leads in the movie.
But Scott Adkins, I really am a fan of his work.
I see all the movies that he does. And he does three, four movies a year or so.
I always wanted to work with him, and this was the perfect movie for him.
So, when we were developing the screenplay,
we always, from the beginning, had Scott in mind.
And we were very happy that he would do it.
And then the villain of this movie is Robert Knepper.
He, of course, is from Prison Break,
one I really liked and he had a beautiful character there.
And so, I was very happy to get him as well.
So, for this boxing game, this whole opening scene...
So, this whole... The weigh-in sequence,
and then, the whole fight, we did three rounds,
the whole aftermath of him killing him, that was all one shooting day.
So, I did like 180 setups or something on this day, it was crazy.
And also, you see the top thing, where you see these LEDs hanging?
So, for me, it was very difficult to find a good location in Thailand
to build this boxing match, Vegas thing.
By the way, those two Vegas shots you just saw, the drone shots,
I shot them myself, I also have a little drone.
I had a DJI Inspire that I shot those shots with.
And I was in Vegas for the NAB.
And it's a fair about toys and stuff, camera toys.
And then I then I flew over The Strip and made the shots,
and those are the shots that we put in the movie.
Anyway, so, we had this empty hall in Thailand,
and what we did, I had Nikorn, who was my gaffer,
he put in this great lighting, all these lights in the background,
you see them moving, all these theater spots that could move with computers.
And then I had the art department
build this beautiful LED above the ring,
that we could have the American flag in.
And that was my basic lighting plan for this whole thing.
We had only 150 extras,
and then, we put a lot of neon lights in the background on empty...
Kind of, empty seats, what was in the background.
So, it feels like there's a lot of depth.
You see in the background, you see these LEDs,
they are also backwards, and reverse,
because there are some brands there...
You're not allowed to put them in the movie, right?
So, we put them backwards, in reverse,
and then with the spot lights... And the depth,
it feels like a big, big stadium, while it's only 150 people,
and one day of shooting.
And of course, the fighting...
This whole fight was choreographed by Scott himself.
He is such a good fighter, and he has so many ideas,
and such a good attitude and energy on the set,
that it was a blast to see him doing this fight.
And this was the last shooting day, by the way, funny enough.
Don't know about the first, but you definitely lost the second.
You can't leave it up to the judges, okay?
So, we shot this movie on RED DRAGONs, by the way.
Get out there...
I always like to shoot on REDs,
the cameras are very small and compact, and I can move them around quickly.
And with battery solutions, you can really get nice handhelds.
Because especially when it is a fight like this,
a lot of stuff in this fight, I'm handheld in the ring with them.
Any my other operator Rolf Dekens, he's Dutch,
he's also with me in the ring.
And we shot this handheld style.
What I also like to use a lot is...
I'm using a monopod, and I put the monopod on top of the camera,
so, I then can put it really low on the ground, but it feels like a handheld, so it's a...
Handheld at low angle,
and I use a lot of that during the fighting as well.
So, we shot this on REDs,
we had three cameras and three main crew cameras
and Neung was my other operator, he's a local Thai guy.
And then we also used GH4s,
we put them on a Ronin rig
and put it on the CableCam, and we put them on motorcycles and stuff.
And we destroyed a few of them. I remember.
And then, I also used a DJI Inspire
so all the helicopter shots and drone shots, I operated myself
on the DJI Inspire.
It's a beautiful drone, and I love doing drone shots.
I also use drones to do scouting, when I'm scouting on locations,
and that's kind of how I work.
So, the actors we had were... Scott Adkins, we had Robert Knepper.
And what I wanted to do in this commentary...
This is, by the way, for me, a very John Woo moment.
Putting the things in the air
with the cannon, with serpentines...
How do you call it in English?
And then, with a big slo-mo stuff going on,
a lot of times, I was doing John Woo homage moments.
And, for me, it was definitely these moments in the ring,
and the slo-mo, and all these little sparkles coming down,
and I love that kind of stuff.
It was amazing, and a big honor to do a movie,
a sequel to a John movie, especially when I'm such a big fan of Woo,
especially his early work, and also, of course, Face/Off.
But Hard Target... But I loved his Hong Kong movies.
And Hard Boiled, and The Killer. And all those movies
I saw so many times, and I really studied them.
And the interesting thing is, that the first AD,
the first assistant director that I had on the set here in Thailand,
his name is Charlie, and he was John Woo's first AD
in his beginning years in Hong Kong.
And so, it was very interesting to hear stories from him,
how John Woo shoots.
And here comes my favorite shot.
This is my favorite shot of the movie. I love this.
The whole feeling, and all the guys in black and him in the white trousers,
and then the side lighting, and the slo-mo, et cetera.
It really was a blast.
So, including this scene, we shot this all in one day,
including this water stuff, and this flashback that he had with Jonny.
And it was a tough, tough day. Tough last day.
What beach house?
The next scene we're gonna look at is the scene where
Scott is kind of at his place six months later in Bangkok.
Bangkok is one of my favorite cities in the world.
I just love the feeling of it, the grittiness, the energy.
Especially Chinatown, it's one of my favorite places in Bangkok.
And I wanted to shoot the movie there for a big part,
but we were just not able to do it.
It's very expensive
to close down all the streets, and all the shops, and...
So, we shot the movie for four days in Bangkok,
and shot the rest of movie in Kanchanaburi.
So, this is me with my drone, flying over Chinatown.
And then, over the river here. And then, this is his house, where he lives,
and, of course, we have the doves in slo-mo,
and you have to have them if you do a John Woo movie.
So, what I wanna do in this commentary,
I wanna get on the phone,
a few crew members and a few cast members
and I thought, maybe it would be cool to have them on the speaker phone.
So, first, I'm gonna have a call with Scott Adkins.
So, we now have Scott Adkins on my cell phone.
Hey, Scott.
- Hey, Roel. How are you? - I'm good.
So, you're now in England right now?
Yeah, in England. This is me with my English accent.
- So, I was... - That'd have been different in the movie.
So, I always do director's commentaries on all my movies.
And I thought it would be fun to talk with some people individually.
I just said that I was such a big fan... I'm still...
That I was such a big fan of Scott Adkins,
and I saw a lot of movies of you, I've seen all your movies.
And I always wanted to work with you,
and when we were developing the Hard Target screenplay,
I always was like, "We need to get Scott for this."
So, I was so happy that you did. So, how was your experience on this movie?
Thanks for that, Roel, I wanted to work with you as well.
It's a crazy film, to be honest.
It was a crazy film to work on because every day
there seemed to be something completely different than the day before.
Whether it was with the elephants, whether it was on a speedboat,
running through the jungle, swimming in the water,
every day was very high energy, and lots of action.
It was a very, very tough shoot,
one of the hardest shoots I've ever done,
but at the same time, for some reason, it was really enjoyable as well.
I think that's because of all the different locations and different settings
that you came up with.
So, it was really hard, but really enjoyable as well.
Great.
- And how do you... - But you shoot so fast, you see?
I've never worked with anyone that shoots as quickly as you do.
When I saw the schedule, I thought, "Well, this isn't gonna be possible."
But let me tell you, Roel, he shoots like I've never known it.
And you work hard as well yourself.
And it's good 'cause it keeps things moving,
there's no waiting around, we're constantly on the go.
- It was a lot of fun. - Great, man.
And how do you prepare yourself for a part like that?
You know, mentally and physically, how do you do that?
If it's an action film, obviously, there's so much physicality to it
that your body's got to be in a certain shape, and...
I'm always in good shape 'cause I enjoy to train and I look after myself.
But really, it's a case of preparing your mind mentally because
I know how hard it's going to be, there's so much action that we need to do.
All the action needs to be taken care of,
I know that I'm gonna be having five hours sleep,
six if I'm lucky tonight.
So, really, I... You gotta mentally prepare yourself
for, basically, going to war, is what it feels like.
It can be really difficult,
you've gotta love it to do it, otherwise, you'd just be insane.
Yes. And the fighting, you're very amazing, good at it.
But also, you did a lot of the choreography yourself.
Like the opening fight, you know...
How did you do that?
And can you tell us a little bit about what you were planning?
It's a collaborative effort. We've got Seng and the stunt guys,
and my stunt double Brahim, he's great.
And Jonny came in, and...
We reallyjust wanted to make it quite realistic,
that MMA fight.
So, we all got together and we hashed out some choreography.
We tried to learn it as best we could before we shot it on the day,
but we were kind of playing catch up at that point because
that was at the end of the schedule, wasn't it?
And everybody's busy and tired.
But yeah, I'm a big fan of MMA, and, obviously, I practice it.
And it was fun to create that fight, and tell a bit of a story.
It's a different style to the rest of the movie, that opening MMA fight.
Yeah, and it was beautiful, man, it was absolutely amazing.
What was one of the hardest things you had to do on this shoot?
Every day was hard, wasn't it? Let me think.
What was the hardest? It was all hard. Just working with you is hard, basically.
But I'd do it again. I'm happy to do it again, strangely.
But what was the hardest day?
I guess, you know, what was the hardest day, it was the first day,
because that was when I realized how quickly you shot stuff.
That was when I realized, "Okay, I'm gonna be doing six or seven things today."
And of course so much of the movie is action-packed.
So much of it is me running around.
I remember after the first day, I was so tired.
I just thought to myself, "God, am I gonna be able to do this for the rest of the shoot?"
But then, you become accustomed to it.
But the first day was a shock to the system.
I always work hard on every action film, but this was...
I mean, it was just so fast paced.
Hey, and your fascination with John Woo, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Oh, man, I'm a huge John Woo fan.
He's one of the best directors there's ever been.
I was heavily into Hong Kong cinema as a kid.
And before John Woo broke through with I guess Hard Target in the west,
I was a big fan of The Killer, and Hard Boiled,
and Bullet in the Head, and A Better Tomorrow.
I actually got to meet John Woo when I was about 15 years old,
the first time he came to England.
And there was a double bill of The Killer and Bullet in the Head.
And I got to meet him. So, yeah, a huge fan.
As I know you are as well.
And, yeah, one of the best action directors to have ever lived.
- Absolutely. - And it's a pleasure for us
to do a sequel to one of his most well-known films.
Yes. Yes, I agree with that.
Cool, man. Fun. Great, thank you.
- That was... Yeah. - Roel, I just wanna say,
it was a blast working with you, man.
And I look forward to seeing the film, which I haven't seen yet,
and listening to this commentary.
Yes, you're gonna see it very shortly. Cool, man. Great talking with you.
- I'll speak to you soon. - Okay.
- Thanks, Roel. - Thanks. Bye.
So, we are back in commentary, that was fun then.
I love doing this. I think from now on, all my commentaries, I'll do this.
And you're set for life.
Madden, give Mr. Baylor our particulars.
So, Robert Knepper, he's of course, a mind-blowing, good actor.
I was such a fan of Prison Break,
and so, when he was available,
I was really so enthusiastic.
This is also a very cool shot, by the way, when I just pan into the streets.
So, this is just a RED Epic, where we shot on 1280 ISO,
and then I put some high speed lenses on that are the 1. 1 stop,
if that says anything to you.
And then you get this really nice look.
You're always gonna be welcome out at the beach house.
What beach house?
The one I'm gonna buy with the money I get from kicking your ass.
What was really a blast to shoot,
they were all choreographed by Seng.
Seng is a local stunt coordinator in Thailand.
I use him in many of my movies.
And I really like his style, his ethics,
and his stunts are really amazing.
This is, by the way, the shot that comes now, I really like that shot.
This is my drone again, the DJI Inspire,
doing this drone shot of the glass building.
And then this pull out, we have a very cool Steadicam operator in Thailand
his name is Somsak, who pulled off this shot.
I just love this image, it's such an iconic image.
He's on top of the world with the samurai statue there,
what is kind of his philosophy in life.
And then he's on his iPad
that shows him, how in control he is of his own world and his own space.
And this was basically the top floor, and it was completely empty,
and it was my hotel where I stayed in, in Bangkok.
It helps me to focus.
They also have very nice restaurant called Long Table.
And I stayed in this hotel, and the top floor was completely empty,
so we put in carpet, and we put in a lot of lighting,
to balance the light from the outside with the inside, so I could do this scene.
And I always thought maybe it would be interesting to have him cut a fish
and talk about making sushi.
And we brought in a real chef to cut the fish for us.
And to have the fish fresh, and do a really nice job with it,
and it looks really cool.
The only thing is, Robert became very sick of the fish later.
So, it was a pity.
And on top of this hotel, was this pool, and this was not the hotel pool.
It was a private pool of the owner of the hotel.
And we could not land a chopper there,
but I asked them to just have the chopper hovering.
So, Chris, the producer,
organized that we had this chopper hanging there
and then it will tell the story of them traveling from Bangkok
away to Myanmar to do the Hard Target game.
What else will be fun is that we also tracked down Robert Knepper
and he will be on the phone with us right now.
...of Myanmar, Mr. Baylor.
- Hey, Robert. - Yo!
Hey, so, you're now live in my director's commentary.
So, this is Robert Knepper on my phone. How you doing, man?
How many times do we have to work together before you pronounce my name correct?
Because I only say "Rob" or "Robert" to you. Never "Knepper, " right?
What do I do wrong?
Knepper-schnapper, schnapper-pepper here.
It's my Dutch accent.
In this country, darling, the "K" is silent.
So, I'm in the commentary right now. We are recording this conversation.
So, you play the villain in the Hard Target sequel, right?
So, how do you think the shoot went?
And can you tell us a little bit about your experience in Thailand?
Well, it's funny you asked that because just the other day somebody asked me
"What did you think of Thailand? We're thinking of going to Thailand."
And I said, "Run. Run to Thailand."
It's an amazing experience.
It's notjust a great place to go, it's an amazing experience.
And all of it together was pretty amazing because of the people, first of all.
The people are the country.
And secondly, without tooting your horn too much,
working with you, sir,
was a lot of fun, was a real treat.
There's a lot of hardworking people. You knew every crew member by name.
The only mistake I made was wearing black clothing that didn't breathe in a jungle.
Other than that, it was pretty freaking amazing.
Yes, you know...
You get to play a lot when you're an actor.
And I certainly got to play a lot in Thailand with you.
Yes. Yeah. You know, you're one of my favorite actors, right?
And I always wanted to work with you, so it was really a blast to do that.
Hey, but how did you prepare yourself to do a villain like this?
Did you do special preparations for this?
Ever since I remember acting, I always was taught...
Bill Esper in New York always taught me to play the opposite.
And you wrote a line in the script that I remember, it stuck out for me.
Something about, "they thought I was too theatrical,
"if you can believe that."
Or I added, I think, "If you can believe that." They thought I was too theatrical.
Well, I just thought, "Just make him like a showman.
"Make everything he's selling to these people
"that have all of the gobs and gobs of money to do this,
"make it really interesting.
"And that they're not out to kill somebody, they're out there to enrich their lives."
So, playing the opposite for me meant
being charismatic and being fun and being theatrical
and stuff like that.
Yes.
And you did really well because every moment in the movie where you are,
it's such an interesting depth level stuff that I see.
And I really enjoyed it.
Even in the editing, I was looking at all of the takes, and it was such cool stuff.
Hey, thank you, man.
And you fighting with Scott Adkins,
how was you beating...
Letting you beat him. How was the experience?
There were so many incredible memories from that bridge,
- as you know. - Yes.
That bridge was a true testament to,
"Yeah? You thought you couldn't take any more?
"Well, how about this one?"
The conditions were unbelievable on top of that bridge
having two, three beautiful Thai people fanning me
and keeping umbrellas over me like they did with everybody.
The fighting sequence was...
I was actually really glad that you didn't make me go one-on-one with him,
as much as some of the other guys.
That my weapon was my words.
And my words, which you gave me, were beautiful there.
I just loved hoping to prove to you
that the more you gave me, the more I could say
in a rapid amount of time.
And really, the slings and arrows that were going his way
were gonna hopefully cut.
Unfortunately, it didn't 'cause he was gonna have to beat me.
And I remember something very funny that you thought I had said.
- "I don't want blood." Do you remember this? - Yes.
And you looked at me, like,
"No, that's the whole climax of the movie is you being bloody."
I said, "No, no, no. I never said I didn't want to be bloody."
When I saw that sequence, when we were doing the ADR for it,
do you remember, I was like, "That platoon kind of like..."
- Yes. - Yes.
Rapid fire at my body. I just thought, "Wow! Thatjust all looks so amazing.
"It's pretty great to have experienced that with you."
Yeah, man. That was a pretty epic ending. Yeah, and I loved it.
And I love the moment when you turn around and say,
"No, you're not doing what he wants you to do, "
and then you see the army coming and then you're flipping and laughing.
It was such a blast.
I was also... Remember, Roel, by that point, we were all so tired.
And we're just like, "Oh, my God!" I saw that the end was near
by the time we did that
because, I think, for me, that was the last day.
And it was a bitter-sweet kind of feeling
because I was happy to be out of that freaking heat.
At the same time I was thinking, "No! I gotta say goodbye to Roel.
"I gotta say goodbye to these beautiful people."
Yes. Cool, man.
So, where are you now? Are you working on something?
We're doing the nine-part event series of Prison Break up in Vancouver.
Cool, man.
Putting back this old glove...
Putting back on this old glove, which is kind of fun.
Yeah, man, I cannot wait to see that.
- All right, man, thanks... Yeah. - It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be fun.
- Thanks for... - Much love.
Yeah, man. Thanks for stepping in for a sec.
- You're welcome. - All right.
- Speak to you later. Bye. - Yeah. Bye-bye.
So, that was great.
So, what I really wanted to do was this one shot, right.
You just saw it when we kind of introduced all the fighters.
We did this one tracking shot with Steadicam.
And Somsak, again, the Steadicam operator, pulled this off.
Because I really felt that if you want to introduce all these characters
and all these hunters, and Scott's reaction,
and you want to make it real,
I wanted to do it, not like a documentary,
but I wanted it to feel like this one-shot moving along the story
and it was like a three or four page dialog that we did in one continuous shot.
And I think we did seven takes, and this was take five
that we used in the movie and I'm really happy with the result.
So, all these hunter actors,
they came from Australia a lot.
Of course, not Rhona Mitra. She's from Britain.
And I was always a big fan of Rhona.
So, I really happy that she was available to join us.
And then the other actors, they all came from Australia.
I did a casting in Australia and I met these guys.
So, we have Adam Saunders,
Peter Hardy, Sean, Jamie,
and of course, Ann, who plays Tha, the girl.
She also came from Australia.
And this is Gigi. He is from Thailand.
So, I met these guys in Australia. I did only one casting.
And that's a pity when you do these movies that are so far away
from Los Angeles, where I live.
I'm originally from Holland, but I've lived in Los Angeles for 11 years now.
But you never shoot in LA.
You shoot in Thailand, or in Africa, or in Canada.
So, I had to cast in Australia.
And I found during the casting process...
I had this great casting director in Australia, in Sydney.
And she found all these great actors.
And then during this casting session,
you basically start talking already about the parts and try to rehearse a little bit.
And mold already, a little bit, the characters
because you know you don't have any time later
during the process of shooting the movie.
Now, I was very lucky to have Tha and Scott a week before shooting,
so we could do rehearsals with them.
And also the other actors came in two days before shooting.
I could do some small rehearsals with them.
But the rest is just, you know, they know their stuff,
we talked about the characters and what the characters are going through.
I think, also costumes... Costume designing, costumes work a lot.
You are with them in the costumes, they try it on, we talk about the characters,
we change the little things,
and therefore you're creating these characters
because on these kind of movies...
I just did the Admiral movie, the Dutch epic movie.
I had three weeks of rehearsals there,
so I could really build the characters with the cast.
But on movies like this, you don't have that luxury.
And especially the way I shoot, I do like, 100 to 120 slates a day,
setups a day.
And because you need the coverage, you need a lot of cuts...
And movie like this, has like, I think 2,800 cuts.
Picture cuts.
And that's kind of what you need to do an action movie.
And to do that, you cannot do 20 shots a day.
Because if you do... Normally, movies do like 20 slates, 25 slates a day.
If you have only 20 days and you do like 20 slates a day,
you have 400 shots.
And how can you get a rhythm in a movie like this
with only 400 shots?
So, that's the reason why I work fast and use a lot of cameras to get that feeling.
Now we are in Kanchanaburi area with the locations.
This is a very famous waterfall. It's a big tourist attraction in Thailand.
We also shot... I did the Scorpion King sequel many years ago.
We shot that also at the same waterfall as here.
And the funny thing is that because this is a nature park,
you cannot use live fire.
You cannot shoot any blanks.
Even movie blanks. You cannot use them.
So we had to do all these things digitally with special effects
and they always look really good. So, that's not a problem.
Fuck!
So, of course, Scott had to go into the water.
And the fun thing
in these movies, for me, camera operating and camera angles
is one of the most important things, of course.
One of my operators' name is Rolf Dekens.
He is a DP from Holland. Very talented.
And I always ask him, for the last few years, to come in on my movies.
And he's then the one climbing up the waterfall,
he's the one in the water, he's the one climbing in through the tree.
He's crazy like me, only much younger than me.
So, we're gonna call him and talk with him as well.
So, here's Rolf Dekens on the phone.
So, Rolf, I'm now in the director's commentary session of Hard Target,
and this is, guys, on the phone now with me is Rolf Dekens.
He's a Dutch cinematographer.
And he's one of my favorite cameramen in the world.
And he comes a lot with my movies, right,
he operates cameras and co-DPs with me in my movies, right?
Yeah, absolutely, Roel.
It's always a big pleasure to be in a set with you
'cause the energy level is very high,
and for a cameraman, it's the perfectjob 'cause it's a dream coming true.
Lot of things happening, high pace, high energy and great directing,
great locations, great acting.
Yeah, it's a boy's dream just coming true.
Hey, and can you tell me a little bit more about where you come from
and how you started working with me, and which movie that was?
Yeah, yeah. Well, I've always been a fan of your work.
I finished film school in 2001 in Amsterdam at the Dutch Film Academy.
And I started following you immediately.
And at a certain point, I thought, "I want to work with Roel, "
so, I thought lemme just send him an e-mail.
And Roel responded and said, "Yeah, sure. Let's have a talk."
So, I went to LA and there I met Roel,
and the first thing Roel said was, "Well, I hate DPs, and especially Dutch DPs, "
'cause Roel had some bad experience in the past.
But I said, "Well, I hope I can convince you that not all DPs are horrible people,
"and some are very willing to help the director/DP
"to make the movie as good as possible."
And then Roel said, "Well, great. Come to my next movie.
"It's called The Man with the Iron Fists 2: The Sting of The Scorpion."
And, well, I basically proved myself a little bit,
that Roel and I are a great team.
And the rest is history.
We did another movie after that. And another one after that.
And in the future, we have some other projects scheduled.
- So, it's a... - Absolutely.
It's amazing. Yeah.
And what makes a shoot, like Hard Target, right...
So, we shot this in Thailand.
Can you tell me a little bit about working with the Thai crew
and working on Thai sets?
Yeah, it's great to work in Thailand.
You have a lot of people doing a job
that in some countries, you could do with less people.
But the way they do it and the smile on their faces
makes it just a great experience.
The heat we experienced on Hard Target 2 was very intense.
Celsius, it was sometimes 40 degrees or more.
But it was all worth it.
You shoot long days in Thailand,
you were being picked up at 4:15 and you're home at 10:00,
but the days just fly by 'cause it's just great.
The locations are amazing in Thailand, the scenery changes a lot.
You drive for a couple of hours and then you're completely somewhere else.
It looks easier to shoot than in other countries around the world.
So, Thailand is a very friendly film country to be in with great crews,
and they are experienced with a lot of American movies
and it shows on set. Yeah.
So, how is it different shooting with me being also your director
than shooting other movies?
Or, how is it different?
Yeah, there is a big difference.
I also work as a director of photography on my own movies
and then I'm fully in charge.
And if something goes wrong, I have to say that to the director.
But when Roel is the director and director of photography,
problems are very easily solved because one man has all the answers.
So, if something goes wrong, Roel just says,
"Great. We'll change it, we'll improvise. We'll make it work."
For me, as an operator, I have to do a step down the ladder.
'Cause I'm not in charge of the Camera Department,
although I try to be as much as possible in a friendly way
if I see things that can help Roel, I'll do it quietly.
I won't put any attention on it for Roel 'cause he wants to do his show.
It's basically the Roel Reiné show. You either love it, or hate it.
And I very much love it. And everybody on his sets love it.
What I also must say is that Roel is very loyal.
So, he's hard to satisfy. But if he likes you, he will keep calling you.
And that's not very much seen in the motion picture industry world-wide.
And Roel is a big exception on that and that's a big plus.
Good.
Hey, and we shot this on RED Epics, right?
Yes.
Can you tell us a little bit about the style, handheld, dollies,
what kind of style did you use on this movie?
Yes. Well, Roel has a favorite camera.
It's called the RED Epic or RED DRAGON.
It's a very small... Basically, a pretty new camera.
It's only a couple of years on the market and it's designed for Roel.
It's perfectly small. You can hide it anywhere.
You can put it in cars.
You can put it in boats. You can hide it in the tree.
It's not that much hassle to make a good shot with a very light weight camera.
And the way Roel shoots is with a lot of cameras.
Most of the time, it's always three.
Sometimes four, and he'd rather shoot with five.
And it's needed because he has so much going on on the set
that every camera operator has something to shoot.
So, what he basically does is, he shoots the whole movie with the A camera,
that's his decoupage.
And he lets the other operators do theirjob.
He trusts them, but he knows he shoots the movie with the first camera he operates.
He can tell the story with that.
All the other cameras do the extra coverage,
and the extra Roel Reiné flavor that gives the movie its special flavor.
And it's a very smart way of shooting
'cause you can always tell the story with his shots
and then the rest is just extra, which makes it look amazing.
So, it's a very smart way of shooting and nobody works like that.
Nobody. Nope. He's the only one on the planet.
Good. Don't tell anybody, 'cause now they're gonna copy it.
So, what was...
It sounds a lot easier than it does.
It needs a lot of discipline, it needs a lot of love for the job,
and it's pretty demanding.
And it's 12, 13-14 hours a day and very tough circumstances.
Weather, location, climbing, diving, jumping, exploding...
Yeah. It's great. It's top sports. It's Olympic-level.
Great.
Hey, what was your favorite scene that you remember?
Well, I very much loved the fact that you gave us an update during lunch
about the helicopter chasing our main hero to the bridge.
He's on a boat, he's being fired at.
Then the helicopter drops the bad guys on the top of the bridge
and then they chase him, there is a big fight scene on the bridge.
And it's my favorite scene.
The way we shot it was amazing. The day was amazing.
The location was great. And I just love that scene. It was just great.
Anything we are missing on the director's commentary
that you wanna talk about?
Well, no, I don't think so.
I think it's great that people are listening to this.
I think a commentary track of Roel Reiné is always very interesting.
And we try to hide our Dutch accent as much as possible,
'cause normally, we would sound like this...
That sounds stupid.
All right. It's cool, man. What are you working on right now?
Well, I'm the director of photography of the Hans Zimmer Live on Tour
through Europe.
He's visiting 32 locations and it's an amazing repertoire
and he has a 130-people choir and orchestra, and yeah, it's great.
We're now shooting in Prague. So, it's great to work with him. Yeah.
Cool, man. All right. Thanks for popping in.
- I'll speak to you later. Bye. - Thank you so much, Roel, for having me.
And enjoy the rest of your commentary track.
All right, man. Thank you.
- Thank you. Bye-bye. - All right.
So, that was fun.
Tha, listen.
Your life is going to be a lot safer without me in it. Trust me.
I'll lead them away. Hide!
A lot of these shots are then shot by Rolf.
I hate second units. I never do second units.
I wanna control everything myself,
but I have, a lot of times, operators doing shots.
So, this shot for example, and this shot.
Those shots are done by Rolf. This shot...
I leave him then behind with the stunt guys for a few hours,
and then he will do a few shots, and then he comes back to the main unit,
and then he will continue shooting with me.
This is the CableCam again with the GH4.
I thought that it was really cool going through that forest there.
Then, of course, I wanted to do an epic shot for Rhona Mitra.
So, what happens is that, when I do action scenes, right,
in the script, the action scenes are just very simple
and they are just half page where you see, kind of,
okay, they fight or they have a battle.
But then I step in with the stunt guys and with special effects guys
and locations and production,
and I basically pitch everybody action scenes,
and then, they come with some ideas.
So, this whole net flying thing...
I liked it when I saw it in Jurassic Park, right, many years before.
So, I thought, "Why not eject a net thing on these bike?"
And for me, the Death Race kind of bikes, I did the Death Race sequels,
and I wanted to do that kind of thing.
Then Alex Gunn, he's the special effects supervisor
that also has done a lot of movies of mine, he made that blast.
Basically what he used,
he uses a gas canister that is ignited by a little spark
and that is what the explosion does.
So, it's, of course, real fire, but it's very safe and controllable,
so the actors can be really close to it.
And that was the explosion Rhona Mitra was walking past.
So, then, I pitched the stunt coordinator...
I pitched them some ideas of a chase, of a fight, of...
Okay, the motorcycles are now firing guns,
I wanna put some guns on the motorcycles and be shooting at him.
So, those are the things I come up with,
and then brief them with the stunt guys and the art department,
and then, they build the bikes.
And Seng with his team built then the action scenes,
and I make a little sequence list with little maps,
and in this sequence list, I basically describe every beat of an action scene
that we then need to get to shoot.
Because if you script this scene, for example,
you're gonna have a really big script with 200-300 pages
and we cannot afford to shoot that.
So, what you do is that, in the scene it says,
"Okay, Tha fights with one of the hunters, "
and then in the sequence list, in the beat sheet,
you then do every beat, you know.
She's coming in. She's fighting him.
And all these kind of things that you then come up with,
that you cannot script, but you have to shoot it
because you're making an action movie.
Trouble is, you can never get enough of it.
I don't want anything to do with this.
Seng is really good at designing these fights with his team.
He has a really good fighting team.
Also, what is different, I think, than other directors...
Normally, his stunts coordinator comes in for a few days,
and they do a few days of shooting.
But for me, no.
For all my action movies,
I have a stunt crew and a stunt coordinator on the shoot everyday
with the whole team of fighters every day,
so I can shoot action every day.
Because action costs time, you know?
When you wanna do a fight like this,
or you wanna do an explosion like the jeep we exploded,
it costs just a lot of time to set it up,
and in-between takes, it costs a lot of time to reset it.
And at the moment when they're resetting for an hour,
I'm gonna go out and shoot other things
while the stunt coordinator or Alex, the special effects coordinator,
are then setting up the next gag
and I'm shooting dialog or I'm shooting this little fight here,
while outside, they're planning...
I think, when we were shooting this,
Alex was planning the whole bombs for the mine field sequence,
so we could do that later in the day and shoot a little bit of that.
I just hoped that the day might come that I get to hunt the hunter.
So, that's what this is about.
So, this fight, the two actors did all by themselves,
no doubles except for this end kick.
And I love this thing in one shot. There we go.
And this stunt girl really took this kick in her stomach.
There's no tricks involved there.
She just goes through it and Scott kicks her and she's flying.
That's also kind of Seng's style, you know?
The fight choreographers...
They really fight like it is real.
And I really like that
because you will see it back, and it feels real and it feels good.
So, this location, where we shot all this stuff,
I remember scouting this hotel resort
many years before,
and we also shot some Scorpion scenes there.
And this resort has really nice jungle, it has a beautiful river,
and the movie, Deer Hunter was shot on this location,
and they used the river and used the jungle as well.
And it gives you a very practical set,
because everywhere, there are roads and parking structures
and you still feel you're in the middle of the jungle and in the river.
So, we shot here for six days.
We did the whole mine sequence, a lot of boat chasing,
the jump in the water,
all the underwater water stuff and it was a perfect place.
And, of course, it's very iconic to shoot in the same location
as Deer Hunter has done 20, 30, 40 years ago.
So, that's pretty cool.
- What happened? - I don't know.
The woman.
She did this.
You let a girl do this to your father?
How could you?
Your father spent a small fortune so you could grow some balls,
and that's exactly what you're gonna do, right here, right now.
You want to kill these people?
- No, no. I don't want to kill anyone. - Say it.
Say it.
- I want to kill them. - Louder.
- I want to kill... - Louder!
- I want to kill them! - Like you mean it!
This, of course, we never hurt any scorpions in this movie.
But the scorpion that we play with, with the sword is, of course, real.
And that shot is, again, something that I left behind for Rolf to solve.
Slowly, we are killing hunter for hunter and hunter.
What was also so nice about the first Hard Target,
I really like the buildup and how people were killed
and we wanna pay an homage to that.
So, the reason also to choose the weapons here, was based on that.
We wanted to do that. So, this is a real scorpion, of course.
And then, here, in comes the fake one, when he destroys it.
Trevor Morris has done the score for this movie
and we have him on the phone.
Good morning, Trevor.
- Good morning, Roel. How are you? - I'm good.
So, I'm doing this director's commentary,
and I thought it would be fun to get my key people that we worked with
into the session.
So, I'm so glad that you're available to talk.
You're my favorite composer of the world. You know that, right?
And you're my favorite director, so, I think that's why we fit so good.
So, tell me a little bit about how you did the score for Hard Target.
What was your process? Your thought?
Well, this is the great thing about having worked together before.
What's this, our fourth or fifth movie,
- or maybe even more? - Yeah, more, I think.
We have a shorthand and we both like big, well-produced music.
So, that already put us into a headspace of where we're gonna be.
And you like to work fast, so there's always a time consideration.
We have to get it done in whatever time we have.
So, for me, the first thing I latched onto was the Aldrich character.
Because I felt like he kind of sucks us into his world,
and then we're physically in his world and trying to get out of his world.
And my first idea was to create a theme,
'cause you and I both love themes we can revisit throughout the movie.
It's to find a theme for him that had just this snake charmer kind of feel to it.
Kind of a dark feel that we could just use whenever he is pulling the strings
- like a puppet master. - Yes.
So, that was the point of entry, which was, "Let's get his theme and just put it,
"basically all the way through the movie and see if it worked."
And, I think, it did.
And that became the backbone of where we started.
Cool, man.
And then, you used a lot of electronics on this score, or not?
Yeah, we really approached it from a modern standpoint.
There is orchestra in there, but it wasn't the focus.
I would say it's primarily electronic,
and then, of course, we have the Thailand look and feel.
So, we did some ethnic instruments, specifically some percussion,
and also this wonderful two-stringed instrument called the "erhu, "
which is an instrument that's sort of mimicking the human vocal chords,
and it became part of Wes' character's love interest theme
and it geographically put us in the place where you shot it.
Yes.
Hey, and you had a collaborator on this score.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, I collaborated with a good friend of mine, Jack Wall.
Jack and I are very good friends and we collaborate a lot.
And he's one of the top, all-time video game composers.
He's just been in that business for a long time.
And he's just at the top of his game,
doing scores like Mass Effect and Black Ops,
where he records it with the London Symphony Orchestra
for a week at Abbey Road.
So, he's a big league composer,
but had never done a movie before and really wanted to.
And I thought this will be a great chance to collaborate.
And, I think, when you're putting your temp score together,
where I do the editor, there's always some of the Black Ops score in there.
It just clicked. It was a great fit.
And it was a good chance for me to pass on some knowledge to Jack
in terms of the process, 'cause I've done it more than he has.
And creatively, he's just golden.
So, it became this really great energy between the two of us.
And what ends up happening when we use timeframes and stuff like that,
is we get to focus a little harder and a little bit longer
than if you did it all by yourself.
So, I think it was the right choice
and I really appreciate you being open to the idea,
and I think it ended up having just a really great score.
Yeah, no. I think it's great. The score is amazing. Absolutely.
No, I was so happy about it.
Hey, and you have your own studio? What kind of system do you work on?
Can you tell me a little bit more technically what you use on scoring movies?
Yeah, my software is Cubase. That's my music software.
That's where I write all my mockups, electronics.
And I use all the usual plugs-ins. And then we mix it into Pro Tools.
And then, as you know, Roel,
I have a pretty state-of-the-art mixing facility at my LA studio.
I've always looked at mixing music like the color timing phase
of being a movie maker, like what you do,
is you got the material, it's edited, there's the movie, but color timing,
you can really make a big difference to the look of something,
- by saturating the color. - Yeah, absolutely.
Or desaturating, or whatever.
Music mixing is that same phase for me,
where we get to really open it up in 5. 1 and really get those subwoofers going,
and that cinematic thing that we both love.
So, it starts with me in Cubase
and it ends up going through my Euphonix console in the mix room.
And then, ultimately, to Pro Tools, on its way to the dub stage.
Cool, man.
Hey, and are you a big John Woo fan?
Yeah.
Can you tell me a little bit about the experience
when you first saw his movie, or something?
It's been a while,
but I remember seeing an interview with him on Face/Off.
- He did Face/Off, right? Yeah. - Yeah.
Talking about how he... He reminds me of you a lot, actually, Roel.
He talks about how much he loves big sound, big music, big sound effects.
He has a thing for doves or birds.
And just his style that makes his thing unique and...
For these sort of movies, you wanna be experientially
just all the way in it.
Immersed in the sound and the look and the action and...
I think you're a great fit to do this one in a way,
'cause guys have very similar styles, which is why I like working with you, I think.
Cool, man. Great. All right. Thanks, man.
Thanks for popping in on such a short notice.
But I like having all these people on the commentary.
Thanks for doing this.
No, thanks for having me. No problem at all.
Okay, man. Good luck.
- Speak to you later. Bye. - Okay, bye.
Well, that was Trevor.
Wait!
Fuck!
God damn it! Somebody kill this prick!
The burning... Officially, we were planning a big burn.
A stunt burn with a stunt guy.
When you start shooting a movie and you only have 20 days,
and there's so much going on,
that you are changing things during the shoot because you don't have any time.
So, there was no time left to do a big burning gag with a stunt guy.
So, I said,
"So, why are we notjust putting a result of burning on the floor?"
So, I suggested to put down a wardrobe, so we have trousers and a t-shirt.
And inside, we'll put sand.
So, we filled it up with sand, the t-shirt and the trousers,
and then, on top of it, Alex Gunn, the special effects guy,
puts some gasoline or some kind of gasoline thing,
and then we're gonna put it on fire.
So, it looks like a body's on fire.
Because if you wanna use a dummy to put on fire,
the dummies are made out of foam and plastic.
And so, you cannot put it on fire. It will look silly.
But putting sand in the wardrobe was the easy and the fastest solution.
But was, of course... I was really happy with the result.
So, now, we are in this real cave.
It was a beautiful cave.
Thailand has a lot of caves and I shot in many of them.
And this was a night shoot.
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about the lighting.
So, on all my movies, I don't use HMI lights.
I don't like the look of it. I like tungsten lights.
So, I use tungsten for the days,
and I use tungsten for the nights as well.
It gives me a very nice, warm white light.
And especially when you do the color timing that I do,
a lot of saturation, you take the colors out.
I put a kind of a look to it,
then this tungsten becomes white
and then, it doesn't take away the skin color of the actors too much.
But then in the flashlights, we put in daylight, so that's HMI.
It's LEDs in the flashlights.
And that gives you then now the nice blue stuff.
So, if I would have shot that scene at night in HMI,
then the whole jungle would be blue.
But now it's a nice distinguish between the blue lights in the flashlights
and the lights themselves.
This also is all tungsten lighting.
I try to get as less as possible lighting in the location,
and I really like sidelights.
So, I'm not really a traditional director of photography
having a key light and a backlight and a fill and soft and...
I don't do that. I do hard sidelights on eye level
that gives them a nice glow, you see.
And then, in the cave, I had china bowls that you can buy at IKEA.
You have this little paper bowls where you put a little bulb in
and those bulbs are also tungsten on a dimmer
and that gives you a nice little fill from the camera
and then the hard sidelights are doing the nice rims on their faces.
And then, of course, there's a lot of candles in the background.
That's what you want, right?
This is the music...
I really like this theme that Trevor composed.
And you hear the violin that Trevor was talking about.
Good night, Tha.
And that was a very famous traditional instrument.
A violin composer came in to do that.
What is this? Fucking summer camp?
So, Aldrich, how'd you get into this business, if you don't mind me asking?
CIA didn't have much appreciation for my talents.
Said I was too theatrical.
Can you believe that?
So, I came up with my own business.
We cut the movie in Los Angeles.
Radu lon, he's my regular editor.
We cut, I think, in 12 weeks, the movie.
He does first, an edit assembly, and then I come and do a director's cut.
But this time, we were kind of bummed out
because I was doing an episode of Black Sails in Cape Town.
So, after I delivered my director's cut, I had to go there,
and prep and shoot Black Sails.
And then, through Skype and on the phone and with little QuickTimes,
I was watching the producer's cut or the studio cut evolving
and gave notes and...
So, I was a little bit remote, but I didn't like the process of that.
And then, when I was done with the episode,
I came back to supervise or direct the audio recordings and ADR.
And that's how it goes, you know?
So, as a director for these kind of studio movies,
the script will be developed by the studio.
I will be part of that, in the development process.
I do notes or I do sessions with the writers.
And then, you get a budget,
what is kind of the budget that the studio decides to make this movie for.
In this regard, it was four and a half million dollars.
And then, I always suggested to shoot in Thailand.
So, then, I went to Thailand with an executive.
His name is George Engel. And he's a really great guy from Universal.
And you go to Thailand, you then scout locations,
you meet the crew.
For me, of course, shooting in Thailand,
it was like I already knew the crew that I wanted to hire.
And Chris, the producer, the local producer in Thailand,
he locked down this crew.
But then, during the scouts, you basically see the locations that I like,
and I pick the locations that I want to shoot at,
and then, you basically start designing the movie.
By choosing locations, you're designing the look,
you're designing also the story.
And you're designing, of course, the action, and what will happen.
For example, the elephant scene.
There were different variations of this idea.
I think, in the original script, there was a snake.
He fell in water, and then a big snake would attack him.
But I thought that doing a snake, we've seen it before.
And also, doing a fake snake will look fake,
and doing a CG...
This is, by the way, one of my drone shots again.
I really like to pull out to the clouds.
This drone goes, like, one and a half kilometer far away.
And, of course, anywhere in the world, you need to have a permit to fly.
Because, especially at those kind of distances, it's very dangerous, of course.
In America itself, you cannot fly higher than 400 feet,
but in Thailand, we had to get permission.
So, the production did this at the government...
They sent us these permission forms,
and I was the first drone operator getting a permit
for flying and shooting movies with drones.
So, an official permit, and I still have it.
I put it in a little thing to put up on the wall, because it was very unique.
At that time, nobody had a permit yet to shoot officially with drones.
So, that shot to the clouds, the drone is one and a half kilometer up.
And then, on the monitor on the remote, you can see the shot and operate the shot.
I do it myself.
A lot of drones, they have two operators,
but I like to do it with only me, with one operator.
And, especially, these DJI drones, they're so easy to fly.
And if you understand shots, you can pull off these shots easily.
So, I was talking about the whole setup, right?
Then I choose the locations...
The design, the action, are all based on these locations.
And then, I went back to LA, talked with the writer,
and threw in my ideas to the writers.
So, we found these railroad bridges, and we found the cave.
And then, instead of the snake,
I thought, "Okay, let's do this introduction with Tha with elephants."
Because elephants are always beautiful creatures,
and there are a lot of them in Thailand.
So, they are easier to get. So, we got the elephants there.
So, then, this design will go into the screenplay,
there will come another draft.
And then, the production will start six weeks before the first day of shooting
with producing the movie, organizing everything.
And I normally start four weeks before shooting.
This time, I think, I started five weeks before shooting.
I flew then to Australia.
At the time, we already did some reading,
so, I could look at videos of actors in Australia.
And then, I picked the choices,
the guys or the girls that I thought were interesting.
And then, I was in Sydney for three days.
And then during those three days, I do casting sessions,
do call-backs of the actors that I liked.
And then, take a look at them, rehearse with them, do the scenes with them,
talk a little bit with them, have a feeling.
And then basically, I do my number one and number two options,
choices of these sessions.
And then, these choices go to the studio.
And then, they say, "Yay or nay" on my choices.
And, a lot of times, we are completely in agreement in who we will cast.
That is for all the smaller parts.
Scott, of course, was in from very early on.
And Robert Knepper was in very early on.
And Temuera, I really wanted to bring to Australia
from really early on.
And Rhona Mitra as well.
So, those are the four actors that I decided on out from LA.
And then, all the other actors, I cast in Australia or in Thailand.
Because after those three days in Sydney, I flew to Bangkok.
And then, we were four weeks out for principle photography.
And then, I start first with casting,
seeing actors in Thailand that I like, doing call-backs and doing sessions.
And then you start going scouting again,
because then, you need to finalize the sets
and what we're going to do there.
At that time, art department is already building the props et cetera.
I have daily meetings with the stunt coordinators
and the special effects coordinators to figure out the stunts and the action.
Then I do some more scouting.
And then you start to do tech-recces.
Tech-recces are, basically, you go to the location
with all the technical crew and I talk them through what we're gonna do.
And I'm very specific in those meetings.
I'm not somebody who does any storyboards.
I'm not doing shotlists.
But what I will do is that I dream my movies.
So, on every location,
I know exactly where this crane movement will be,
where the actors will be coming from, how we stage a fight or stage a scene.
And then, during the tech-recces, I tell everybody how I'm going to do it.
And so, they know how to clean out this little jungle here,
or they know where to put all the service trucks.
Because I know very specifically, what I'm going to shoot on the day.
I even tell them already where the dolly track will be,
or where the crane will be built, and which lenses we are using.
And, 90% of what I tell them during the tech-recce
is also actually what we shoot on the location on the day.
Meet me at the river.
I will never tell you.
I think you will.
So, this fight was choreographed by Seng and his crew and his team.
Pretty well done.
Officially, this stunt was a little bit longer.
And in the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray,
you can see a little bit longer, this scene, and what happens with the girl fight.
And also, this, I like a lot. I like fights where the guns go off.
And then, of course, we have a little John Woo moment here.
Nice and close. There we go. And the two guns, of course, there.
The girl fight, right?
So, officially, the girl fight ended
with them rolling down the hill and then she would break her neck.
But this stunt, which is a real stunt,
which is very dangerous, was so nasty,
and such a beautiful gag, that we decided, "Okay, let's kill her there."
And that is something you decide in the editing.
So, with CG, it would do a little bit help here.
So, it's all CG blocked there, because that was a different planning.
This is a very nice moment when the shell hits him.
Of course, that is all CG, because, so at close range.
This jump, right? So, Scott is doing this jump himself.
On the bridge, he's jumping on a mattress.
And then, this is back at that resort
at the river for Deer Hunter, where Scottjumps into the river himself.
And because this river is the same river as the bridge,
but it's only like 100 kilometers further up,
where we shot the jumping in the water.
So, then in the fight, in editing, we decided
that it's much cooler and much stronger to end that fight
with her being knocked down in between the two carriages of the train.
And so, that's what you end up with.
So, these are the stunt-doubles floating around.
And, of course, Temuera seeing the dead body.
And that's, of course, not good,
killing the hunters.
Also, the fight where we did the train on,
that was in that same resort of The Deer Hunter resort.
So, the bridge that you see here is really the bridge of River Kwai.
You know, the famous bridge that was built during the Second World War by Japan,
and by a lot of prisoners, of course, war prisoners.
They built this bridge, and we shot on this bridge.
It's now a very famous tourist attraction.
And also, the next scene where they're gonna be at a military place
is also at one of the bridges of the River Kwai.
It's the same railroad and the same history on the bridge.
Found Sofia.
Fuck.
At least we know where they're going.
I kind of like this shot where we pull out, and we see all four of them standing there.
I think it's really cool.
So, for those kind of shots, I used sliders a lot
because not on all locations
you can get quickly, of course, a GoPro camera.
But on all locations, you cannot put in track...
And you saw that.
By the way, that was a visual effect, putting that shot in there.
I really like what the visual effects guys have done
because you see the reflection in the water.
But we put it there in post.
When I save your ass, you rob me blind?
So, for this talk, there was a big, long dialog,
that was kind of not very interesting.
So, I thought, "Okay, what about doing this dialog on the river,
"floating on this little tree-thing?"
So, that was kind of the plan,
and that was, I think, the stupidest plan I had on this movie.
Because I was planning to have them float in the river,
and they were talking and then with the boat
we would follow it and have the dialog like that.
But after a half hour of fooling around with this floating thing,
like, floating like this...
This of course, again, is my drone.
Floating like that did not work at all.
Because when you're on water,
and especially, a river that is really floating,
there's no more control in the angle
or the distance you can have with the camera
with your subject, with the actors.
So, we ended up putting this tree very close to the shore.
Basically, here at this beach, where we shot this scene,
we basically put the tree trunk just a meter out of the shore
so I could stand with the cameras on tripods, in the water.
And they were floating... Basically, with their knees, they were on the sand,
the actors, and they were hanging there.
And because the river water is moving in the background,
you feel, you believe that they are floating around.
But they basically were standing still, hanging still,
and then with really tight shots, we could make it work.
This sandbank is at the same resort, that had so many locations,
The Deer Hunter resort.
It was a little beach area where we could shoot this scene.
And when we're gonna pull out after we kill his character,
I'm doing this drone shot again.
And then basically, in this drone shot, you see the resort in the background,
and the river.
But of course, we could not put the resort in the movie there.
It's binding.
And actionable.
This is, by the way, CG blood. I didn't want to spend time.
Even the blood coming from the blade on the shirt,
all CG blood.
I could not spend time on doing a prosthetic here.
It was just too time-consuming and too expensive.
So, we solved this with CG.
By the way, I wanted to have this prop, this GPS tracker.
I asked the prop master.
He's a really cool Thai guy, who came with all these props.
I asked him to build me a GPS device that was different.
And also, in the future...
I read this article about screens, LED TV screens
that are bendable, that you can bend like paper.
So, I told him about it.
I said, "Okay, let's make a GPS tracker
"that the screen is bendable, so it flips open...
"And the screen is bent,
"and we'll put it in with CG, so we have a unique prop."
So, he was like, "Cool!"
And so, he built this little plastic device that could click open.
So, that is the GPS tracker that you see.
So, it's a non-existing, futuristic thing.
Call in the cleanup crew.
- You think we need them? - Call them!
So, in this pull out that we're gonna see now,
the resort is in the back.
But, of course, we cannot see a resort at this stage.
So, the CG guys take out the resort buildings and the resort,
and also crew members who were in this shot.
Me, for example, operating the shot.
But this is what the river looks like and how the land looks around that resort.
It's really pretty.
So, then we come again to the bridge.
And this is also the bridge of the River Kwai.
It's a little bit further up on the same railroad track.
The big problem with this location was, there's so many tourists.
So, I am now looking away from the tourists.
But if you look back,
there will be thousands of tourists watching us filming,
and there are restaurants and terraces
where people are sitting down, watching us work.
And they all come to this bridge, to walk on to the bridge,
because it's a really big tourist place.
So, we had to keep them off the property and off the bridge.
It was a very tough location to shoot. But it's really beautiful.
You see there, that's the bendable GPS.
And then CG designs the digital things that were on the screen
because the screen was just black with some tracking marks on it.
But I like that you close it.
He closed now on one side, and then he closed the other side.
Anyway, so, on one side of this bridge,
there's big tourist boats, and restaurant boats,
and there was a market square.
And on the other side, there's a temple on one side,
and then the other side was empty.
So, we asked the art department to put there, a little bit of a military camp.
So, they brought in all the props and dressed it in,
and the result was, I think, amazing.
GPS says he's around here somewhere.
And then we would do this explosion when he was sailing away.
You two get to the border.
You make him pay.
Why would you do this for us?
The funny thing is, is that when I lived in Holland, in Amsterdam,
I had a speedboat in the canals in Amsterdam.
And sailing a speedboat in the canals in Amsterdam is really tough,
because it's very busy in the canals, it's very narrow.
So, you really learn how to sail a speedboat.
My first speedboat in Holland, looked a lot...
It was almost the same speedboat as we are using
that Scott is now stealing.
So, when we were shooting,
I'm so good at sailing these things
that I suggested, "Okay, let me do the sailing."
And then I'll have Rolf operating the camera.
So, this is that speedboat. It looks exactly like the one I had in Holland.
And then we had a camera boat, what is kind of similar.
And then, I was steering the boat,
and then Rolf was on the front, operating the shots,
because basically, when you shoot on boats or you shoot from helicopters,
the one piloting the boat or piloting the helicopter
is basically operating the shot.
Because as a camera person, you are fixed on this boat,
and you can only pan left or right, or tilt up, or zoom in.
But you cannot really move, you know.
The moving has to be done by the object itself.
So, for all these shots,
I operated the boat, and Rolf was operating the camera,
and then we could do this perfect timing.
So, example, this shot what's coming up right now,
it's me, operating this boat, with the camera,
and Scott operating that boat,
and having a nice, almost close, touching each other, here as well.
And so, Scott was sailing himself, and I was sailing...
And that was such a blast to do.
Because you can really nicely time these shots.
And being with Scott on the water, of course, was a lot of fun.
So, then, because of the schedule, it was very difficult to schedule in...
Also, these shots are all operated from this camera boat kind of thing.
So then, we are back to the drone, of course, with the chase.
This is all the drone.
And these drones are really fast, as you can see.
These things fly, I think, at 30 kilometers an hour or something.
I see you, yes. I'm coming for you.
This fight, what we did,
this angle, on this side, we shot at the resort
because of the schedule issues we had.
But we could see the resort on this side.
So, the reverse, we shot on the real bridge location.
So, we had to split up this scene, which made it very complicated,
between this angle that's somewhere else and this angle that's also somewhere else.
And then the fight, of course, was so much fun to do.
Win!
When I was designing the ending of the movie,
I always wanted to end the movie in a city
so you felt, like, a city building...
This, by the way, when you see this little dialog bit here in the helicopter,
the helicopterjust stands still on the ground, and I'm shaking the camera a little bit.
So, these shots are just the Poor Man's Process, right.
So, we had a little wind machine.
But this shot...
That is Robert, really, himself, hanging out of the chopper.
That is Robert himself, hanging out of the chopper to do those shots.
Anyway, so, when we were...
I wanted to end the movie in a city, in a Burmese city.
And then end on this beautiful building that is in Chinatown in Bangkok,
as it would be in a building in a border town.
But it was very difficult to organize that, to produce that.
We had to buy out so many stores in Chinatown.
And logistically, it was just a nightmare.
But I wanted to do a big fight on the roof of this building.
Because you want an epic ending, that's what you want.
So, this bridge... That was an idea of Chris, the producer.
He lives in Thailand. And, he tells me, he said, "There's a really nice bridge.
"Now that we have so many bridges in the movie,
"there's this really nice walking bridge in this town in the north."
It was a long drive, like a three, four-hour drive to this town.
So, this is the hut we built that we blew up.
But, this bridge was an existing wooden bridge
that was part of a temple complex.
People, tourists, but also a lot of locals...
This is me, by the way, flying my drone over the helicopter, shooting that shot.
I'm so proud of that shot.
I suggested this to the helicopter pilot.
And he was like, "Yeah, yeah, sure."
As long as I would stay on one side of the bridge,
and he would be on the other side of the bridge, I could fly over him.
So, I was in a drone, operating,
flying over the helicopter,
while the helicopter was chasing Scott on the boat.
Those moments were really, really fun to do.
I remember when I was operating that shot,
and I was looking at my little monitor on my remote,
and I was like, "Holy shit, am I doing this right now?"
It was really, really great.
I wanted to have an epic ending.
And Chris came with the idea... He knew this bridge.
So, I went there, I saw it,
and I was sold on it right away, because, it was epic, it was beautiful.
It was also a nice bridge between two borders.
And it made all the sense in the world.
So, then, I did a rewrite on the screenplay,
and wrote in the bridge
and wrote in this whole action scene
with him chasing with the helicopter and shooting at him and the whole thing.
This is also the Poor Man's Process again. He's just standing still, of course.
And his helicopter goes lower.
And then, this shot... This is Scott, right? This is not a double.
This is just Scottjumping from this moving boat.
And absolutely spectacular.
And then, I wanted to do this one shot, this John Woo kind of thing.
So, that became this shot with the Steadicam.
To do another homage shot to John Woo.
Of course, the famous one-shot with the elevator in the hospital.
What I really, really love from one of his movies,
one of his Hong Kong movies.
So, we could use the bridge. And then, of course, I will try to push the limit.
So, I asked, "Can we land on the bridge with the helicopter?"
And, of course, we cannot.
So, then Seng said,
"Okay, what about them jumping out of the helicopter?"
And that was, of course, a brilliant idea.
Now, the stunt-doubles are jumping out.
And Seng, my stunt coordinator, he's doubling here for Temuera.
So, he's the one on the right side, jumping off.
And then, of course, I asked the helicopter pilot
to come over the bridge one more time.
And then, I operated this shot in slo-mo, 120 frames a second,
where we see the drone in their backs,
and it gives you this nice, epic John Woo shot,
where you see this slo-mo helicopter in the background.
But basically, it was the helicopter doing one more pass in the back of them.
And there's a big distance between them, but with a very long lens...
Let's talk about this gun, by the way.
But with a very long lens, it feels like the helicopter's really close.
So, of course, in Hard Target 1, Lance Henriksen, who played the villain,
he has this very iconic kind of gun,
this revolver with only one bullet in it.
And I really wanted to do a glimpse of it, you know?
I always, in my mind...
This character, Robert's character, is family
with Lance Henriksen's character of the first Hard Target.
So, I was like, probably he's continuing the business that
Lance is setting up in the first Hard Target.
And then, he's continuing the business, so, he got Lance's gun.
But this revolver, we could get nowhere in Thailand.
So, based on photos from the movie...
Of course, the John Woo shot.
Based on the photos from the first movie,
I had the prop master in Thailand build me this revolver.
Because I wanted to have this iconic one-bullet revolver,
which was exactly the same revolver as Hard Target 1.
And, he did. So, I'm really happy.
This, of course, you see the beauty... how this bridge looks.
It's such a beautiful bridge.
So, we put it in the movie.
And I'm really happy that we have the revolver there.
I also wanted to do a nice end fight which cuts on this bridge.
So, the idea was to bring five fighters or six fighters to the bridge
and have them fight with Scott.
What was really a cool and epic moment.
It's up my ass.
Well, let me help you extract it.
You know, I know you're not that bright, Madden,
but you do realize that wasn't my ass.
I'm not the man you insult.
So, when we were talking with Robert, he was talking about the heat, right?
It was so insanely hot on this bridge.
And the sun was blasting on top of us, and there was no wind.
It was just...
And we were, like, two days or three days on this bridge.
We had to work really hard and we had to carry everything in.
But, I think, the results... It's really, really good.
It's an epic ending for this movie.
Hell, I would just die. I wouldn't be able to...
Stop it. That's what he wants. That's exactly what he wants.
Death's just not enough for you, is it?
You want to go out like your friend, like a warrior.
Just give me what I want, and I'll be happy to oblige.
No more shame, no more guilt.
So, then you start shooting. You get 20 days of shooting.
I go in with a good plan so I can do maximum results.
And then, after the four weeks, you go home, basically.
Then the editor will do an editor's assembly.
He is cutting all the footage. In the first pass of editing,
I'm not seeing any of what he's doing.
I don't like to look at editing during the shooting.
I do it sometimes on movies.
But normally, on these movies, I do not, because, I want to keep my head focused.
This girl, by the way, is a very famous Thai actress fighter.
She's a big star in Thailand and she's a great fighter.
Fun to look at.
Yes.
And also, not this guy, but this guy on the right,
that's Kazu, he's also one of the fight choreographers.
This guy that is going down here, he works for Seng.
And he choreographed a lot of these fights as well.
Yeah, this girl can fight. But Scott, of course, he's badass.
So, after five or six weeks of editor's assembly,
I come in and then have four weeks to do a director's cut.
And then, three weeks to do the producer's or the studio cut.
But in the producer's cut, studio cut,
I'm also involved with notes and trying things out.
So, it was really a collaboration, which was fun.
But the creative process,
you get a lot of freedom, or I get a lot of freedom on these movies
to decide how to shoot it, what to shoot, the angles.
And in the editing even, how we're gonna put it together.
Radu lon, he's the editor of almost all my movies.
He then puts a temp score in.
Basically, he uses a score from other movies that he cuts in.
And then, we lock picture.
So, at the moment we lock picture, the movie goes to the sound designers.
Chris Bonis with his team did this movie.
They've done a lot of my other movies as well.
And then, Trevor Morris comes in, starts composing the movie.
And then, of course, all the visual effects are put in,
and we start cutting the visual effects in.
And then, at the end, you do ADR with the actors,
you're recording bad sounding dialog, or you try some extra lines here and there.
And then, everything is mixed in, the music and all the sound effects.
And the movie is finished.
And then, of course, the color timing is also a long process.
It's kind of six days of color timing.
And I wanted to do this very stylish kind of look.
I wanted to make the world of Aldrich very cold and desaturated,
and big contrast and a lot of blacks,
because you want to make it kind of a...
You know, the thing is
that I love a lot of subtext and subconscious moviemaking.
There's not a lot of time you have on these movies to do that.
But on my bigger movies, like the Admiral movie,
I had a lot of time to do that.
But with the color timing,
you get a feeling with the audience about this world
which is very cold and distant,
and makes it suspenseful and dangerous for our hero.
So, what you'll notice is that everything that is Aldrich's world
is in this color palette.
And then, in the opening of the movie,
Scott Adkins' world is very warm-colored and warm in tones.
And that makes the difference between these two worlds that collide.
And then, of course, at the end of this movie, it turns around,
and then the world becomes warm again.
You're gonna see that after we have killed Aldrich.
Sixty seconds!
You're gonna have to kill me, Baylor.
'Cause I have friends. Rich, powerful friends.
So, you have to understand,
these extras, right, they're locals, and they're not trained military.
So, what also Seng, with the stunt guys, do really well,
I always ask them to train the extras in what they're doing.
So, now they have to march in and stand there military-style.
And that is something that Seng will do with his team.
And normally, Jimmy does this.
Jimmy is Seng's assistant, and also a Thai stunt coordinator.
And they will train the extras to do this military thing.
So, on this bridge, it was very tough to shoot,
especially when you want to shoot with long lenses.
I always use this big Angénieux zoom lens,
which is a 28-250mm, bit heavy zoom lens.
I then put it on a slider so I can always have a little nice movement.
And this is all CG. CG shooting, CG bullet hits.
We had a practical effect
where we did a lot of bullet hits,
and I asked Alex to do bullet hits,
like, 50 bullet hits on his chest.
But when we did the gag, a lot of them didn't go off
because he didn't have the right black powder to make it work.
So, we ended up using in the cuts,
a rehearsal that I did with him.
And then with CG, we put in the blood and the hits.
And Aldrich is dead.
So you see here, that slowly, the movie becomes a little warmer.
And then, the next scene, it's gonna be completely warmed up.
And basically, Scott takes control back
of his world and of the story.
And therefore, the color timing changes with him.
So, I didn't talk about Tha yet.
Ann Truong, who plays Tha here, she is from Australia.
She was very good, a very good actress,
a very nice actress to work with.
She was also very serious about her character,
and came with a lot of good ideas.
And it was absolutely a blast to work with her.
For also, it was a very tough shoot
because we shot so fast, so many scenes on a day.
But she was great to work with.
And then, of course, everything becomes warmer.
Warmer, and then a nice pull out with my drone again.
And there you see all the people walking on the other bridge,
that was just the locals who normally use the big bridge,
and they were using, now, this help bridge on the side.
And we end the story there.
Then we wanted to end the movie with a nice upbeat...
This voiceover that you hear now is the character of Jonny's wife.
In the opening of the movie, she is the one crying when Jonny gets killed.
I did a version of the ending of the movie where I brought her there.
I liked that version much better. I never really had time to finalize it.
But that was something that the studio didn't want to do.
So, we ended up with just the voiceover, which was also scripted.
But I shot a different version.
You can see a version of my different version
in the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray, as well.
And then I shot, also, this alternative ending. I shot, basically, three endings.
Why I brought her back to the scene,
what was kind of an upbeat, nice moment that we decided in the end to put in,
that they are back together again.
And he is kind of training these kids on this little boat.
So, this boat...
There was a disco boat coming by the hotel every night, with a lot of noise.
And it was pulled by this little ship.
And then, when we were looking for a final location for the movie,
where he would train the kids,
I thought, like, "Let's use the disco boat." And that's what we ended up using.
So, as I told you before,
for the end credits, I'm using the footage that I did of Chinatown.
We wanted to end the movie in Chinatown, but we ended up on the bridge.
But these, I wanted to do some B-roll shots.
So, we asked Scott to come with me, and with Rolf, for a few hours.
So, these kids, for example,
are really making homework on the streets in Chinatown.
That was really interesting.
So, for a few hours, we walked with him through Chinatown,
and we shot it just on two GH4s using a Ronin-M
to have these nice, smooth movements,
and just to have some nice footage of Bangkok and his life there.
So, another secret I have to tell you is that I also make music.
I compose music, myself. And I do this under the name Dida.
So, I composed this music that is over the end credits of this movie.
I do this a lot, and a lot of my movies have my music underneath.
And you can find it on the Internet if you're more interested in it.
So, we shot this guerilla style.
We were only with two or three crew members,
with me and Rolf, two GH4s, and Scott Adkins,
and jotted and just stole these shots, you know?
Went on to the streets and shot it.
I know that Chris got permission to shoot at the metro station
because that's a big security thing.
But also, the drone shots, because I had the permits,
I could fly the drone in Bangkok,
and have these beautiful drone shots, like this one.
And for me, the plan was to use this B-roll footage,
maybe in the opening of the movie where we're seeing his life.
But it didn't really work out.
So, we ended up using it now for the credit sequence,
which was a nice go-out.
And this location was found by my location scout.
It's a really, kind of, part of Bangkok
where these people live in these houses, really close to the rail track.
And when you see railroad tracks... You see, here, this train,
it just goes past the houses with just a few centimeters...
And I wanted to do a whole scene here.
But because we didn't end in Bangkok, we used this.
And this is, by the way, that rooftop of the building in Chinatown
that I wanted to use for the ending of the movie.
But I hopefully, am gonna use it in a movie in the future.
Now, I hope you liked this commentary.
Hit me up on Facebook. Roel Reiné on Facebook.
And I hope to catch you all later. Bye.