Warning: Potential book and cyber-bridge spoilers ahead.
Day 2:
Day 2:
Call time: 7:30 am.
Big day today. Three scenes, 9 3/8 pages, a fight scene, gun
fire. It’s a lot to try and get through. What’s going to make today even more
difficult is that we have one hallway that needs to be made to look like five
different spaces. It’s somewhat fortunate that the scene itself is supposed to
be dark but that doesn’t mean it’s any easier. Any time we turn the camera
around, we’ve got to change lighting and figure out the exact logistics of how
this works.
I had done much of the work ahead of time while planning out
my shots but it’s still a challenge. And that was just shooting everything
leading up to the fight.
Adding to it, we were under a lot of pressure to get these
three scenes done today because we only had Daniel Buran (Steve Dark) for one
day and it was Hal Ozsan’s (Labyrinth) first day on set as well. Just a big,
big day overall.
I’ll take a minute here to talk about Hal Oszan. I’m giving
some things away here about Labyrinth but fuck it. Obviously, with Labyrinth
acting as our protagonist, it was extremely important that we find someone the
audience would be believe is capable of both the crimes he’s committed as well
as the deep sense of humanity and conflict he undergoes throughout the
cyber-bridges. He also needed to be British.
Hal was recommended to us by our amazing casting director,
Jennifer Cooper, and after our first meeting I immediately knew he was the guy.
Beyond the fact that he “got” the script, the politics of it, the whole idea of
what we’re trying to do with this character, he had a charm to him, he knew
when to lay it on and when not to and there was a real sense of humanity in his
eyes that could be masked by darkness. All in all, he was the perfect picture
of Labyrinth before he even opened his mouth.
We immediately hit it off and continued to do so when I met
him at his house to discuss the character on Friday before the shoot. He’s an
incredibly gracious actor to defer to me despite his experience in the
business. You hear stories about actors coming onto the sets of first time
feature directors and just railroading them, taking over, being a pain in the
ass. Hal was none of those. At the same time, during our meeting, we both came
to a mutual understanding of who Labyrinth was, where he was coming from, and
why he was doing what he was. Because we were both on the same page, it made our
interactions on set that much easier.
I’ll talk a little bit more about my philosophy as a
director later on.
Anyway, the scene begins with Labyrinth observing the
aftermath of an attempted assassination when Steve Dark tracks him down in the
basement hallways of a building in Edinburgh, Scotland, leading to a chase and
a showdown.
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| Photo by Alex Minkin |
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| Photo by Alex Minkin |
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| Photo by Alex Minkin |
The first thing we shot were the bits of the chase, then
moving on to the initial confrontation. As Dark takes a couple of shots at
Labyrinth, we had Bruce, our props master and armorer (who is a really awesome
guy, former Delta soldier) loading up the Glock 17 with blanks. Unlike Dark Prophecy where the one bit of gun
fire was done separate to the action, we integrated the shots into a longer
take so it felt more organic and real than by shooting them as inserts, as I
had done on Dig. It’s just so much
better not having to have it cut it up. The energy just flows better
throughout.
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| Photo by Alex Minkin |
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| Photo by Alex Minkin |
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| Photo by Alex Minkin |
Once Dan’s angle on the fight was done, we came around on
Labyrinth’s angle and finished the scene with Hal stepping in to perform a
final reveal and dialogue of the bridge (this moment will only be available in the
full length version of the bridges, released after the book comes out.) I’m
telling you, the scene was fucking amazing, despite the need we’ll have for VO
from Hal because of some restrictions. It’s too bad it won’t be included in the
regular cyber-bridge but the plot point was just too significant to not have in
the book.
We spent a good chunk of the day shooting the fight scene,
more than we should have, and had to book it up to the autopsy set on Stage 3
to shoot the eighth cyber-bridge. This was a big scene, four pages of dialogue
between the two characters and it was a hugely important scene. This is the
final confrontation between Labyrinth and Steve Dark and it’s actually the
final moment in the book, i.e. the book, and the entire series as a whole, ends
on this cyber-bridge so it was really important we take the time to get this
right.
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| Photo by Alex Minkin |
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| Photo by Alex Minkin |
However, once we got shooting and started wrapping up Dan’s
shots, I decided, after discussing with Hal, that we should come around and get
a couple takes of him. Despite the shortage of time and the amount of material
to shoot (4 pages for each angle) Hal was just really on fire and I thought it
would be a shame to 1) break and come back and 2) not have Dan there for Hal to
play off of. So, I made the call to turn around and get Hal’s coverage of the
scene, knowing that if we needed to, we had the next day to pick up the
non-performance sections of the scene. In the end, it was definitely the right
decision and Hal delivered a great performance.
The third scene we had to shoot was actually done during the
scene described above. While lighting for another shot, myself, Paul, Nate
(camera op), Tom (1st AC), Maria (Script Supervisor) and Dan went
out to the front of the CBS Radford Admin building to shoot the final shot of
Dark in the series.
As mentioned above, there are spoilers here, so if you don’t
want to know what happens, I would suggest you stop reading.
The Level 26
series has never been black and white, at least for the audience. Clearly, Dark
sees both good and evil as very definitive things, but for the audience,
they’ve been on a ride with a deeply tormented and divided protagonist. Steve
Dark is not your normal good guy, walking a fine line between the establishment
he represents and the bad guys he attempts to put behind bars. I have to
applaud Anthony for creating a character so three-dimensional. Travis and I
really wanted to use Labyrinth to challenge Dark, to really put Dark’s faith in
the system to the test and I believe we succeeded, having seen the final
cyber-bridges and heard reactions to it.
Labyrinth is not your typical bad guy. I’ll admit he plays
more like one in the books, but as mentioned in an earlier post, we really
wanted to make him a protagonist for the purposes of the bridges. In that
sense, Labyrinth is really someone who wants the world to be better, believes
that humanity is capable of it, but just needs a push. He is that push. He is
that spark that will ignite the flames of revolution, so to speak. He’s chosen
victims who, by all accounts, probably deserve what they’re getting, and is
doing so in the name of making the world a better place. To quote Thomas
Jefferson (which was included at the beginning of the script):
"What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?
The tree of liberty must from time to time be
refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787
Labyrinth is merely acting on the same principals as the
revolutions long before him. However, he is facing a world that is lazy, that
is unable to fathom the thought of revolution, and sees murder as the only way
to call attention to the injustices visited upon humanity by a select few – the
elite.
As mentioned before, we wanted the audience to agree with
what Labyrinth is saying (though maybe not his methods). In this way, with Dark
a protector of the status quo, he in fact becomes the villain of the bridges,
finding himself perhaps on the wrong of the fight.
This is what Labyrinth hopes to challenge Steve Dark on. In
the same way he was challenged many years ago by a revolutionary in Santiago,
Chile (Cyber-bridge 3) Labyrinth manages to get into Dark’s head.
The book ends with Dark capturing Labyrinth, thus winning the
battle, but the war rages on as Labyrinth’s message spreads from country to
country. The revolution has already started and can’t be stopped. So while Dark
wins the battle, he doesn’t win the war. As Dark attempts to stand stoic
against Labyrinth in his finale moments, Labyrinth calls him on it, leaving
Dark with the feeling that he does protect the elite and that, in fact, Dark is
not a hero.
The last shot follows Dark walking out of this government
building, presumably a black ops hospital where Labyrinth was being held and as
he stares off, thinking about Labyrinth’s words, the building stands tall and
looming above him. He’s trapped until he makes a decision on which way to go.
And the crazy part is, we never see him make that choice. We don’t know what
Dark ends up doing. But that, in a sense, is the point. Dark is the reader,
someone thinking that they’re on the right side, as we (Labyrinth) start to
question that. It doesn’t matter which way Dark goes, the question is, which
way will YOU go.
That, at least, is the intent. We shot the scene at dusk to
play for morning, did several takes until we were out of light and moved back
onto the stage to the finish the day.
Tomorrow: Day 3 of Production
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