Fury | Director's Combat Journal | Behind The Scenes | CineStream

Three, two, one, action! All right, all tanks move forward! Fuck! Right step, taking the right flag. One more like that. Let's talk. Don't do it! It's really interesting, the idea of the tank, because it's this big box on treads that moves across the countryside and kills things. And inside are these five guys. And the more you learn about a crew-served weapons system and guys that have to maintain, live in, you know, it's their living room, their bathroom, their office. They're really the servants of this machine. And as a dramatic vehicle and as a space to put them in, it's a fantastic way to present these phases and images of the war and have them wash over these people and react to them. There's a farmer's field and we packed it full of vehicles and cut in roads and added mud. If you add water to dirt, you get mud. If you add a lot of water to a lot of dirt, you get a lot of mud. And it was hard to walk. I mean, guys are slipping around. In the middle of all this, I have to shoot, you know, a dramatic dialogue scene in the middle of the mud, so you have to figure out how to cover the scene. Where are the shots I need? Then you have to figure out how to set the camera equipment up in this sea of mud. It's interesting. Background action! Action! It was our second day of filming, and so it was kind of perfect to start the movie with that and to have Logan, who's incredibly nervous because he knows that this film really rests on his back, and he's working with Brad Pitt, who's this huge, prestigious actor. Put your head in your hands, Norman. But they're bloody. You can. You want to, but you can't. They're bloody. They're bloody. Don't touch your face. You know, David does give us the freedom to go in certain different directions and kind of go off book a little bit, and we got to the point where we just knew the material so well, every little section, every piece of the characters. So yeah, I guess we became more comfortable playing around. I kind of tortured Logan a little bit, had him run around and do push-ups and yelled at him a little bit, just kind of shake him up. Norman, look at the SS, look at the fight, you're watching the fight. Because he's supposed to be nervous, so why act nervous if you can make him nervous for real, which is sort of my modus operandi as a director, try and make it as real as possible. Cut it, cut it, cut it. Action. Stay, stop, take a viber. It's not an easy movie to make, you know, and I think the fact that Ayers knows the terrain and the situation like he does, it's tattooed to his brain, it's a top-down effect. So you can't be in a conversation and not be armed with the same kind of ammo, otherwise you're not in the conversation. Davis, one of the smartest guys you meet, he is so knowledgeable about every bit of detail in this film, and he's demanding that we meet that detail. From art department, actor, grip, everybody knows where we are and what we're doing. There's a real streamline of communication, it all comes from him. And then when those guys travel up, you go with them and then end in the free shots. All right, roll camera, please. Is that much killing? No. You will. Boys, take him to that gun. What do I do with this? See that cover? Yeah. Open it. Now you kill him. Now you hang him. In a weird way, like, the script is almost like a documentary and like a song about each character. Everybody has their own storyline, which in the mix of battle, somehow David was able to interweave character study with action sequences, which is pretty genius. Where do I put this? Bottom right next to that cover. Make sure you still put that strap on. You run the scene and you run it again and again and again and you move the cameras and you run it again and you move the cameras and you run it again. So somewhere in that pile of footage, you take it back to editorial and you cut the scene, and there's a thousand ways to cut a scene. You see that? He's an SS. You kill every last one you can. The real assholes **** every last one. They start it, we finish it. It's interesting because even though it was the beginning of the movie, the introduction, until we had cut the entire movie, it took us that long to understand the characters and who they are to then be able to go back and cut that scene and have that scene be exactly right. All right, that's a cut. Camera reloads. Because that's the scene. It's like drawing a bow back and launching an arrow. That's the scene that launches the arrow, their relationship, which is what the movie's about. Straight, straight. Slow, slow, slow. We got bodies. Stick left a bit. Eyes on the floor. Yeah, we were left and we traverse right. We're traversing right on action. He's like a feet ahead. He's on the target. So we want to hold our fire till Peterson gets one off. That's the sequence. David often talks about how in the late 40s, Hollywood started making the first World War II movies and that the template that got set at that time sort of became the template for war movies for across generations. What David wanted to do is kind of not reference cinematic history, but reference actual history. And so he culled together hours and hours of Signal Corps footage and watched very closely how the men would walk, how they would carry their weapons, how they would approach the day, and that became the template for how we made the movie. Just make sure we're all seeing Peterson's tank from when that spark gets going. And when does this happen? After this. So after this, you line up. One, he swerves. Two, he avoids guys. Three, he gets hit. So after this, if you can go all the way to here. I need time to get over there. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. For me, cinematographer, first of all, is not just the guy who's listening directly and do what you ask, it's the guy who bring a lot up on the table and then director can pick what he wants and what he likes. And I think biggest part of my job is to give him millions of options which he can choose and I have to think about these options to give him as much freedom because director needs this support. On action, everybody moves forward. Our simulated pack gun fires and then their cannons fire and then all this shit happens. We shot on film. We used anamorphic lenses, which is an older format. We actually use these older, softer, kind of prettier lenses from the early 80s. It's called a G-series. And the light that goes into that camera determines the look. It's everything you see. And if you're shooting digital, you're making videos. Film is magic. Fire! Fuck! Antitank, AT, twice left! Modern filmmaking has been so much about fragmentation of these little moments and I think whenever you can play out a scene longer, it invariably makes it feel like it's more authentic and what's going on is perhaps actually happening. You won the 50-count gun on this shit, right? Yeah, but not on action, because it takes a second for everything to get set. Up to speed. Once at speed, everybody fires. Like any good war movie, you're also making a lot of commentary on the brotherhood of man. I mean, these are guys who came together to work together for a mission. There's some parallels actually to a movie crew. Each one has a role to perform, from the tank commander to the driver to the gunner to the sight, and they each have to work together. There's a lot of working together for a common purpose. All tanks, start squirting that tree line. Let's light them up. Let's go. Let's clean it up. All right, good. Well done, everyone. Set the gates. One of the most difficult scenes to execute and also one of the most dramatic scenes is the battle with the Tiger tank. What you've got to realize in tank warfare and anti-tank warfare, it's all about the ambush. And the perfect situation is you always want to shoot somebody in the back in warfare, because if they're looking at you in arm, there's a chance they may shoot back, and that's not good. The Germans were expert at camouflage, and they would set up upon roads, intersections, where they had a great line of sight, an overwatch position, and place their vehicles, camouflage their vehicles, and just wait for the inevitable Allied advance. And they usually had a pretty good shot of picking off a few vehicles before they themselves get destroyed. The turret's going to blow off and blow off to the left side. We have marks for that. There's going to be an explosive cutter on the chain for the tow, so that'll release. So there'll be a big surge when that happens. Get ready for that. Biggest challenge on this kind of location is the mud and then the weather, trying to get things to match when you get four seasons in one day, except for summer. It's one, two, three, four, five, six moving vehicles, five cameras coordinating everything and having everything happen at the same time. It's all time and coordination. That's all this is for ten seconds of film that'll end up in the movie. Good times. Action times! Video's rolling! Now, this is where I cheated a little bit on the tactics, and all you military guys out there probably did a forehead slap when you saw this, is the Tiger actually shoots the last tank in the column. You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to shoot the first tank in the column, which then forces the column to stop, and then you shoot the last one, and then you pick off the guys in the middle. So I know that I cheated, because if they shoot the first tank, Brad's dead, the movie's over, roll credits, and that's not very fun. Our 4-tank column is now a 3-tank column. The Tiger tank hidden down the hill down there has schwacked Binkowski, and these 3 tanks are backing up to get a shot and present their armor of the threat. Back up, back up, back up! Hard left! To photograph, action requires time, and every little beat, every little shot has to be articulated. So when you're shooting a gunfight, big headache. Now imagine doing the same thing with priceless 70-year-old real World War II tanks. Now you have pyro, you have stuff exploding, you have actors you have to photograph in the tanks, and it's interesting, if you look a lot of tanks in older films, they don't really move. They'll sort of stop, sit there, fire, then move, and I think that has to do with the equipment that was available or not available at the time. And so present day, you know, we had a piece of equipment called a Russian arm, which is a 4x4 vehicle with a jib arm on it and a gyro-stabilized camera head, and so we're able to parallel move with the tanks and photograph the tanks and get up there and get Brad's eyeline and get all these incredible shots. Fire! All right, pop it, pop it! Staging that Tiger battle was, it was grueling. We shot it in a week. I think we did about 5 days of photography for all the action in that battle. Jabu's left! Hey! Good evening, Norman, why'd you change your pose? Slow down. They're coming right now. Who's coming? The Germans! Another day at work, I just want to kill Nazis, but it's never as easy as it seems. Great location, good stunt people, stuff's blowing up, but a lot of moving parts, 4 cameras, one director. He's more directors. I have empathy for him, you know, he's a big wounded bear. He's got a wild history of his own, you know, and he shares it with you and he listens, but he's Patton, you know, he's kind of crazy, which is perfect. He'll pull out his pistol and shoot it at an airplane, you know, he's that guy. He has an ability to connect with actors and get performances out of actors, take you to places that you didn't think he could ever go, and that's an investment in you, it's an investment in the story, and he's bold and he's fearless, and I think at the end of the day, he's hard as ****, but I think he's got a huge heart. 3, 2, 1, action! This day and age, you would do something like that, there'd be a lot of CG work, but what you're seeing in this battle at the end is, it's real, it happened, we did that, we ran guys through the mud, we had that fire going on, I mean, it was a gamble. So we have got an order of pyro. We have the pot over here, we all know, and we know the guy's in the ditch, you're happy with that? And the second one that goes, like a split second after, is this one here. 3, 2, 1, action! When you conceive of a scene, the writer, very easy to sit there in your office and type something as the writer, hand it over to the director, and now that director has to figure out how to execute it. So sometimes I was cursing the writer, but at the end of the day, we got it done, and it's fantastic. 3, 2, 1, action! I've enjoyed seeing the evolution of an artist in David. Just to see my friend and someone I've collaborated with before continue to grow and evolve as a great director, I think is incredible to watch and to be part of and help facilitate. I think he genuinely not only cares about the project, but he cares about us, but I think he cares about the project more, which is good, and he wants us to hurt for this, he wants us to bleed for this, and he wants guys who are ready to go there with him. What I pulled off the magic trick as a director that I'm really proud of is the performance of the cast and the fact that they feel like a family, they feel like brothers. Action is mechanical. If you have a plan and you have time, you can nail the action. Good drama is really difficult.