"Hello, my name is Roel Reiné, and I'm the director of this movie, Death Race 2." "I remember that a few years ago, I read in the trades that somebody was doing a remake of Death Race 2000, and I was really like, "That is super cool."" "But, of course, it was never in my vicinity." "I still lived in Europe at the time." "I'm a director from Holland, and I just recently..." "A few years ago, I moved to Los Angeles." "And then in 2008, Paul Anderson's Death Race was in the cinemas." "I went to see it, and I was so happily surprised because it was such a cool action movie that gave me the feeling of Mad Max, and all the good action stuff from the '80s, and I was really happy to see that." "And then last year, I was directing The Marine 2 for Fox, and after I was finished, I got this call from my agent to meet with Universal because they had a script called Death Race 2." "And I had one meeting with Universal, and they got me the job." "I'll try to tell a little bit more about the origins of this screenplay, but I will do it during this commentary because otherwise we're going to miss these kinds of scenes." "Okay, originally in the script, this whole opening sequence was very long." "It was at least eight minutes, ten minutes of establishing the prison, establishing September's character," "establishing the different gangs and the whole prison system." "But when my first initial..." "The edit assembly was two and a half hours, and my cuts, the director's cut, was two hours." "The final cut is now one hour and 40 minutes." "And what we basically did, we brought the minutes down in the opening." "So now, this whole opening sequence became a very nice, two-minute montage piece, where we see the different elements, but it feels like..." "But it's still like the credit sequence." "I think this was Paul Anderson's idea to merge it together, and that was very smart." "I thought those were really good notes that he gave me during the editing." "This whole fight, we had 100 extras during the fights, but we had no time." "I shot this movie in 30 days, and we had less than one-tenth of the budget of the original movie." "So, it was very challenging to manage it and make it look like a big movie." "But coming from an independent, low-budget world that I am, there are always ways to do it." "And I think the way we shot this fight also was very..." "In a very efficient way." "What we did is that I always shoot with four cameras, and I shoot with two at the same time, and the other two are setting up the next shot because I don't like to do second units." "I like to shoot everything myself." "So we had two cameras inside, and then two cameras were outside setting up some racing stuff." "And then, I reset from one place to the other place." "This helicopter, for example, what we did is, I asked the production," ""Okay, let's have two hours of a helicopter," ""and in those two hours, we'll do one hour of the chopper hanging above this riot," ""and then I have an hour hanging in the chopper myself and doing these top shots," ""and doing some helicopter shots for this, spread over the whole movie. "" "So, that's the way you double-use the chopper for your advantage." "Then, the casting." "There were two names I put on my list at the beginning of the production, and it was Sean Bean to play this character, and Luke Goss to play this character." "They were my number one favourites for these parts." "I'm so lucky that we got them both for this movie." "I think Luke is an exceptionally, really good actor who goes really deep into his character, into his character's arc, and having the beats right." "And Sean is, of course, for me, a legend." "He's one of my favourite actors in the world, and I was so happy to have him onboard on this movie." "I remember that on the sets, he was really like a sponge, you know?" "He was somebody who I didn't need to tell him what to do, of course." "He knew exactly what to do, but he wanted to have the information about the surroundings." "So I gave him a lot of details about this world, and about his organisation, and his house, and what moment in time this was." "And all this kind of information, then he was looking at me, he was like, "Yes, yes, yes." And he was absorbing it as a sponge." "And then, when the cameras were rolling, he was in character, and everything I told him about this world, he took it in him to play with that." "And Luke, of course, it was also so much fun to work with him." "He was so dedicated in rehearsal and having the fights right." "Because, of course, for me, Paul Anderson's movie had Jason Statham, who is a good fighter, you know." "Of course, his fighting is very world-famous." "So I told Luke, I said to go and match that in the early start of the movie." "I wanna have a really good fight in the bank situation, where we come in five minutes or so." "So he rehearsed and rehearsed, and because I wanted to show how good of a fighter he is," "to at least see what he can do later, when we go into the arena and go fighting." "And also to show the audience and the fans, like," ""Okay, you like that element of the first Death Race" ""about your main character being a good fighter." ""Okay, this is the prequel," ""and we have a main character who's a really good fighter. "" "And he took it very seriously, and I think that fight in the bank is pretty cool." "So this is one of those helicopter shots, hanging out of the helicopter, shooting." "That's also a thing." "Normally, in my independent movies, I'm the DP and the director, and operate the A camera." "That has always been my style." "I believe that as a director..." "Framing this shot, for example, on the escalator." "Everything, for me, is like a dance." "The camera is a third character in a scene, and the things you wanna do, like reveal Ving Rhames' character here, doing these wide, still shots." "I love this kind of aesthetic, wide, cold building." "There's nobody there." "It gives you the feeling of this empire that Ving Rhames has." "So, that's kind of my style of directing." "But every time when I do a studio movie, studios are always a little nervous if I have also the DPjob." "So I always end up hiring a DP, but the DP is then basically lighting the movie, and I operate the A camera and shoot the movie, and direct the movie, of course." "Also, in this style, I shoot 70 slates a day because I use four cameras." "I shoot with two." "And the speed, I never leave the set." "I'm there, on the set, with the actors." "I'm right there with them." "So, also, the actors have no time to go back to their trailers or to think about stuff." "No, I wanna shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, and I like that energy." "And I noticed that also Ving and Lauren Cohan, who plays September, and the warden here..." "That's a South African actor, a really good actor." "And also, Luke and Sean, they loved the speed, and they loved that energy." "And we feed each other in that way." "For this movie, I finally convinced the studio to, instead of hire a DP, to hire a really good gaffer, like the best gaffer in South Africa." "We shot this movie in Cape Town, in South Africa." "And John McKay, who's like a really, really high-end gaffer who did Doomsday and Blood Diamond," "I asked him to be my DP, and basically light the movie." "And that was a very nice combination between his know-how about lighting and my know-how about using lenses, and dollies, and shots, and cranes, and operate everything." "So, this bank sequence." "Officially in the script..." "The script was really, really good when I got it." "It was a really cool prequel to the Death Race world and setting up this character," "Luke's character, who then later becomes Frankenstein." "I assume you have seen the movie before you listen to the director's commentary." "So, this is that fight I was talking about, when he comes in." "And also, I almost did it in just four or five shots, so you can really see that he's doing it himself." "I don't like the Hollywood movies that cut up action really close and tight and handheld." "I like to be a little wider, so we can see the dance the actor's doing." "Anyway, in the original script, there was not a lot of action in the first 30 pages." "So, one of the things I did, I added a lot of action in this whole sequence." "I wanted to see in the bank what was going on." "In the script it was all set outside, around the car." "And then, I wanted to have a really, really big chase because I wanted to show the audience that this main character is a really good driver." "He's this exceptional driver in the cop chase." "So, we understand later what he can do in the Death Races." "And it was also the first movie..." "In the first movie, we were told that Jason Statham could race, but we never saw it, so I thought it was very important..." "Before Jason then did the Death Races." "But I wanted to show before the Death Races that he was a good driver." "So we did this crazy chase, and we got this car, what was a Shelby Mustang, and it was sponsored by Shelby." "And the only restriction I had is that I could not scratch the car, so I could not do any damage to the car." "So I designed this chase where he's driving through everything, not hitting anything, and all the cops and everything are crashing and hitting everything in their path." "And then I came up with the idea of the hand grenades that they are throwing out, and the cars flying, and Luke is pissed and kicking them out of the car." "I shot a movie before in Cape Town." "So, here the chase starts." "We had two days to shoot this sequence." "Also, I will tell more about what we shot at, about the cameras." "But all this slow motion stuff we shot with the Phantom cameras, that I really love." "It's such a cool camera." "Anyway, so we had two days to do this whole sequence." "The whole shoot was 30 days, and two days I had to do this, and no second unit." "So, it was really crammed with shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, shots." "And was very tough because we're shooting in downtown Cape Town and we had to control everything." "I shot before in Cape Town." "In Cape Town, you have this freeway that is not finished, built." "So, what I wanted to do is end up on the freeway, and then have the cars flying off this freeway where it all stopped, where the freeway stopped, so we could use that, the end of it." "So, I built the design of the chase around these locations." "Funny is that this location, where we do the explosion, is in front of the bank again." "I just used the street on two sides." "One side was the bank and the other side is this shot, what comes up, the side shot with all the slow motion." "This shot, this is across the bank 'cause those were the only streets we could close." "I love this shot." "Absolutely one of my favourites." "This, again, is with the Phantom camera, and we're shooting this at 400 frames a second, when the cars are flipping over." " What the fuck was that for?" " Fuck you." "Then, this stuff is shot in the green screen studio." "It was not really a studio." "The thing is, with these kinds of movies on these kinds of lower budgets, you need to be very efficient in choosing locations so you can combine stuff, like I did with these locations for the race." "I also had the same with the green screen stuff." "We had a warehouse where we shot the racing, and we built the prison interior cells there, and I shot there also the green screen car stuff." "So, we put in green ceilings and started shooting." "So, then this house, the Sean Bean house, which was a beautiful, beautiful mansion." "We shot it in the house itself." "We had one day to shoot that." "Oh, yeah, the freeway." "I wanted to shoot on the freeway, but it was really, really difficult." "The only way to do it was to use it on Sunday between 6:00 in the morning and 9:00." "And in those three hours I had to shoot this whole piece." "Then the chopper shot was done later when I had the hour chopper and was hanging out of the chopper." "I flew over the freeway for just a minute, did these top shots, and then later the CG guys from the Ukraine put in the little cars that..." "And composited that in." "So you see Cape Town in the backgrounds, but we always wanted to have a feeling it's an American city." "And because they drive on the left side in Cape Town, we had to replace all the signage and all the street signs and make them backwards, and we all did that in post." "This movie has 700 visual effects shots." "But the visual effects shots are mainly green screen and compositing, so all these stunts and all the explosions are real." "There's no enhancements." "We only took away here a cable that pulled the cars over." "But the explosions and everything is..." "Here again, 400 frames a second with the Phantom." "That thing, you see the thing flying off, that was for real." "It was the door." "I think somebody forgot to put a cable on it, so at the explosion, it really flew towards the crew." "So, it was a scary moment." "And this also is 400 frames a second with the Phantom." "And that's how we introduce the character going to prison." "When I got the movie, there were, of course, a few things." "There was already an island, there was already a prison bus." "And we wanted to have a few characters back, and one of the characters was, of course, Lists' character here, what I thought was a really, really fun character in the first movie." "So, I was very happy that Frederick wanted to come back and do his character again." "And I think also in the script we had a very nice, new thing for him, and he even kills somebody at the end." "So, it was pretty cool, I think, for him also." "And for him it was also..." "He told me that it was very surreal to be back on this set." "So, this bus was built by the art department." "I had a very good art department on this movie, all local South Africans, and a very good production designer." "They built this bus from some kind of school bus." "They completely rebuilt it to be this prison bus." "The only thing that shows us that it's not the bus from the first movie is because now the steering wheel is on the other side." "And then this location, it was very difficult to find prison locations in South Africa who were very old and had that old feeling, like in the first Death Race." "But this was shot in the tower, the bunker, it was like, of all places, an old Dutch kind of castle, and we shot it on the outside with the rain and stuff." "And then, this set was built in one of the warehouses where we shot the racing." "And also, this was just built from scratch, you know, there was nothing." "The only that's real is the wall on the left side." "And the prisons are completely built." "It was a beautiful, beautiful set." "So, I remember also, in the screenplay, that it was very fast, very fast-paced." "And I kind of like to stand still, here and there, to give the character some room for emotions and for having the character reacting on his environment." "So, at hand, this moment's very long." "I remember in the script, he came there, and then he was taken to the arena, but I wanted to hang with him." "I wanted to feel his feeling of, he's fucked, you know?" "He will be imprisoned for life." "So, you wanna dive in his head and you want to feel what he feels." "And so, I'm really happy that I pushed forward to these kind of moments." "And also, when you are in the editing, and you're editing with your producers, and there's a lot of pressure to speed things up and to go fast to the action, go fast to the racing," "but I'm happy that I fought for these small moments who give us a lot of the character's story." "And this scene..." "Officially, this scene was set, I think, in his study." "He's working in his study." "But I was kind of, "How cool is it if he's making a sandwich?" ""What is the most spectacular, expensive sandwich in the world?"" "And he's more focused on the sandwich than his work and killing Luke's character." "But then this, this little moment here." "What I like, it's very subtle, it's very Sean Bean-subtle, that he shows." "There's the emotion of killing him and, boom, back into the sandwich, and giving his girl the sandwich." "We had so much fun shooting this scene, I remember." "Then, the arena." "The original idea was to put this arena on a location that I saw in the early stages of prepping." "And in the end, it was not possible to get it." "Just three weeks before shooting, we end up with this old cement factory." "And my production designer Johnny Breedt, he saw it in his head, how to build this set and build, in this empty frame, this arena." "And I was standing there when it was empty." "I could not see it." "And then he made some drawings, and when I saw the drawings," "I was like, "Oh, yes, man." "This is perfect."" "Because we built the bleachers here, where they're standing." "Here, these things were not there, the bleachers, all the upstairs, the truck we brought in," "the bus." "The place where September's standing upstairs, there was nothing there." "He completely built everything in this empty shell." "And then John McKay came in, and he built this incredible, beautiful truss here with all the lighting, what became a practical in the set." "So, at that stage, the arena was built, and I was really, really happy with it." "I think we shot all the fights in four or five days." "And only two, three days, we had a lot of extras." "The other days we had not, and we were concentrating on the close-ups and the dialogue pieces." "But it was incredible." "And because we had to build so much, I had to shoot it in the last week, which was very, very difficult to plan it in." "Then the fighters," "Xander is a South African actor, we cast him for this." "And, of course, what I also was very happy about is that Robin Shou wanted to come back to play 14K's character." "And I thought this character in the first Death Race was really, really cool." "There was not a lot of room for him, so I was really happy that we had him back, and give him more screen time, and see more of his character, and make him the only survivor in the end," "so he can go to the next Death Race movie, what is the first movie." "...or make him submit." " There are several pressure plates..." "Then, also what I liked about the first movie is that Paul has put in these pressure plates in the racing, with the swords and all those symbols." "So I was always looking for, "Okay, what's the origin for this?"" "If we do a prequel, then I wanna show how they came up with these things." "And the same goes for the death racing." "If this is the prequel, and in this prison system they have all these old cars and all these cascades, let's put this bus in the arena so it already gives you the feeling of," ""Okay, this is where it all started."" "And it's kind of plausible that we go from here, going into the death racing later." "So, that was also the design of these weapons." "All these weapons are stuff that came from cars, that they reuse to make this axe and to make the shield, when 14K goes up the staircase here." "See, the symbol there." "He climbs up." "You see that he takes this shield?" "The shield is a door of a car." "And, of course, we made a fake one, and it's rubber and that kind of stuff." "But that was the idea, to bring the death racing, car-racing Death Race, already into this fighting and into this arena." "Also, I like to have the actors do their own fighting." "And I remember that Robin told me that because I shoot so much, you know, I keep on shooting, shooting, shooting." "Because the only way you can make these scenes work is coverage." "So this is that door, what he uses as a shield here." "So, it was very, very, very tough for these two guys because, okay, we do the fights." "We'll do it again, we'll do it again..." "Also, we shot this film..." "Normally I shoot my films on film, 35 mil." "Universal really wanted me to shoot this on HD." "And I was really happy because Universal doesn't like the Red cameras, and I have the same problem with them." "I think the Red cameras are beautiful, beautiful cameras when you are shooting still shots on the tripods with a nice, beautiful lens." "There is that specially-made weapon we made, or Johnny Breedt made." "No!" "So, we didn't want to use the Red camera." "I don't like the Genesis and all these HD cameras who feel really like video." "And even the ARRI digital cameras, all the CMOS cameras, they have a problem." "When you move them as quickly as I move," "I always want to move the camera, it's always handheld on dollies or Steadicams." "These cameras, just these CMOS, they don't accept that." "So, I did a test before we started shooting, and I tested the F35, the Sony F35, and the Phantom." "And I was really surprised about the quality and the feel of feeling in the shutter speed in these cameras." "So, we ended up shooting this movie with two F35 cameras and two Phantom cameras." "And then the Phantom camera I used as my handheld camera, also on 24 frames, because the F35 is so big and so heavy." "So, I had to build a little..." "I call it always "the machine gun mode"." "So, we put the Phantom in a little handheld rig that I could hold in front of my stomach, so it's really low and I can run around the characters." "And during these fights, arena fights, I was really running around, and I think 90% of those shots are the shots I operate with this little handheld device, which is really, really cool." "So, Ving Rhames." "I was really glad to have Ving Rhames on this movie." "I remember talking with him on the phone, when we talked about the project and about the script, and he already had a lot of ideas about his character and he thought it was really cool that he was running this whole Weyland Corporation." "And so, on set, there was a lot of little improvisations, here and there, and I think they end up all on the set." "Even the scene which we just saw, with pulling her hair, it was the last take, and I told both of them that they should change it up a little bit, surprise each other." "And they both did." "And that ends up now in the movie, which I kind of like." "So, this location, this was also in one of the racing locations." "I think we used this location, this room, four times." "I think we built a mess hall here, we built one of the control rooms for the racing, we had the prison for Katrina here with the scene with Sean Bean and I think we did some scenes here with the cars being built." "So, it had to be all planned very efficiently." " Goldberg, huh?" " Yeah." "Then, Danny Trejo." "I'm such a big fan of Danny Trejo." "I think he's a legend." "And I always had something like," ""I wanna cast Danny Trejo in one of my movies. "" "And when I read the script, I was like," ""Maybe, maybe for this movie we can get Danny Trejo. "" "And he's very busy." "I think he does so many movies a year, big movies." "I think he was working on the Predators movie at the time we were shooting." "But we were very lucky to get him." "Here." "Oh, yeah." "In the back, you see?" "You saw the sword and the shield on that staircase?" "That's what we built." "I kind of like that we can see in this old building, the swords and the shields, as a symbol, are already a part of the art direction of this old building." "So, September came with the idea of these swords and shields because it is in that building." "And I really like those kind of things." "There's one scene, which is deleted, which is the office of September." "I bought this African mask on one of the African markets and it is one of her kind of props in her office." "But it looked really like the mask of Luke." "So I had something like, "Okay, so we've got this mask, a really old mask," ""and building the mask of Frankenstein was inspired from there. "" "DA offers you a talk-and-walk, and you turn him down?" "So, this scene..." "I remember, this was the first day." "I think this was my first shooting day." "We had a few foreign actors." "We had some actors from England, we had actors from America, and then we had a few actors from South Africa." "And I was very happy with having Patrick Lyster to play the part of the warden." "He's a very, very good South African actor." "But I remember, during the rehearsals and during the casting, it was so much fun when we worked with his character and for his character." "And then when he came on the set, he was very sick that day." "And so he was so sorry about that, but there's nothing you can do, of course." "But I think he does an incredible job in this movie." "And also, there are a lot of other South African actors, like this guy, Joe Vaz, who I really liked." "Then Tanit Phoenix, of course, the beautiful Tanit Phoenix, who plays Katrina, we'll see later." "This shot, yeah, this was kind of interesting." "I wanted to do a lot of 360-degree shots in these scenes." "It was tough for John to light 'cause there's no place where you can put lighting." "So, we had a big balloon hanging above them and some lighting outside of the windows." "But I love the timing here." "And I had an incredible Steadicam operator, and I remember that this was one of his toughest shots to pull off because the timing had to be right and he had to run really, really fast because it's a long lens that's on there." "So, his circle had to be a big circle." "So then, this sequence..." "I don't know, still." "I don't know when I'm doing this commentary right now, if we can clear the song Betty." "Betty, what's now underneath in the offline." "What was also in the script, what I really liked." "So, I hope we're going to get it." "This sequence was very difficult because this car, the old, rusty Mustang, was being a troublemaker." "It never would start, and it never would drive." "So, every time I had the camera rigged with these rigs on the front of it, it could not drive, and we were stopped again, and I had to push it for the next day." "And I want to have Luke driving it for real, and because I had such a tight schedule, it was very difficult to get Luke into that car and have the car driving at the moment that I had time to shoot it." "But I'm really glad that we end up shooting it." "And I remember that the interior, when the camera's inside with him and we see the nice sun in the back," "I shot that together with Luke during lunch break because we had no more time, everybody had to go to lunch." "And I said to Luke, "Let's shoot this shot." And he was, "Okay."" "So I put the Phantom on my lap and put a 35 lens on it, and everybody was gone, and me and Luke were racing over this location and doing that interior handheld shot." "Yeah, those things are fun to do." "And that's what's also so cool about Luke, he was completely game for that stuff." "I remember that he really, really loved that moment." "Then, these locations are also spread all over the place." "We shot this, again, in that castle, which is in the centre of Cape Town." "While we shot the prison yards at the cement factory, which was like at least an hour away from Cape Town." "And so, it was very difficult." "I think we changed location every day, every other day." "But it was fun, you know?" "In the end, that's the only way you can make these movies look good, if you have really good locations, and that you have the production value in the location while you shoot it." " Hey!" " Hey!" "Then, Big Bill's character." "Everybody else stay back!" "I saw a lot of Big Bill's casting tapes, and we end up with this British actor and I thought he did an incredible job playing this character." "And he had also a lot of fun with it." "Remember that we had to train all these fights, but especially the thing with the fight with Big Bill and Luke in the arena later." "It was tough for them, it was really tough for them." "Because also, again, I love to shoot this for real." "There are no doubles for these characters, so they're doing the fighting themselves." "And if you wanna have a lot of coverage, you need to do it a lot of times." "I remember, they were pretty bruised up over their body." "You ever hear of a computer?" "You're, like, a century behind everyone." "And September's character, Lauren Cohan." " What are you doing in my office?" " I'm here for him." "On the page it was a very, very cool and interesting villain, and I remember that." "Of course, in the first movie, Joan Allen's character, who plays the villain in the first movie," "I liked that it was like a female villain in this man's world." "So, in this movie, I was glad that they wanted to do the same thing, but that, of course, it was a different character." "I talked with Lauren a lot about her character, and I think we wanted to put a little bit more heart in her, a little bit more emotion, and make her less cold." "But still being an incredible, manipulative human being, who uses her sexuality to get anything she wants." "And she will never stop." "Then you're dumber than I thought." "And I'm really glad how it turned out, this." "It was very tough, because her character's going all over the place." "And that's very difficult, being tough, being pushed again by Ving Rhames, and then being sexy again in the next scene." "So, I think she really pulled it off." "The next scene, I think, is one of my favourite dialogue scenes." "This one in the shower." "I remember that my first AD, we were scouting this location, the cement factory, and there was this empty shell where I think the cement was holed up or something." "And he said, "Why not build the showers here?"" "I was like, "That is a really good idea."" "So Johnny Breedt just put in some showers and some lighting, and that was the shower." "So it's like a real, practical, very cold location where we did this." "But good for Luke, they made warm water into this location." "Yes, I remember talking with both characters about this scene, and I really wanted to make it very, very sexy, seductive, and that she was really going to seduce him." "And I remember talking with Lauren that I really wanted her to touch him, and to really try to persuade him by giving him also physical attention." "Which was kind of daring because her character, would she do that to the prisoner, that kind of stuff." "But I think she plays it really well, and Luke's reactions are classic." "And I think this is a very, very strong scene between those two." "...as well as plenty of..." "And I remember in the editing that this was one of the scenes that was cut..." "I had two editors, Radu Ion and Herman P. Koerts, both are Dutch." "And I remember that when I saw the first assembly, that this was one of the only scenes that I think the assembly was what we used in the movie." "Because it really worked, it was an organic kind of scene, and it was really put well together." "Because there was only one way to put it together, it's the way they play it and the rhythm they play it." "Yeah, I'm really happy with the result." "Hey, go sell sleazy someplace else." "And that's also so fun about Lauren's character, is that she had to play, also, the host." "What I liked in this version of Death Race, is that she's hosting it, and her ego's putting herself on the television." "And that gave us an opportunity to also make the fights, and these arena fights, more like a TVshow." "What I really wanted to do, you know?" "I wanted to feel like, "Okay, now the TV leader starts," ""and we are in this crazy TV world, where people kill each other" ""in this reality game show."" "And I'm really happy that I could do that." "Shooting again..." "And also, I wanted to show that it is a TVprogramme, so I put in the TV cameras and made it feel like it was a TVshow." "And combine TVshots, like these, with movie shots, where we feel the movie again later, when we are with the characters." "So then, these Big Bill fights." "On the page, again, it was just a very regular stage fight with some weapons." "I wanted to bring it up a notch." "I remember, my first conversation with Paul Anderson," "I told him, because I love the flamethrowers in the first Death Race on the big bus, the big truck." "So, I told Paul, "The second fight," ""I want to introduce a new weapon." "I want to introduce flamethrowers," ""and have these two characters go at each other with flamethrowers. "" "And he was like, "This is such a cool idea."" "So, the first thing, when I came in South Africa," "I went to the special effects company and I told them," ""Okay, we need to build flamethrowers that can be..."" "There they are. "That can be a backpack," ""and they work for real, and the actor has to operate it," ""because I want them to do it." ""I don't wanna have some CG flames, I want them to have the real flames. "" "So, when I was operating again, these shots," "I'm running around with this handheld device, with the Phantom camera, and when the flamethrowers came in, it was really hot because I was on top of it with the camera, and we also put the whole arena in fire." "And so, it was like mayhem." "For two days, we had this fire mayhem, and every night when I came back to the hotel, my nose was black from the black smoke." "But I love it, you know." "I think this is what the movie needed, this energy and this crazy, crazy world." "So, we had so much fun." "But even for the scene," "I always am looking for a different kind of shot, shots we've never seen before, and figure a way how to build something that we can utilise to do it." "So, for this movie, I remember we were doing a recce, and I was telling the riggers and stunt people and the camera people that," ""Hey, listen, what I wanna do," ""I want to have the Phantom handheld in my hands," ""but then I want my body hanging in a harness on a cable," ""and I want to fly over the set, over the fighting," ""and kind of running, jumping, and then coming down again. "" "And so, everybody was looking at me, like, "Is he serious?"" "This is the Phantom again." "I think I shot this on 300 frames, or something like that." "It's such a cool shot, when we reveal it's the flamethrower." "So, these are the actors themselves with the flamethrowers." "And that was fun to shoot." "It was a lot of fun." "This way!" "This way!" "Come on!" "So I told them about this..." "We called it the "Flying Dutchman" rig." "So, I was on this harness, flying over the arena, but also what I kind of forgot because there was so much fire, and we put everything on fire, and the heat goes up, it was very smoking-hot when I was hanging over them," "over this fight, and jumping." "I think one of the shots comes now." "Let me see." "I think now..." "I don't remember." "I think..." "Yeah, this shot is done like that." "So I'm running backwards while they pull me up, so it feels like a handheld crane shot." "And I think there are a lot more..." "Especially at the end of this fight, it comes back there." "I used that recce cam." "I told you." "So, what was also very complicated, is because, at this stage, a lot of things..." "This was also fun." "This is Luke himself." "We put Luke in fire, on his legs, you see here, and I think that was such a cool moment." "You know, it was very safe." "It was no problem." "But I wanted to see that the flames were really on top of Luke." "Anyway, so we had the riots, we had the flamethrower duel, we had Katrina and Lists' characters, and September." "So, what was very complicated is that I wanted to take the things away from each other, because if you combine them, then you can never cut it in a way you want." "So I really had to have the feeling that a riot was going to happen at the same time, and that they're fighting at the same time, but shoot it in a way that they never see each other" "or do not come close to each other, except after this moment." "And I think I'm very happy doing that because then..." "You see, now the riot comes together with the whole arena." "Otherwise, I could never time it in the right way." "And I remember during the shooting that nobody was really knowing what I was planning, 'cause I shot everything in little, separate pieces." "But that was the only way to have enough footage in the editing to make the timing of the riot and the fight work in the editing." " Shut it down." " No way." "This is my show." "Then all these shots, of course, we had a lot of green screen in this room." "We had no real televisions." "Death Match is a trademark of Weyland International." "I remember that this room was really practical." "It was on top of this arena, and you had to climb..." "You had to walk all the way around the arena, and then climb up this little staircase to get there." "These are the shots, again, with the Flying Dutchman rig, which I really like." "And that's how we did this fight." "It was fun, it was mayhem." "And then, of course, later in the movie, when we have the love scene..." "This is the Flying Dutchman rig again, and then coming back above Luke." "Also, I wanted to do a lot of transitions where we have a shot from the TV or from a security camera, and then pull back, and then we are somewhere else in the television and..." "But, of course, these things had to be planned ahead, so you know exactly what you have." "This was an interesting bit." "Any closer, buddy..." "We had this wound in his leg, and I wanted to feel that," ""Okay." "This is real." You know?" "Again, I didn't want to do a close-up and it was something else, so we built this wound on top of his leg, and so his veins, and he can really react to the surgeon putting this leg closed." "What happened is that, I think we had an actor, a local actor to play the doctor, and we had a medical advisor to advise how you do it." "And when he was doing the sewing of the leg, I was like," ""Let's have him do the scene."" "So he became the surgeon, and we used the actor for something else." "So, that surgeon is officially our medical advisor." "Sit down there and shut up." "This location was an old..." "An old hospital, and I remember it was very sinister." "It was closed for years, but it smelled, still, like dry blood." "And it was really..." "I remember walking around all the rooms, and there was even this room where you had all the towels from 10, 20 years ago." "All still bloodied up." "They were never cleaned." "The doors were all closed, but you could smell it through the whole building." "It was disgusting." "But I think the location was pretty spectacular." "And also, we had the white room, which was at the end of the movie, when we build Luke's character into Frankenstein." "I remember that we never had..." "I had a vision for it, with a lot of lighting tricks, but we'll talk about it later." "But during scouting of this location, we found the old kitchen of the hospital, so we end up using that as our white room." " Boss, we've been assured it's happening." " It's been happening for weeks now." "So then, this scene." "I think, as a director, it's always very important to do things differently, in a way we didn't see it." "So, him shooting him..." "I wanted to do something experimental, and I remember that it was like," ""Okay, I will do this crazy kind of shot." ""I will do this 1,000-frames-a-second shot of him. "" "Here." "Boom." "This is 1,000 frames-a-second." "There's no tricks at all." "All the gunpowder coming out of that gun is for real." "Then we do this shot, which is completely out of focus, which I kind of liked, and then jump-cutting to him again in real focus, and continuing the scene." "And I always planned to do it like this." "I remember shooting an alternative, more traditional alternative, 'cause I was not certain that Universal would let me do these kind of more artistic ways of killing people." "But when I showed it to them, they loved it." "They were like, "This is cool." So, it ended up in the movie, as we wanted." "The board's decision is final, Miss Jones." "Then, this whole Weyland location." "I remember we went through all Cape Town, and I saw every office building, and I was really scrammed because I could not find a really big, glass, industrial, high-end office space, where I can do all these scenes." "And I remember that we ended up shooting it in the..." "How do you say that?" "The Convention Centre." "The Convention Centre of Cape Town." "And we basically shot this scene in the hallway of the Convention Centre, while there was still conventions going on a little bit further." "So, all this office stuff, when they first arrive in the opening, you know, with the escalators, and even his office, with the glass, which we saw in the opening of the movie," "is all that location." "Then, this location was the furthest away from Cape Town." "It was a one-and-a-half-hour drive." "We did a lot of stuff here." "So, inside of this location, we had the pit stops, where we are building the race cars later." "Outside, we did racing." "We used the location for the mess hall, we had the location for the fire and the burning of Luke at the end." "And again, this is the way I schedule and plan a movie." "I choose locations where I can at least have four or five sets going at the same time." "They're so spread out that I can have lined up this shot, while this shot is lined up inside, and I can go from inside to outside, and keep shooting while I'm resetting the A-team over here," "resetting the cameras, I'm shooting with these cameras over there, and flip-flop between the cameras." "...no one has ever seen before." "Then, this sequence." "This sequence was officially set in a boardroom, in his office, and I thought it was..." "I didn't know how to do this in a boardroom." "Everything that we need..." "So, when I saw the location, what would become our racing location," "I was like, "Shit, man." "We should do the board meeting here. "" "September brings them to the location where we'll do the racing." "Such as?" "There's, by the way, a very small cameo of myself." "I was like, "If I do one cameo in this movie, I should drive the fastest car in this movie. "" "And so, you see me on this little steamer a little bit further." "It's the slowest car, of course." "This, that's me there." "The fastest car in this movie." "Anyway, so we're using this location to do this boardroom meeting, and I really liked it, in the end, because it gives the feeling of," ""Okay, all these executives come to this location," ""to the Terminal Island facility, to talk about building the racing. "" "And also, I remember that I told Ving to say the name, "Death Race"." "You know, again, because in Lauren's speech, in September's speech, she talks about the Death Race." "But I wanted to him to repeat the line because I wanted to cut it out from her lines and feel that he's coming up with the idea for the Death Race name." "And how cool is it to have Ving Rhames say, "Death Race", you know?" "I think it's a trailer moment." "So, regarding the cars." "I thought the cars were very, very cool from Paul Anderson's movie." "Every car had its own character, and so I was really happy that the cars were still alive." "They were there to grab." "And also, because..." "Before we go there, this is just classic." "Death Race." "Yes." "That's what I mean." "How cool is that?" "This is also the Phantom camera, 1,000 frames-a-second, the basketball going in." "Anyway, so when I got the movie, the thing was that I shot it in 30 days, this movie." "We had less than one-tenth of the budget of the original movie." "So, you have to be creative in how you do it." "And I remember that I had access to all the second-unit footage of the first Death Race, of all the racing stuff, and I knew I had the same cars." "A lot of collectors around America had the original cars, so were able to buy them back and ship them to South Africa." "And I had to build two cars because they were gone." "It was Big Bill's car and the Chrysler car." "We built them from scratch." "But basically, I went through all the footage that they shot for the first movie, all the second-unit footage, and there was so much cool footage because they had, I think, 60 days main unit and 60 days second unit to shoot the first Death Race movie." "I had only seven days to shoot the racing." "And I had to destroy all the cars in all the crashes, and so that was not a lot of time." "So, I was fortunate to use the footage from the second unit, from the first Death Race, which was not used for the first movie, to use it for my movie." "And I think in the final movie..." "We have two big racing sequences." "I think I used 20% of the shots from the first second unit crew, and the rest we shot ourselves." "This is what I really like, the foot chase idea, where they have to run and fight for the cars." "I remember that we were shooting this, but also time was so constrained, so, in the end, we had three hours to shoot this whole foot chase." "And that's a pity, but I think it's fun, it's entertaining." "And also, for me, that's very important." "I think any good action movie, any good genre action movie needs humour." "You need to..." "Don't take yourself so seriously." "So, I think, especially here with Calin's character, when he gets in the car right here, I love these little moments." "This just keeps getting better and better!" " Hey, baby." " How about a bit v rodet?" "And also, I think I gave a lot of room to the actors to improvise these little moments." "I told them what I was looking for, and boom." "This is a nice PO V of a dummy getting hit." "So, I told them what I was looking for, and then we roll the camera and they go for it." "And those moments are always priceless." "So, this is the car, Big Bill's car, the one on the left side, we had to build that, the Dodge van, Ram Van." "But the Mustang, of course, was the hero car." "So, we got the hero car back, which is this car when he steps right in." "And that car..." "This car..." "That car, but not this car..." "We built one..." "We didn't have a lot of money, but I convinced Universal to at least buy another Mustang, just a clean Mustang, four years old, to bring it with us to Cape Town, so at least I could build a second Mustang." "So, I knew that I could shoot action stuff, and explosions, and put the Mustang on fire, in the schedule at the different moments than when we were doing interiors of these kinds of shots." "So, I had a double car." "So, that was the only double car I had." "All the other cars, I only had one car, and scheduling this was very, very tough because I knew I wanted to destroy every car, and we're destroying every car in our movie." "But doing the racing, and then scheduling it so that we can kill these cars, was very tough." "I remember that on one shooting day we did three explosions and crashing, where we destroyed three characters' cars, and that was really mayhem because we had to do that schedule-wise." "So, again, these shots are back in the arena, where we did the setups of them in the cars, the green screen stuff, and it was so much fun." "It was so much fun to shoot these race scenes and to shoot these characters in the cars." "That was fun." "I remember also, in my conversation with..." "This is the chopper shot, again, at the cement factory, what I did in that hour." "So, I remember talking with Paul Anderson about what elements they also had, and he told me that they built a lot of CG muzzle flashes and guns going off of these cars, because if you do it practically..." "Because everything goes so fast, the shots are so fast, there's no room for the camera to really register the bullets going out and the flames going out of the muzzles, the muzzle flashes." "So there was digital elements for that, and that's also what you see in this race." "Sword pressure plates activated." "Because we had no time for squibs." "The only squibs I had was in the second race, when 14K gets killed." "Then, we had real squibs in the cars." "But all the other ones are just digital, and it made our lives so much easier." "Here we put a green screen thing on the floor to make them go over the pressure plates." "And then, again, because you have to imagine these cars were built for the first movie, they were used on the first movie, and there they had five, six cars for each car." "But I remember that Paul told me that they had a lot of trouble with these cars, also." "So, then these cars didn't drive for two years." "Then we bought the cars, we used them, so these cars were in terrible, terrible condition." "And so every time I was ready to shoot, one of the cars broke down, or could not start, or drove not fast enough, so it was really, really tough to make all these things work." "This PO V, I love this PO V kind of thing." "Yeah!" "And then the Phantom camera, of course, with the slow motion explosions." "Stock car racing got its start during Prohibition with moonshine runners fleeing federal agents." "Bill France Sr conceived NASCAR..." "I like this moment where Lists is explaining about all the racing stuff." "Anyway, so with these cars, we had a big problem keeping them driving, and I was also very nervous that we maybe end up halfway through the shoot with no more cars driving." "But in some kind of miracle, overnight..." "So, we shot during the day, during the night they were fixing the cars." "They were putting new stuff in, and then the next morning we were driving again." "And we were very lucky that they kept working till the end." "Then, this moment, there was a really big bang when we flipped this car, and we had the car exploding because I had to do this explosion, this one right here." "This one." "We had to do that inside of a warehouse because of schedule-wise, and lighting, and timing." "And I remember that the bang was so loud and so hard, that there was a lot of stuff at the ceiling, old rust and stuff that came down," "but it was a pretty cool bang." "Where did he go?" "So again, we had a lot of character actors from South Africa, playing Calin and playing these other characters." "It's gonna be mine." "And I remember that we were in the green screen environment." "We put the car on the little circular gimbal, where you can turn the car 360 degrees." "So then, we had the cameras..." "So, these kinds of green screen moments, we had the car moving around on this platform, and then I have the actors in there doing all these crazy things." "Also, in the designing of the racing, I wanted to do a few different things." "Because I remember the script, there were a lot of moments in the race which felt like the first movie." "So, one of the things I wanted to do is," ""Okay, how cool would it be if one of the drivers get out of their car," ""jumps to another car, and kills one of the drivers" ""just standing on the hood of the car?"" "So, the stunt guys found this free jumper." "So, this actor, stunt guy, is a free jumper, one of the champions." "And so, he was able to jump and do his thing." "And we made him the character, so we don't have doubles doing it." "No, it was just him being that character." "And that goes also later with Katrina's character here, when she climbs up the car and turns the machine gun around to shoot backwards." "I just wanted to do different stuff." "Only driving and shooting at each other would be a little boring, and also we didn't have the budget or the money to make a big, big sequence." "What I really like about the first movie was the sequence with the big truck, with all the machine guns and the flamethrowers on it." "That was a classic, classic big action piece." "So, we had no room for that, of course, on this budget." "So, I had to come up with smaller things, smaller ideas with the same kind of impact." "And I love this moment when Luke's car is loaded with the machine gun, but Big Bill's on his back." "So, how to solve this?" "And the tombstone flies away, so he's completely fucked." "He's exposed and he's gonna get killed." "And I love then that September climbs out and takes the gun off the holster and turns it around." "I think those things are really, really cool." "These wider shots are done by a stunt double." "That's, I think, the only moment..." "No, there was a few more moments with the fire and explosions." "But here we used a stunt double, and then Katrina, Tanit Phoenix, did the close-up herself." "And I think it's pretty cool stuff." "And then, of course, they win the first race." "Sweet!" "I guess I lucked out, then." "Nice." "That's a fun moment." "And then, they win the first race." "This start-and-stop grid, that was a really, really big problem." "There were two locations I really liked in South Africa, in Cape Town, for our start-and-stop grid." "And both locations were, in the end, not possible to shoot." "We could not get the permits." "And I love this shot, also." "I love these 360 degree Steadicam shots which show you the whole world, and I love to set up the blocking and the timing of everybody." "So, when you go around, in the background, we see the other characters." "There's Calin walking with his team." "I like the timing of these things, and one thing leads to the other." "I was a Girl Scout." "Even here, when Big Bill comes bursting in." "Is that right?" "I love this little improvisation moment." "I told Luke to find Frederick and have him kick his ass." "But then, the camera is on him, and then, boom, the next character, Xander's character, comes there." "Then, Xander brings us to the next little piece." "And I liked that everything is interlinked to each other, and it has a lot of energy this way." "So, the start-and-stop grid, we could not get those locations, and then we end up..." "There was this one location I knew about, it was the old slaughterhouse in Cape Town." "And I remember that they were closing it down, nobody could shoot there anymore, because every movie shot in South Africa, even Doomsday." "I remember scenes from Doomsday that were shot on those locations." "And even the new Lost Boys is shot on that location." "But we were not able to shoot there anymore." "So, in the end, our local producers fought for it, we got it." "And then, I think just a week before shooting, we could build the start-and-stop grid there," "and had our own set to do that." "Come on, Lucas, let's go." "So, this is a set, again, that we built." "Hey, what did I do?" "Then, the love scene." "I don't know any more where originally the love scene was placed, but I thought it was cool to put it back into the arena." "And I think this is also one of the classic moments, when Ving Rhames says, "I'm Caesar."" "That's such a cool moment." "But I remember that I wanted to use this location, and then had them going onto the roof of the building and doing the end of the scene there." "The way I shoot these kinds of scenes is also..." "Because there's always a lot of emotions hanging around when you shoot love scenes, but I like to find moments and not over-think it too much." "What I hear from a lot of actors is that a lot of directors over-think it, overanalyzing these moments, and then it becomes a really big thing, and then it's very difficult to pull them off, shooting-wise." "So what I told both of them is that," ""Okay, what I would like you guys to do is hit just a few beats," ""the beats of looking at each other, talking to each other," ""come closer to each other, and then kiss," ""and then pull each other's clothes off, and kiss some more," ""and look into each other's eyes, and that's it." ""Let's shoot it." "Let's stop talking about it."" "And then, because I operate the camera myself and, at this stage in the shooting, you also know the timing of the actors." "And Luke's also somebody who can..." "He sees my camera moving, he feels my operating, he sees me in the back of his eyes, so he also times himself on my movements." "And then it becomes a synergy, it becomes a dance." "It becomes a dance between your main characters and me, going around with my handheld camera and shooting the love scene." "And I think it's a really powerful, cool moment." "I also remember that I loved the music for the first movie, which was composed by Paul Haslinger." "And so Jeremy Bolt, who was the producer of the first Death Race, who was also a producer on this movie..." "He offered to try to convince Paul Haslinger to do it again, to do this movie." "And I'm glad he did." "So, we end up with Paul's music." "And I remember in the offline cuts of the movie for this sequence," "I used Paul's theme, the love theme from Underworld." "I put that underneath this scene in the cuts, and then I asked Paul to" "compose something new, of course, but compose something that had this emotional feeling." "And I think he did an incredible job for this sequence." "And then I love this transition, when we're going from skin to skin, where we're seeing them making love and doing their thing, and then we're hitting this guy's stomach with the bat." "I love these kinds of transitions." "They're also very important to make the movie flow." "Also, this is a local actor." "I used him also in an earlier movie." "I did a movie six years ago, it was in South Africa, and I had him also for that." "Anyway..." "Danny Trejo, beautiful." "And we end up with that scene, that sequence, and I was really happy about it." "Then, this scene, I always felt in the screenplay that we lost Sean Bean's character a little bit at the end of the movie." "So, I really tried to bring him back in and to have him be a part of Katrina's character, or somewhere in this moment in the movie." "And I remember that me and Tony and Patti Jackson, who was the executive from Universal, who's absolutely an incredible, incredible person, who was so supportive and so inspirational to direct this movie and a great help during the development, and then shooting and post, every asset." "I remember that Patti, Tony, the writer, and me, we were discussing, and Mike Elliott, also one of the producers of the movie," "discussing and trying out this moment, this scene." "And I remember we had so many different versions, and in the end we chose this version, where he's kind of asking her to kill him." "And, of course, she will not do that." "But I thought it was a really..." "And I remember, even in the editing, that there was a lot of discussions if we could keep this in or not." "And I'm glad we did, in the end, because I think it's very important to see Sean Bean at this stage of the movie and still feel that he's controlling the killing of Luke, and how important that is for him." " Yeah?" " Sixty-five share." "Well done, young lady." "Then, the firing." "Yeah, that was fun." "That's also something..." "In the editing, you make so many decisions." "You, basically, are rewriting the movie during editing with the choices you make." "Because the script is your base, you always need the best script possible, and we had that on this movie." "Then, when you start shooting, things change." "The actors bring ideas on the table, locations are bringing new ideas on the table and changing them around." "Then the way I staged the scenes, what I think is one of the important things, you know." "Good staging of the scenes will change it again." "And then, their performance changes it again." "And then, in the editing, you change that again to the final scene." "And I remember that I did..." "There was more ending to this scene, where he fires the warden." "But we end up with ending on the warden, and I really like that moment." "So, yes." "Officially, in the script, there was the isolated cell, and in the first Death Race movie there was an isolated cell." "But when we were scouting, we found this location, and I thought how cool would it be if we built in this location this isolated cell, and we reveal at the end of this little sequence that this cell is in the middle of this empty, big space." "And so, we ended up building a new isolated cell doing that." "So, this is our pit, again, that we completely..." "Johnny Breedt completely built on this strip." "The second race." "I remember that there was a lot of scenes here also, in between, where Luke has a conversation with September, offering to go and testify." "In the end, I'm really glad we cut that out because it changed his character a little bit, and I thought also it was a little bit too early for him to give in and it was losing the suspense." "And we had to take out at least a half hour from my cut to the final cut." "And so, these were the first scenes we took out." "And I'm really happy with that because we really didn't need it." "Then, of course, this whole "leaders of the Death Race"." "I used what Paul designed because I wanted to have, of course, the same feeling." "Even the racing is like the pre-racing of Paul's movie." "But at least it had to flow into each other." "Dim the lights." "The carnage is about to begin." "And because we have this big explosion at our pit stop," "I imagined that our pit stop was destroyed, and then they built a new pit stop, which was used for the racing that was in Paul's movie." "So, again, we're racing." "So much fun to shoot action and shoot these racing sequences, but it was very complicated because you're spreading this out between so many different locations, on so many different days, and you shoot little elements, here and there." "I also thought it was very important to see the audience, feel the outside world of this Death Race." "So, that's the reason that we shot inmates looking at the Death Race, we shot at these restaurants, where people are looking at the Death Races." "And if it was up to me and I had more time, I would have done..." "Even went into houses and see people on the street watching at the window dressing, where a television is showing the Death Race." "But in the end, we had no time to do it in such detail." "But I like that we are cutting outside." "Go for it." "Go for it!" "Shield pressure plate activated." " Throw the smoke!" " No, not yet." "Then, this whole thing about the death head." "Pull it now!" "The death head, of course, is not something that really works." "It was all computer animation that the thing comes up." "But we had to build it, and I was really surprised because the art department rebuilt it based on drawings and designs from the first movie, and it was so huge." "It was really big." "But I wanted to do something different with it." "Just having the car crashing into it was not that cool." "So I came up with the idea to have the car on its side, and the driver tries to push the car back to get back into the race, and then Big Bill yanks him between the spikes and the car." "I thought that was a pretty cool death." "And that's also what I did a lot." "When I came in Cape Town, I bought these toy cars, and in my working room with the stunt people and stunt coordinators and the art department," "I discussed every kill, and we changed the kill, and changed the kill, and make them different, different, different." "So we had kills that were unique and fresh and new, but also they were practical, so we could even do it." "Like this, for example, this chicken moment, we had to CG the car." "And then this was shot at 1,000 frames, again, with the car smashing the wall." "But the thing is, I was hoping that the car was careening into 20% of the volume of the car, so it would go really very small." "But these cars were so heavy and they were so good built that even with cutting in," "making room and cutting open the roll bars, we could not squeeze the car to a real small car." "So, on location I said, "Okay, let's then blow it up." ""Let's have Big Bill pass the car and blow it up. "" "So I made that decision on the set, and a few hours later we blew up the car." "Also, for this movie, I liked to change the music up and have different rhythms." "Radu Ion, one of the editors, did an incredible job in this racing to change the energy and change the music and use different beats," "and slow and fast, and the classical music to change up the musical design of this racing." "And can you imagine that this Porsche after..." "It didn't drive for the whole time, it was always broken, and then when we did this stunt with the Porsche, it was still driving afterwards." "It was kind of funny." "So he did an incredible job editing these different music beats, and I remember, when Paul saw the movie..." "Because he did the first movie also, he was really surprised by changing up the music style in these chase scenes." "So, a lot of this music has been composed by Paul, and the other ones are just songs that we used to cut in between." "So these are the only squibs we built ourselves, and then, of course, he pushed him here into the gasoline, all with the Phantom camera on 1,000 frames." "And I love the cutting between the 1,000 frames, and then cutting back to real speed and real size." "And all this is real, there's no special effects at all." "The only special effect in this scene is the matchbox flying in the wide shot." "And that's it, the rest is real." "So, I think, yes, the next shot." "Here it comes." "He throws it." "Only this shot is a visual effect." "The rest is all real." "This is all real." "The explosion is real." "Putting the stunt guy in fire was real." "And that's also what I liked about Paul's movie, it felt real because it was real." "They shot it for real, and the same I wanted to do." "And I love these little timing moments, when we see the fire, we see the flame, we see even the stunt guy being in the fire, we pull the lens to 14K, and then Big Bill passes also with his car." "These kind of timing moments I like because it makes it feel real." "I guess you owe me a favour, too." "It gives a really, really, really good..." "Powerful moments." "It doesn't feel that I'm tricking you with this sequence." "No, we did it for real." "And it's true, we did it for real." " Yeah, I got you, baby." " Sword pressure plates activated." "So then, this whole ending, with the car being sabotaged and shooting the heat-seeking rockets." "Activate the napalm on my signal." "It was very, very difficult shooting it, designing it, and executing it because there was so many elements involved." "I think, in the end, it was pretty cool." "The only thing was the parachute jump." "On this budget, it was very difficult to pull off, and it think this was the best way to make it work." "Come on, hit it, you dumbass bitch!" "Swerve!" "Swerve!" "Anyway..." "And then these rocket are CG, and the rest of the explosions are for real." "And I love the moment when Big Bill shoots his pit team." "I remember that I told the physical effects people on the location," "I told them, "I wanna do it for real." "When Big Bill shoots up his own crew," ""I want the real actors, or stunt people, standing in the explosion. "" "So, they end up using a different way of exploding." "It's just air woofers, which they filled up with earth and with dirt and cork and all kinds of other debris." "And so, when we blow it up, it is for real, and these guys are getting this air woofer with all this stuff in their face." "So then, this explosion is also absolutely, I think, classic." "Again, with the Phantom camera seeing the Mustang flying because of this heat-seeking missile." "I love this shot." "It's one of my favourite, I think, also." "And then, Big Bill, of course, shoots his pit team, which is the thing I just discussed." "So this bang here, it is real." "Those people are really standing there, and there's no trick here." "Then, the burning of Luke." "I..." "I remember in the script, originally, Luke's body..." "Luke was flying out of the car, and he was on the road, burning." "And I really had the feeling like, for me, that is not epic enough." "The Mustang, his Mustang is such an icon for the Death Race movies, we need to have him getting killed or getting burnt and become Frankenstein in the Mustang." "So, that's also the reason why I built a second Mustang because I wanted to cut open the car and have Luke sitting here for real, upside down, while the flames are around him." "This is no trick." "This is Luke Goss by himself, for real, with flames around him, sitting in this car." "This is a stunt double, of course." "His arms..." "That's a stunt guy having the arms in the fire." "But I put Luke there." "And that was, I think, the hardest part for him to shoot because you have to imagine, we have the car on a kind of stick, what is a barbecue kind of a stick." "We have to..." "And this car was hot, by the way, when Danny had to run to this car and try to open the door, it was burning hot like hell." "Those hands are from the stunt guy being on fire." "Anyway..." "So, I wanted to have such a powerful, impact moment that the second-best thing we built..." "At the end, the last two days, we cut it open, they put it on a barbecue stick so we could roll it over, we put Luke Goss in on the right side up, then put him in the harness, and then turn the car upside down for real," "stick the cameras in, stick the flames bars in and have fire." "And I remember that it freaked out Luke so much," "I think we did two or three takes with him and still, an hour after we shot, he was still kind of crying and he was still completely into it." "Because it made that so real for him that he was completely exhausted and completely..." "So impacted by it that it was a really, really tough moment for him." "And I think you see that back in the movie." "It's such a powerful, powerful moment to see your main character burning alive and become this monster." "There's the bus again, and the burnt car." " I need to talk to him." " No." "Then, of course, building Frankenstein's character." "I always liked what was in the script, this room..." "It was even described as a white room, where they were working on his muscles and building the character of Frankenstein." "There were two moments when we see his burning wounds." "This is one moment, just after the fire." "And I think the makeup department did an incredible job putting this makeup on top of Luke." "And Luke is really playing with it." "He even came up with the idea here of his teeth." "That was Luke's own idea, to open up his mouth and let you see all the inside of his teeth." "And also, Luke is somebody who loves this stuff." "And I think it's an incredible moment." "Takes him eight hours sitting in the chair to apply the makeup, but it's a really good moment." "Also, it was fun to call back Joan Allen's character here, which was also in the script that I really liked." "Anyway, so after the second part, we see Luke's character when he becomes Frankenstein, that was set in this white room." "What I wanted to do is bring that to the next edge, even this white room, and I remember that I saw these LED lightings" "at NAB in Vegas." "And so, I was trying to explain to John McKay the lighting gaffer, the DP, to" "He better be." "put these as practicals against the wall." "So instead of using it as lighting, I wanted to use it as lights." "This is also one of my favourite shots." "I think it's 1,000 frames a second, September walking towards the white room." "I think it's classic." "We're talking about placing electrodes into the brain." "Anyway." "So, next is the white room." "So, what I wanted to do is make these practical-lighting white things, and then have a lot of lights put into the lens and giving all these flares inside of all these lenses in all these shots, and then put in the cold ice." "You see the lighting in the back, these are all these LED lights, and then we have, of course, all the cold ice." "They brought so much cold ice." "And I said, "More, more, more!"" "On every shot I put more cold ice in these spaces." "But I'm really happy with how this whole scene ended up." "It's the building of a villain." "So, this is hell?" "And for me, even the montage, I always wanted to do this montage, where we see just fragments of it, and we even see the characters in slow motion moving while they're talking in real time." "So I remember when we shot this, I told September, Lauren, to walk around and just say some rubbish stuff." "It didn't make any sense what she was saying, but at least I wanted to have her move around and move her arms." "So she was not sure what she was doing, but when I showed her the movie, she now got it." "She was like, "This is cool."" "Because it's a really surreal sequence." "And only have one line on her that is in real time, and real on her face." "But this moment, with her hands going around," "I love the surreal of that." "And that I wanted to combine with building the mask." "The original idea is that the mask was basically a part of the door of the car, where his face was melted against." "We even built it melted against his face, but when I saw it on location, it was not that cool." "But I definitely wanted to build a mask, so I shot all this stuff at a melting place, where they built some masks for us." "And then, I wanted to have a really cool reveal of Frankenstein's mask." "So we did all these shots of his wardrobe, and then the doctor comes in with the cold ice tray." "And I remember shooting this shot." "And then, with the flare of the lens when he..." "And this, of course, I think is a classic, classic, classic shot." "And then going to the flare..." "I remember that we really were trying to design every shot to make it very stylistic, and I think we succeeded." "And then, at the end, I wanted to shoot a slow motion shot, so what we did, I shot Luke here getting up at 400 frames a second, and then we ramped it up, so I could slow it down again here." "So this is the real speed I shot the scene in, on 400 frames a second, when he puts on the mask." "And then, at the beginning of the shot, he says, "My name is Frankenstein,"" "we sped it up, and had a ramping moment there and synched it." "I'm really happy with that reveal moment." "Then, of course, the ending." "I always intended to..." "I remember..." "I don't remember quite well." "I don't remember well in the script, how the ending was played, but I think it was very linear." "This is, of course, fun." "It's Goldberg getting out of the car, and not Frankenstein." "It was very linear, but I wanted to end with a montage, where we kill all the characters at the same time in this montage, kind of strong montage timing." "And so, I shot all the elements of this end sequence with that in mind." "And my editors put it together, and I was really, really..." "I remember seeing it for the first time, and I had tears in my eyes watching it because it really worked." "You know, it worked." "All these little lines and all these end kills came together in that end sequence, which will start two minutes from now." "Then, of course, the arrival of Frankenstein." "Again, the Phantom camera for this shot here." "I love that camera." "It's such a beautiful, beautiful high-speed camera." "Also, what was fun is that, we had, of course, new drivers because we killed everybody except 14K." "So 14K is still alive, and, of course, Luke's character is now Frankenstein." "All the others are dead." "I remember that on the day itself, because we shot this in one night, this whole end sequence, we had all these new drivers and new girls on the side." "It was very interesting to see because, at that stage, we were shooting with all these drivers for weeks, and weeks, and weeks, and now we had all these new faces." "It was kind of a fun moment." "So, now this montage starts, and I think we..." "What I always imagined that it would be, power intense, the stylistic cutting between the characters getting killed, it really worked out and I'm really happy with that." "And then, of course, Paul's music is so powerful at this stage, which is, of course, beautiful." "Also, again, the killing." "I like to do the killing of all the people around" "Sean Bean's character, to do it in a different way." "And back to the shower, and killing Joe's character." "This crane, what you see now, this crane shot, what you also see in the beginning, when September does her introduction, and then we cut her introduction, and then you see behind the scenes," "that crane is a Fisher crane." "And I love to use cranes." "I use it all the time, every day." "The first thing getting built on a location when we arrive is the crane." "So, the crane in the movie is the real crane we used every day." "It's a very light Fisher crane." "Also, this moment, I remember talking with Sean about..." "Talking with him about, like, "Okay, this is the last moment." ""You know that everybody will be killed because if he gets so far," ""you're gonna get killed." "So, enjoy this one last cigar. "" "And I think he did a really, really good job here, this moment." "His last cigar breath." "But I was really happy in how this came together, and I think it's a good synergy with all the characters coming together." "At this moment, she's looking, and the Mustang is still there, and then cut back to Sean Bean." "I think this is one of my favourite sequences in the movie." "Tell me who sent you." "And again, the use of the Phantom camera." "So, I used the Phantom camera..." "It was, I think, my C camera, but I used it also for 24 frames a second all the time." "And then, of course, I shot a lot of high-speed with him, like this moment, and him falling in the water, and that kind of stuff." "Payback for Lucas." "It's nice to reveal Frederick's character later, that he kills him." "Yeah, I'm really happy with the end result of this whole sequence." "Oh, my God!" "Yeah, we put some CG elements here, doing the blood, and the guts, and stuff." "Phantom again." "Phantom." "And then, of course, after such a moment, you need to have the comedy coming back." "And I was really happy with the way Patrick portrays the warden, who is happy that she's already killed." "Yes!" "This is so much fun." "Especially the contrast between that ending, and then this moment, is a relief." "The tension is relieved." "That's a stupid bitch." "I remember doing a lot of takes, and had Ving just go for it." "Different versions." "It was fun." "Take care of your business?" "And then, we are at the end of the movie." "I always liked, in the script, that for us it's all clear." "That he is not Frankenstein, but that Frankenstein is Luke." "And I like that, at the end, we reveal it for Katrina, and there's the connection." "She understands it, and that is the upbeat ending of the movie." "It was incredible fun to make this movie." "I'm looking back at a very short prep." "I think we prepped the movie in seven weeks." "We shot it in five weeks." "Six-day weeks, so 30 days." "And that was it." "And then we cut..." "I think we cut for nine weeks." "No, 10 weeks." "I think 10 weeks." "So, it was all very, very tight." "But it was so much fun, especially in the editing because both Paul Anderson," "Jeremy Bolt, and even Paula Wagner came into the editing with incredible, cool notes and good ideas." "And really, Paul and Jeremy made me understand the speed and the energy of an action movie, how it should be and what it should be." "I learned a lot during that process, and I remember being involved till the last moment." "And it was such a synergy, it was such a good working environment." "And also, I was backed up by the studio in a very, very well way." "Patti Jackson and Glen, they backed me up in every decision and everything I really fought for." "Because, of course, there's also a lot of taste things." "I have a different taste than the writer, and I have a different taste than the producers, and a different taste than Paul." "But I also had to serve the franchise, what was set by Paul." "So, I really understood my place in the arrangement." "And because I wanted to make a really, really good prequel that is like the franchise, but taking it to a next step." "Giving a little bit more drama or a little bit more emotion, and a change of the action, here and there." "But still I wanted it to feel like, "Okay, this is the Death Race franchise."" "And I'm really, really happy with the end result." "And I hope you liked it, too, and see you next time." "Death Race is a trademark of Weyland International." "Fighters are convicted violent felons." "Acts should not be duplicated at home."