“Hi. My name is Sam Hargrave, director of ‘Extraction.’ So at this point, we’re in the middle of what we would term a oner. It’s a long continuous shot that we came up with, a way to do that kind of a unique chase scene. And we’re escaping with Chris Hemsworth, who plays Tyler Rake, and Rudhraksh Jaiswal who plays that Ovi.” “Alright, kid, you trust me?” “No.” “Good.” “This jump— and at that moment, we had a stitch. So we could infuse our actors into the action and then use the doubles for the dangerous part. And for that jump, I was actually on a wire leaping behind our stunt doubles. And coming down those stairs, that’s me running backwards with a camera, trying to keep our actors in frame, keep up with their speed, not fall on my butt. We work our way through this whole series of hallways. And when we enter this room, we actually, on that door kick, we moved to another location. So that’s a different day of shooting, different time.” “Stay on my shoulder, all right?” “And this fight here, we’ve got Randeep Hooda and Chris Hemsworth going at it. They spent weeks rehearsing together. Because the beauty of this is it looks sloppy. It looks like they’re struggling for their lives. And it looks messy. But that comes from hours of rehearsal so they could put the acting into this. So again, here, we build in a hidden cut where we can put the doubles in. And as you see, the camera goes down with them. Again, that’s me on a wire, jumping over a balcony, and gliding down with them. And for that, we kind of set that all up. We built the balcony. It didn’t exist. We parked the truck in the right place. And the stunt team rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed to get the timing of that right and the distancing. And it was really challenging to kind of keep both actors in frame for that fall just because the nature of the jump. I mean, I’m on a wire, trying to jump with a camera, keep them in frame. And then when we land in the streets, what we thought would be really fun was to have the actors interacting with the environment, the vehicles passing by. This is just a day in the life of for these people. But these guys are locked in a life and death struggle with knives. And yet, life goes on. You know, this is busy street. People are watching like they’ve gone to the cinema. And you know, again, this hours of rehearsal with these two actors so that we could have the intensity that we needed. And then a little shock value here.” [GRUNTING] [CAR SCREECHES] “The thing that was interesting about this moment is, and what we tried to do to make kind of a unique perspective, was do what people aren’t expecting, which you take out your hero. Just take him out of the fight. And then focus on the bad guy. And we just thought it was fun, a different way to kind of follow action was to leave your hero out of it. So you’re thinking, wait, what happened to Rake? Is he going to come back? And you know, leave people wanting more.”
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
