Call it GoPro Noir —a high-tech “Lady in the Lake” meets “Death Wish” — since Hardcore Henry” succeeds as a first-person POV actioner as a result of its audacious technique and emotional power. Thankfully, it was thoroughly road-tested by first-time director Ilya Naishuller to make sure it worked as a compelling narrative without making us nauseous.
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“There was hesitancy at first,” admitted Naishuller, who previously experimented with the technique on the “Bad Motherfucker” music video for his band, Biting Elbows. “But I performed 30 hours of tests [with a special helmet cam rig] to solve the motion sickness.”
And the director had an important ally in Russian producer-director-VFX-entrepreneur Timur Bekmambetov, who made his breakthrough with the Moscow thrillers “Night Watch” and “Day Watch,” and enjoys being on the cutting edge of risky tech (he’s currently finishing the “Ben-Hur” remake with a YouTube influenced chariot race).
“The problem with helmet cams is they are very shaky and it’s not comfortable to watch. But because he is a gamer, he understands the importance of giving some kind of comfort to the audience.By extension, the cameraman is also part of the character capturing events around you and every action and reaction is an important part of this language,” he added.
By far the most challenging sequence was the highway chase in which Henry rolls up to a convoy of vans and other cars and works his way up the line destroying them. However, when Henry gets to the semi-truck, he narrowly escapes being creamed by a bridge.
“We had six days to shoot a two-minute sequence and it had to be practically prepped and still some things were improvised on the set. The van was flipped for real but we had to have the right amount of explosions to make it look real. And another thing, we didn’t want it to look like a typical blockbuster explosion. We were shooting on a GoPro level so it had to be consistent with what [preceded it].”
Boston-based Zero VFX (“Black Mass”) handled the sequence with a team of 30 artists working and renaming shots and putting them back together with hand-crafted rotoscoping and using a workflow that included After Effects and Nuke.
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Since it was shot in Moscow, Zero VFX modeled the van from available photography. Mini gun, muzzle flashes, smoke and shell casings come out from that, and also when Henry looks back down the road, all of those systems were built fully CG and are present throughout the sequence. Plus, it was a long, straight road, which meant that some of simulations were quite lengthy.
“The resolution of the GoPro was just fine for this first-person POV,” Drewes said. “Many times, you’re trying to hide the fact that it’s shot in this manner. But in this case, it’s front and center. So all we had to do was make sure our technical pipeline…could handle the tracking and distortion challenges.”
“Hardcore Henry” opens on Friday, April 8.
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