Dodge This: Action Movies Unleashed
Simon Feilder and Matthew Highton are British comedians separated by a sea but united by their love of action movies. Join them for a celebration of the latest and (hopefully) greatest in action cinema from around the world, from big budget bombastic bonanzas to down & dirty DTV darlings.
Dodge This: Action Movies Unleashed
ONE MORE SHOT (UK, 2024) (With Ben Mallaby)
Simon is joined by director, educator and chum Ben Mallaby, to get into the weeds on ONE MORE SHOT, James Nunn's all-in-one-take-ish action sequel starring Scott Adkins, Michael Jai White, Aaron Toney, Waleed Elgadi, Alexis Knapp and Tom Berenger. ONE MORE SHOT Trailer
Also on the menu is REACHER, PRISCILLA, POOR THINGS & ECHO
The show's got a Twitter: @dodgethispod
All the other good stuff is here: simonfeilder.com and here mallby.co.uk
Subscribe to Simon's newsletter thing: simonfeilder.substack.com
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Hosted by Buzzsprout & recorded in Riverside.fm
This will help you watch all the international treats: nordVPN
If you're reading this far, just One More Thing.... could you do a rate (and review) on Apple or Spotify plz&thx?
Alright, super quick intro from me this time. Another super fun chat with Ben Malaby about One More Shot. If you haven't listened to it already, you know what goes great with this episode? A double bill of this episode and the previous episode where I had an in-depth chat with James Nunn, the director of One More Shot. Cue it up after this one or put it on now and come back to this one afterwards. It makes for a lovely double bill. much like one shot and one more shot. He brought it back to the topic. Enjoy the episode. or the honor of fighting without fighting. Stick around. Some motherfuckers are always trying to nice skate on me. Dodge this. Oh my goodness, it is literally welcome to season three, episode nine of dodge this action movies unleashed. I'm now reading the title off a document so that I stop saying action movies unplugged, which I don't know what that is. I suppose just like old shore brothers movies that are set before electricity. That would be a good example of action movies unplugged. They're all, they're all acoustic. That's what they are. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am joined, as you've just heard, by his words, by a good guy, good pal. We're talking about James Nunn's One More Shot, the sequel to One Shot, the one take action movie starring Scott Adkins from a few years ago. There's a sequel. It's out now. If you haven't seen it already, I suggest watching it probably before listening to this pod because there could be a few little spoils coming up. I've already teased him. My very special guest today is a director extraordinaire. He is a director. He's a writer. He's a... Oh, what else should we be? Lecturer? Is that a thing? I mean, it is a thing. He's a scholar. A pedagogue. Very, be very careful. A pedagogue. His name is Ben... Malaby. Hello mate. Hi Simon. Thanks for having me. I'll play in the live applause at that point. You don't need me to do it. That's fine. Okay. Hey, thanks so much for joining us on the pod, Ben. My pleasure. So excited to be invited. Thank you. I know you're a big fan of the pod and you've been pestering me via all your letters for almost a year now. It takes a long time to mail them to India. I don't know your address. A lot of them are piled up in Amsterdam still, so I do apologise. I must update, send out those change of address cards that people do in the olden days. Thanks so much for joining. For people that don't know, Ben, you are... Well, the reason I think it's great that you're on this episode in particular is because you are a director. You know your way around cameras, around blocking, around set. You know how stuff works. Quite a nerdy discussion of the technical sides of movie making. Yeah, yeah. Beautifully crafted movies. Not to say we're not going to talk about the content of the movie. It's an action movie podcast. We're definitely going to talk about the action. This movie in particular tickles the nerdy part in me. And for eagle-eared, is that a phrase? Eagle-eared? I don't think it works. But eagle-eared listeners who listened to the last episode where I had a lovely conversation with the director of this movie, James Nunn. You would have got some wonderful tidbits. And hopefully Ben, you also have benefited from some of the insight from the horse's mouth on this about how they did some stuff. He still, he wouldn't open up on a few bits. There's a few, a few secrets that they're keeping close to his chest. Absolutely fair. It's a, it's an incredible achievement, but so yes, people might know you from you've made an enumerable, enumerable amount of award winning and nominated shorts. They might have seen some stuff of yours that's been on BBC three. All these are true stories so far, right? These are true stories so far. Yeah. I definitely cut my teeth. Is that the phrase? Yeah. It's a weird phrase, isn't it? Cut my teeth with shorts. Yeah. And then, and then I do a lot of ads and I got to make a pilot recently and I did some web series for BBC and And I mean, you know, looking at James's filmography, I feel very underwhelming, but nevertheless, I, yes, I, I persist. Of course. No, don't do yourself a disservice there, mate. And also people will mainly, I suspect know you from the 2000 and so I want to say 17 short film, Renaissance Renaissance. That is probably my defining. work. They will mainly know you from that I suspect. When I'm stopped in the street people are like what's it like to work with Simon? And you know I'm honest. And you're like which one? Simon? Yeah yeah. Fielder! Oh he's the one in Amsterdam isn't he? He's moved. Oh god this is a nightmare. He's not going to be getting any of my letters. Oh god and all the fan mail that I forward on for you. For everyone else Simon wrote a short film and we made it in 2017. Featuring my at the time, four month old son. Yeah. And now they're probably like 25 or something mad. They finished uni. They've got full-time jobs. That's horrendous. Mental. Yes. And I also, because I looked at your IMDB was reminded that we also work together on a TV show called The Great Christmas Rant. Oh wow. Yeah, I forgot that too. Which was one of those sort of comedian talking head shows, but I wasn't a successful enough comedian to be one of the talking heads. So I was just sort of acting in some interstitial bits. It was still a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. The, the, that those interstitial bits were probably the, the funniest bit in them. Yeah. And then did you ever watch it? Yeah, I think I would say 90 to 98% of them didn't, didn't make it in. From you were almost, you were almost entirely cut. Yeah. You are on the cutting room floor. Yeah. It was a sad day for me. I had the whole, a whole family gathered around the, around the tube. And I was like, I'm in this. Mum, I'm in this. Oh no, they've gone past the bit where I thought it was going to be. Oh no. Oh God, they can tell you. It's one of those things where like the channel or someone says, we really want this to stand out. We want something that differentiates it. We want it to be unique and not feel like cookie cutter. And so you're like, okay, we're going to do this. And they go, that's great. And then you do it. And then they see it and they go, uh, and you're like, oh, we need it to be more similar to everything else. Actually, you didn't actually want those things. Okay. My mistake. We did them and we had a lot of fun doing them. We had a lot of fun. It were good times. Well, Ben, we've established the pedigree. What I would love before we dip into our feature presentation one more shot is, I'd love to find out if you've seen anything else that isn't action movies. Isn't? Well, I mean, it can be, but for example, the things I have been watching in the last couple of weeks have chiefly been the back catalogue items of James Nunn's that I hadn't previously watched. a lot of whom, a lot of which fall into the category of action or action adjacent, not to say they're not good, highly recommend. Also the TV show, Reacher, that's it. So I've watched a lot of action things. Yeah. It's so funny you bring that up because I was thinking about Reacher because I read somewhere that it's Prime's biggest show. And the tweet that I read that I learnt that said something like, there are a lot of dads who do not factor into online conversation about what's popular right now. You know, like most people don't know it exists. If you were to go by Twitter and Instagram and you know. Yeah, you're right actually, because I watched the first season of it last year, would it have been last year or even maybe the year before? I don't know. They turned it around pretty quickly the second season. But I think I read one of them a few years ago and was like, this is quite fun. It's quite fun. book, you know, it's a hundred percent airport fiction, dad fiction, whatever you want to call it. You know, it's a big strong man doing justice and like beating people up in graphic detail. And the Tom Cruise movies as well. I mean, I feel like people, there was two of them. People must have seen one of them. The first one I think was very good directed by Christopher Macquarie. Yeah. Like I think aside from all the sort of tedious, well, Tom Cruise can't play Jack Reacher because Jack Reacher is six foot five and 300 pounds. But if you take that out of the conversation, I think the movie was great. So I really liked the first season of this and was surprised how few people outside of like the action realm had heard of it. And even now it's been on for the last, I guess, eight weeks and still people are like, what is it? Is it good? Yeah. I think you have to sort of know what it is. in as much as it's quite dumb. Like it is a book about a kind of indestructible ex-military police officer who just solves things with his fists, but also he's like super, super smart. It's a cross between like CSI and I don't know what- You know, the make America great again crowd. Yeah. Like that's what's in my head. I don't want it to be that. No. I feel like it, yeah. I mean, there is a sort of hurrah-ness to it. Yeah. But yeah, I guess you could- That demographic here at home going like, cut your hair you damn hippie, you know, kind of, uh- Yeah, a little bit, I suppose. Yeah. I just maybe- But who knows? I should watch it. I'm being very judgmental. I think the first season was very enjoyable, the second season is also good, they're both based on like the two of the most popular books I think. And yeah, it's just, I think it's just like solid TV, solid action sort of investigative TV. I enjoyed the first Tom Cruise, Jack Reacher. Then I think you'll be fine. But there is a funny moment in there where he's in a cafe and the waitress comes up to him. And I think he's flirting with her. Yeah. You know, I think, I think he's implying that he would like to have a date with her and maybe take her home one day. But Tom Cruise, that's one character beat. He's just never been able to crack. He just can't be asexual. The idea that he's, Oh, are you, are you flirting with me? And he'd be like. Maybe, but it's, it's very unclear. Please be clear. Are you like, actually I can't tell. I mean, I've got one hand on my mace spray and the other. Yeah. It's the one thing he, yeah. Yeah. But I enjoyed it otherwise. And the second one, I can't remember a single beat. No, the second one I think was a bit disappointing, but I did rewatch it and it wasn't as bad as I remembered, but it definitely didn't have the kind of bruising visceral action that I think the first movie and both the TV series have. have delivered. What have you seen that's popped its head above the parapet? Yeah, well, so, cause it's like Oscar season, the cinemas are full of quite good stuff at the moment. So there's like Priscilla, we went to see Priscilla, my wife and I, and that was very good. I enjoyed that very much. That's about Priscilla Presley, right? Yeah. They didn't back off Elvis being a terrible person. Oh, wow. I'm glad. I thought they, I thought they might be like, Oh, you know, he was just stressed, but no, they're like, he was like very, this was a very manipulative, abusive relationship. Oh, wow. Okay. And, uh, but in, in that kind of like, Hey, Hey baby. Uh, I don't think we should have sex for like 10 years, you know? And, uh, you know, Oh, it's all power. You know, he had to be having, you know, he decided what she wore and who she spoke to. I didn't, I don't know any of this stuff. So it feels, it feels like it would be, I don't really know anything about Elvis aside from the sort of bullet points. So I'm kind of intrigued. I also don't know that any of it's true. You know, I'm just assuming that this is, it's based on Priscilla's book, but I don't know how much interpretation has gone on. So basically I could sort of do a double bill of like the Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie from a couple years ago and then this, and I'd know everything. It's a very interesting picture it paints, isn't it? The artist and then the human or something like that. I don't know. But so I enjoyed that and then I saw Poor Things, which is absolutely fabulous. Is that the Emma Stone mad Greek man who made the lobster? Yeah, you're just you're just who I've loved since lobster. And then I very much see it's so great. It's just completely unique and bonkers and just stays in control. He's got such he's such a sure hand like he just knows exactly what he's doing. Wow. And. Uh, and that's rare and Mark Ruffalo as well is just like, I read an interview where he was like, I'm bored of being Mark Ruffalo. And, and he, and he was so uncomfortable. What does that even mean? I think he's got a shtick, hasn't he? He's like, he's always Mark Ruffalo-ing. And on this. He's always just Ruffalo-ing all over the place. He's just, he Ruffalo's, he Ruffalo's and Gruffalo, yeah. And, and, and I get that, but I love the Ruffalo energy. So I have a problem. And this is still Ruffalo, but it's like. manic Ruffalo. He was always worried every day he was going to get fired because he was being too big, but actually it's just the right size. It's so good. It's really, it's so funny. He's so funny. That is such a good way of describing a performance. Just the right size for such a bonkers film. I spoke to Tom Levin two episodes ago and he was talking about that some of the performances in Wonka and being so insanely large. But they were just that they are just in the movie and that was, he really enjoyed that they were allowed to do these sort of panto level performances in a feature film. I think it's so impressive for directors who can make that make sense. Yeah. You know, who the film can survive and, and allow this to happen and it, and it will make sense. Yeah. It's so rare. So rare. Wonka was great. I still, again, on my list. Yeah. It's so rare to have a family film where everyone's just. having a great old time. Yeah. Well, again, as I said to Tom, I watched Paddington over Christmas for the first time, and was like, ah! How charming. Well, I sometimes find myself in quite a sort of narrow corridor of movies, where I'm chunking through quite a lot to make sure I get all the good ones on the pod. And I think sometimes that means I don't get to watch, y'know, past lives, or whatever sort of thing is that... I need to, what do you just kind of paint in the rest of the picture. I'm a bit, my sort of vision is a bit like kicking, punching, exploding. And I forget that there's like this whole world of feelings in movies. There are films you're supposed to watch, aren't there? Yes. And you've got to be careful to make sure you watch the right amount of those. But especially Oscar season, I like see the nominations and I'm like, Oh boy, I got a lot of catching up to do. Yeah, I'm working my way through them. And then, and then yeah. And then on my phone, I download Echo season one from Marvel. And that's why I watch, uh, in my own time. Is it good because I have added it to my list, which means I may or may not ever watch it at this point. Yeah, it's, I mean, I need to get all the way through it. It's, it's some of the, I mean, you should watch it for the action. They've done a really good job with that. I keep swearing off Marvel. Because every time I'm like, Oh, just watch Hawkeye. It looks fun. And then I watched eight episodes and I'm like, yeah, fine. Fine. It's totally fine. I could have watched, you know, past lives and finer things in this amount of time or whatever. No, there's definitely kind of a plateau with their output just because of over familiarity, perhaps, or, or I don't know. And, and Echo is certainly not, um, doing anything new, but the, um, but the action's really interesting because she's a deaf. Yeah. superhero and they play with that. So multiple occasions they take the sound out of the scene. So you can experience it like she is. And then as they start to reintroduce sounds, it might be a heartbeat, kind of like in gravity, you know, how, when she touches something, she can hear it through vibrations and that's not her superpower, but it's a really, it's just a different energy and also something that's really fun is they go super wide angle and there's a lot going on. And so part of it's like, wow, this must be really confusing for someone who's deaf to kind of see 20 people fighting in this one shot and to try and like figure out What you're gonna contribute? Oh, that's cool Yeah, so they did they did, you know, they're doing interesting things there, but I can't speak to the story yet I'm not far enough in okay, but she's very good. Maybe I'll maybe it sounds like something I should dip into Just a little just watch. Yeah, just times to speed fast forward to the Why is there a times two on Netflix now? Who is? Who is watching things at times two? What is the use case? Yeah, yeah. No, I don't do that, but I do. I do listen to podcasts times two. Is that not normal? Times two? No, I can't do it. I'm a one times. I've, I've occasionally been intrigued and been like, what does this sound like at 1.5 or times two? Times two is, times two is too much. Some people talk too slow. That's why. Fair. Found it for everyone. Ben, is there a vacuum cleaner occurring in the background? Ooh, did you hear the vacuum cleaner? There may be. No, it's my motherboard on my computer. On your tower PC. Loading. Okay, well I quite like that you have the balance of watching the Oscar noms and then sort of sprinkling it with the sugar of Marvel. I think that's what I sort of need to do a little bit more. Yeah, exactly. That's the goal, isn't it? You've got to do enough, especially when you're an academic. people will talk to you about filmmakers who are very obscure and you don't want to be a fraud. You have to have an opinion. And so sometimes you'll go through an entire back catalog of someone just to have an opinion and to sound knowledgeable. And then you crack on and then you crack on with your, your normal day to day. That's impressive. I mean, that's ostensibly what I did with James Nunn, but it involved watching a thriller set in a tower block about a sniper, a WWE movie set in a car park. a shark movie. So I feel very well informed about that. But if you asked me about the Greek guy who made the lobster, I'm like, I've only seen the lobster. Lanthimos, that's a great example. I've gone through the whole backhat log and you know, fabulous. What's the, what should I watch next after having watched the lobster? Seen the lobster, have you seen dog tooth? No. Dog tooth is the, it was his second film, but it's like the defining. film for his style. And then he did the favourite, which is on Netflix. Oh yes. Okay. You know how like, Paul Thomas Anderson, like even when he misses, it's still watchable, but it's, but he, sometimes he swings and it just doesn't quite, you know, but he does take those big swings. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Which you can't say, you can't say, um, about Too much Marvel stuff, I think these days. I think Marvel are aware of the fatigue that's setting in there, right? I think that's it. They're only releasing one movie this year as their kind of apology for the last two years. They're just so like all or nothing, aren't they? They're like, oh, they like us. We'll release 10 films a year and 100 TV shows. And then no one watches them. And they're like, oh, you hate us. We won't release anything. We're so sorry. Another bingo coy. Oh, phase five. It's only going to have one movie if you're going to be like that. It's just Deadpool. That's it. Five Deadpool movies. Oh boy. Hey, Ben, do you fancy heading through into the auditorium and watching one more shot? Now, our feature presentation. Dodge this. I make footstep sound effects as I walk. Yeah. As you walk past the room full of vacuum cleaners into our feature presentation. There's a vacuum cleaner in the auditorium as well. We're so early for the screening. It's so weird. They're cleaning up the previous show. Oh, so much popcorn everywhere. All right. It's all right though. We'll watch it. Okay. Hopefully the vacuuming will stop at some point. It's the aggressive reality of recording a podcast remotely. It's not that big a place. There we go, it's gone again. Now Ben, I'm quite delighted to speak to you about this because some people do the minimum amount of homework before coming on this pod, but you were very generous with your time and you watched not only one more shot, but you watched one shot as well, right? And thank God I did. Because I think you can go into one more shot knowing nothing and just enjoy it at face value for what it is. But I feel like, not to kind of intellectualize it too much, but if you have, if you see one shot and you know what that is, then you come to this movie with a sort of expectation. And also there's just, it feels like there's more of a point of comparison. I don't know. They do everything they need to do so that you can watch the new one without having seen the first one and you're not at a loss. Yes. But everything is amplified. If you've seen that first one, I feel like you're getting so much more out of the second one. I wasn't expecting it to be a continuation. No. Because it ostensibly is part two. Yeah. I mean, it picks up literally like 12 hours later or something, right? It's crazy. And you would expect a whole new story. Oh, he's off on a new adventure, but it's not. It's still things that they need to wrap up. Yeah. And that's great. Let's do the old classic Simon twists the guest's arm into summing the plot up. which I feel like is fairly, I'm not, not to undersell it, but this one's quite, quite achievable in terms of a plot summary. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the power of a film like this is to not over complicate it. Right. You know, it's that, so they're, they're bringing, is she an FBI or I forget who she is, but they're bringing like an interrogator or someone who works for the government in some capacity to a, to a camp where they keep prisoners, a kind of Guantanamo style camp. This is, this is the first movie. This is the first movie, which I would recommend watching if you're going to do this. I like the, please do them both actually. Give us bullet points of the first and then the slightly more sight and sound synopsis of the second. I think, and the way to do it as well as the way I did it, which is I watched them back to back, so it was just like watching season one of one shot and it was like five hours of time, but But it, but it makes more sense. But yeah, so she's there. She's going to interrogate a prisoner. The prisoner seems to know nothing, but she seems to believe otherwise. And then in come the private army to kill the guy and our hero tries to keep him alive and to escape and he does. And then in episode two, nothing else happens. We really skim through that. Love it. Yeah. Because. In our sequel, the one we're going to talk about in more detail, we join them 12 hours later when he's got the prisoner to America. Um, by, uh, which airport was it they shot in the UK? Stansted airport. Stansted standing in for Washington DC or something. Incredible scenes. And, uh, and they've got the prisoner and in the first one, the baddies were trying to kill the guy in the second one, the new range of baddies. And we don't know their purpose for a while. are clearly trying to get him and want him alive. And then we've got some kind of fun complications. One of the reasons they're able to kind of get what they need from him in the first movie is through mention of his wife who is pregnant and there's kind of a big plot beat about him losing one of his sons and how that kind of radicalized him. And so the wife is now a player in the movie and we've also got some big names. um, joining the cast and fleshing it out and are they goodies? Are they baddies? So that's kind of a fun kind of, you know, beat to kind of unpick that you just assume Beringer is the shady bad guy. You got it. No, and they, you know, they, they have a lot of fun with your expense with that. And then I, I mean, I wasn't going to stop size all the way to the end. I was just going to kind of do the buildup. We'll probably ruin it. That's absolutely fine. Yeah. No, we don't need to go full spoiler town, but, um, yeah, you know, the baddies arrive. And it's the whole thing is in an airport. The whole thing's an airport. And we haven't said the USP every. No. Do you please? One shot. It's a clever name. It makes a lot of sense. They are those kind of tricksy one shots that are, I mean, there's probably 20 cuts in the whole film. I don't know if there's substantially more, but he does 10 minute takes. And hour and a half long movies. And, uh, and so you are. You are in there and there's no cutting to reaction shots and you've got to follow the action. And it's such a fascinating device because of the problems it creates and the solutions that you need to put into place to still tell a legible movie, which he does so well. Yeah. I mean, I rewatched the first one also this week as part of my James Nunn retrospective. He's not dead. I was just interviewing him. And It was, it's really interesting to compare them side by side, which I guess we may as well do. I think the, you know, the first one is sort of very contained on this army base and the second one is set in a whole airport. You know, it goes outside, they're in cars. Like you say, everything is ratcheted up a little bit. Like in the first one, they're on foot. That's it. They're sort of running around, they're crawling through a tunnel. In this one, you know, there's a little bit more money. So they're in a car and then there's you know, the camera's handed off out of the car, the car drive, those are those like, oh okay, the money's on the screen, very early kind of vibes, where you just sense the kind of slightly elevated production values. And I mean, I got through this whole movie going like, oh, that's amazing, where is this airport in, you know, Bulgaria, or is it like a disused airport? And then it was like filmed entirely in Stansted Airport, and I was like, what?! What?! How?! Now we know how. The airport closes at night and so they had it for four hours a night. For 20 nights. 20 nights. That doesn't compute for me because... 80 hours of shooting! Yeah, well exactly. A 21 shooting day schedule is already quite intense. And then, and you can only shoot half days. Half days, all action scenes. I don't, I don't understand. It's an incre... I think... Maybe people who are just approaching this as I just want to watch an action movie won't enjoy it quite as much. Because I just think on a technical level, I'm constantly rewinding bits. Because I'm like, how did they do that? How did that get down? Oh wow. The camera's just floated down a floor. What? You know? Things where in a movie that is cut, it's just like, well, we'll just cut to the crane shot and then the camera will... head down there and then we'll cut to the other angle. But this is just like, and I, and I think, you know, it's possible to watch it that way, obviously, and maybe your mileage may vary, but at some point I think you, you do forget that and you're just kind of watching the movie and then you'll be like, Oh my God, this, this is a fight scene and there's no cuts. These guys are really good at this. I think it's a, it's a funny, someone said to me the other day, you must be a nightmare to watch films with. And I thought it was a funny thing to say because they assumed it was because I'd be like always dissecting and pulling things apart and definitely I can be in that mode, but I wasn't in this movie. I was appreciating the craft, but I wasn't being like, there's the cut, you know, well, there's the cut, which I can be in some of these long take shots where, where they're doing something so expensive and complicated and it's very piecemeal that the join. is often a bit ropey and they don't have a clean wipe. I'm thinking of the extraction films. When I watch those, they scream at you. There was a cut just then. Yes. There's a lot of people and things falling in front, taking up 90% of the frame. I hope you didn't notice. Yeah. And I didn't feel that so much with this film. I really was just, it might have happened there, it might have happened there. Maybe they left it there so they could do it. Maybe it wasn't used. But they're very subtle and it's just... I'll tell you that actually the funny thing, the thing that I rewatched, you're talking about rewatching, I didn't rewatch my match of the action stuff, but in the first film, there's a dialogue scene between three characters, Ryan, Philippe, Scott, and the female character that they bring on the helicopter. And I rewatched that because of the staging, because of the blocking. So that's a really boring technical thing. But you've got these three people in a room that having this very kind of heightened conversation. No, height is not the word, but yeah, fraught. Heated. And, uh, heat, thank you. And the camera has to be on someone and can't be on everyone. And the staging is so lovely because you're on the person and then everyone's like ready to move to this point at this time and the camera pulls back and now it's a two shot. And then it revolves around here. So it's all very carefully designed. And I was just really intrigued because like, it's not just the craft of the choreography that is getting all this attention. You know, it's all these little moments as well, where he's just figuring out how to have this conversation with three people with one camera. Very clever stuff. Yeah. And I think, you know, we sort of, people always talk about film sets being a collaborative environment and, you know, there's so many moving parts and none more so than in situations like that, where you're so reliant upon every single department and every piece kind of fitting into place, like You know, the camera goes the wrong way, it's fucked, you know, one of the actors goes the wrong way, like the framing of the next shot doesn't line up, people fluff their lines. Like there's just kind of so many plates being spun at once. It's too complicated. In a scene like that, that I would say, you know, perhaps the layman might not, like I would, I re-watch the action scenes because I'm like, man, these guys are... just like, you know, there's no misses, this is great. But that dialogue scene, as you say, is so much more complicated than you might expect. Because how do you shoot dialogue between three people with one camera that is moving while they're moving, and keep all that, like, I don't know, there just must be so much graph paper on an office wall somewhere, right? like we're on him, but Scott's about to say something incredibly important. So we need to make sure we're on him for that. But you know, and so it's like, okay, so how do we, how do we move the characters around the space as well as how do we move the camera around the space to make sure people are somewhere where we can get to them in time for the reaction or the line? Yeah. It's really interesting. Yeah. I think also what the, the kind of James Nunn talked about each of these movies sort of almost being like a level of a video game. Like, the first one is the sort of, you know, green camo army base level, this one is like the kind of blue gunmetal nighttime airport level. And you know, some people can see that as detrimental, like sometimes it looks like a video game cutscene, yadda yadda, but I do think that really draws you in. I think in the first one, there's so much kind of walking down narrow corridors and people... talking, and then it's during this, you know, it feels from the minute that it kicks off, which let's specify in this, the second movie, one more shot. I've written one last shot down in my notes. Oh, that's the third film. I'm preempting a couple of years time. But as soon as it kicks off, it's just so tense and it just doesn't really let up. Yeah. It's really fun, isn't it? And they're both so good at that. The second one is like, I think it gets into action even quicker than the first one, like I think the mysterious mercenary figures that he just stumbles into them. I think like he's just walking down a ramp and then walks into like 10 mercenaries who haven't started murdering yet and they're just like eating a sandwich. You know, they're just like. They're just like on their way to do the murdering. Like so remember, as soon as we get to the place where we do the murdering. Fair play. Yeah, and have you switched off your mobiles, everybody? Don't want them going off while we're murdering. I mean, in Die Hard 2, he just sort of sees like a suspicious looking guy going through a door or something and follows him, right? And finds out he's a terrorist. He profiles someone. Yeah, he's just like, you look like a terrorist. And he's got long hair. These guys say out loud. The target is this guy. So at least he knows, he knows these are probably bad guys. Oh, okay. I thought he just saw like a European with long blonde hair and just assumed the worst. I mean, I would say the setup is kind of the toughest part in a movie like this, right? Where you're like, how do we, how he's got us, we got to just get the bad guys being bad really fast. And we've got to, he needs to start punching people. We're 20 minutes in. Let's go guys. Those are the sort of beats where I'm like, I'll allow it, allow it. What are we here for? Absolutely. Yeah. You've got to like, you've just got to be as efficient as you can be. Like he really gets that doesn't he? And like, I read a lot of scripts as part of my job as an academic and also like people send me scripts all the time and the amount of time people spend, they think that they need to set things up. And you're like, I am 10 pages in mate. Just like, tell me what the, what's going to happen. So they're so efficient with this. It's like, you know, he arrives at the airport. No, in fact, we don't even see the protagonist for a spell, which is really fun. It's just the sort of walk and talk with Berenger and the other agents. Right. And then he just, he just sort of, you see his plane landing. I think you see him in a car. Yeah. You see him out of a window, like from another floor coming in. I love that stuff. Really great. Yeah. And then like, and then off camera, he's coming in through the doors, walking up the stairs. The timing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's also, that was going to be my thing to differentiate between these movies. This movie is like, um, adds a 3D dimension. Like if the first movie is 2D, it's sort of all on one level. I mean, it doesn't, obviously it's 2D, it's a movie, but it's like on one floor, if you will. This movie has levels. Yeah. It's used in some such beautiful ways, where there's shots where you just see someone downstairs doing something, you know, while there's something happening in the foreground. And like, just the planning and the shots. Like you say, Scott's entrance is, he gets out of a minivan on ground level while they're on the first floor. And then while they're talking, he's literally... walking up and coming up the escalator. Yeah, I love it. Yes. Like in the movie, but also literally because it's happening in real time. And you think I'd like to think he's still in character, you know? So he knows he's on camera when he's in the car. So he's like in character and then he gets out of the car and he doesn't just like start flicking through his phone and look at photos or whatever, like the rest of us, he's still walking and frowning. I'm so, yeah, I really want that to be the case. I mean, I feel like I would be, I would be like, I've got one minute to try and make everybody laugh before we start this next bit. And that's why I'd be a nightmare in that situation. Whereas real good actors would probably just be doing the work, you know, focused in character. You know what real actors don't do? Real actors, when you have the clapperboard in front of them, real actors, when the clapperboard shuts and claps, real actors don't act like they pinch their fingers. in the clapperboard. Then what's the point of the clapperboard? And then go, ooooh! Like that. For a few seconds into a take, after the clapperboard is gone, that's real acting. I mean, if you're not reacting to the clapperboard, I don't know what you're doing on set, you guys. It's never not fun. Yeah, exactly. Some people stay in character, somehow. There's so many bits like that where there's two bits of action going on at once. And by action, I mean literal, you know, like fight, action, but also, you know, the camera swings around, we follow these two people over on this side of the room. And then I'm always, I am always wondering like, what, what are the people off camera doing? And I, and I sort of, when I, when I spoke to James, I was like, you know, where are you? He's not, he's not there to be kind of directing the other people. So it's, it's the, everybody is. doing this as if it's a play, ostensibly. Yes, yeah, yeah. And they're just waiting for their moment and staying in character, I guess. So my favorite thing about this technique that he uses is you've always got to see what the villains are up to. You know, it's John Lithgow telling all of his henchmen on the mountain that he's got to, you know, get Sylvester Stallone or whatever. Glyphhanger. Yeah, okay. I was like, Lithgow, Dexter season four? He's gone even further back, an absolute classic. It's the Santa Claus. So, um, so yeah, so, but she, you've got to have that moment. You've got to get that exposition out there. And in this instance, that means that your bad guys and your good guys can never be too far away from one another because you can't just spend five minutes walking down a corridor to get to them, right? So they've either got to cross paths. Or what he does quite a lot that I enjoy is the goodie is in amongst them or has recently been killed by them. So they think anyway, and you know, you're just in the kind of the right space. And now we'll get that exposition out. But one of my favorite bits in both movies and it is from the first one is the suicide bomber sequence where we are sad. Well, it's not clear what's happening. And then you kind of figure out what's happening. And then it leaves that character. It walks past him and all they do is they go around one corner. Like all this has happened, you know, within meters of the heroes who in like this garrison, you know, this formation with guns pointing at that corner. And you're like, wow, that's really fun. The geography is really fun. Also to that point, that bit in one shot, the suicide bomber moment was, I thought was like a really genuinely good bit of drama in what people will, could, you know, be sort of say, you know, it's a throwaway action movie, but that, the acting in that bit really great. The guy who played the, no spoilers, ill-fated suicide bomber, there's not really a surprise if he's still alive at the end of the movie, I suppose, is it? He hasn't done his job. Really good. And also, the guy who plays the suspected terrorist, a guy called Walid El-Ghadi, who is in both of these movies. He's like the sort of beating heart. Or the unspoken beating heart of these movies, I would say. Obviously, Adkins absolutely nails it and not to take anything away from him. But he dehumanises this character so well in both of the movies. I think it's a really smart move to have the story continue and just bring him back as well. I couldn't agree more. I thought he was such a phenomenal... presence, his character is kind of complicated within a world where nothing can be too complicated, but like his motivations are interesting. But regardless of that, it's the performer, the performance that elevates it. You know, I think he is so fascinating to watch and he's so unknowable. You really don't like he's always denying these things until he confesses and you are completely believe him. I completely believe him. And the first moment you see him and he's like, I didn't do it. What are you talking about? And I'm letting go. Let him go. And that's why you failed the FBI entrance exam. That's why I was not allowed to be a prison guard at Guantanamo. But that's another podcast. But yeah, so I just, he is utterly convincing and fascinating. And so there are characters in the films who want this guy dead all the time. And Scott is generally trying to keep him alive, but half the time you're like, Oh no, you should kill him. You know, like you really are like on the fence with. He is a bit of a shit, you know, he does sort of wait to leak out bits of information, but then they do manage to make him a sympathetic character. Yeah, they absolutely do. He's so complicated. Yeah. No, he's definitely the baddie, but also, you know, let him off. But also can he be in the third one? Come on guys. He should go to jail, but also like. A nice jail. He's a nice jail. Home jail where, you know, white collar millionaire jails that Martha Stewart went to just don't let him near the plutonium anymore. You know, like he's a good guy. Just he, he loved, you know, plutonium. Oh, such a good eighties, eighties bad guy reference. Back to the future. What is it in this one? I've forgotten. What's the, what's the stuff he's got in the thing? A dirty bomb, isn't it? It's dirty bomb. It's a dirty bomb, which I don't really know what that is made of. some sort of gas, one assumes, right? That's going to explode. It's absolutely filthy. On Capitol Hill and take out all the politicians who are assembled for the State of the Union address. I mean, we're all, we're all hoping more than anything that the next, the next one of these takes place in the White House. But possibly it'll be Buckingham Palace doubling for the White House? I don't know. I feel like the producer who- Because they're closed after 10. God, yeah! They just film it at night. When Charles is asleep. Charles is like, mate, we need some more money. Let's just let him shoot it. Yeah. I'm a little sad with the end of the second one, that they've kind of closed off some of the storylines that I would have quite happily ridden one more shot. Yeah, I think, you know, the ending is the ending, right? I mean, it's... You've got to be conclusive. I totally get it. Like, he made the right call. If he never gets to make another film, it's finished. And he's got a shadowy figure on the other end of the line and somewhere to go. Yeah. It's very, the door is very open for the third one. And there's probably an argument that it was, it's a bit too obviously open, but I think we get a scrap with Michael Jai White at the end, you know, he's on, he's on the poster. Clearly he had a very limited window to shoot for this movie, but he flew in, filmed his, you know, couple of nights or whatever it was. He's got a scene at the beginning. He's got a solid fight at the end, which is on the actual airport tarmac in front of a real plane. And he's not dead. So he can fly back again. He's very conspicuously not dead, isn't he? At the end. Another very shrewd move, I would say. But, but if the next film is set 12 hours after this one, it will prove problematic for his character, I think, to just walk in and pick up. That's true. Yeah. I think he's a little bit injured. You want the all-star superstar team up, right? Oh, bring them together. You want somehow for MJW to have to team up with Adkins to take down the president or whatever, whatever it is. He's the shadowy figure. Cool. Tell you what, kill all the politicians, president for life. There you go. As long as you're, as long as you're the president. How's that work? Right. As long as you're already the president. My suspicion is that this Admiral figure, we hear Scott talking to him and he seems like he's the good guy. Then we also hear the bad lady speaking to a person with a disguised voice. Yeah. You think it's Scott? I think it's the same person. That's where I'm putting my chips. You know what I think he should do? Because I want to make sure that the next film still has Well-E'd in it. So I think film three, because we've explored the horizontal and we've explored the vertical. Yep. And now what we need to do is that Birdman effect where you're not cutting, but there's a passage of time in that movement down the corridor. You go into the room and now we're in a flashback. And it's only because there are dead people in that room that you figure it out. Yes, I forgot that. That puts me in mind. There are still no cuts. That movie Carter. I mentioned to you, which I don't think you have seen, right? The South Korean movie, Carter, where... Which is obnoxiously, the whole movie is filmed in one shot, but in a way that, based on what you said about extraction, you might hate. Oh, sure. But, in that movie, they have flashbacks, where the camera will sort of rotate around, and now we're in a flashback. Which, I forgot that happens in Birdman. That is quite an interesting move. I don't think they actually do flashbacks. What they do is they compress time. So you go down a corridor and it's six months later. And when I first saw that my mind exploded. I just never seen anything so clever. If you're going to do a one shot, like that's the one thing you can't do. Right. And to do it. And just do it so obnoxiously. Like, no, you can look. I just, you just say it. Six months later. They don't even say it. It's just that person was behind us and now they're in front of us. So figure it out, dickhead. Like that's the extent of the exposition. Yeah, I just thought that was so clever. I mean, if there is a third one, they're going to have to up the game somehow, right? And it's, you know, James Nunn is a smart boy and a very technical filmmaker. I'm sure he's going to come up with something. I mean, this one had, like I said, the camera being passed out of the car. That was very cool. Camera being floated from one floor to another down a very narrow sort of the gap next to an escalator. I'm again intrigued about this, and I suspect maybe we'll never... As I said to James, there's a reason there's no behind the scenes footage, because there's nowhere for another camera crew to be, so you can't shoot the behind the scenes because you're gonna be in it. So yeah, maybe we'll never know. The couple of sort of big stunt bits, I'm just so fascinated as to how some of these were pulled off. There's just some really cool stuff. And the stuff about the levels, I think that was really nice. He talked about, in the first movie, us following Scott's character as he surreptitiously knifes people, and in this one, switching perspectives where Scott is kind of hidden in the background like a Batman. Like one of the Batmen. Or like a horror movie, ostensibly. There's that one kind of set piece that is basically a horror movie set piece. Yeah, he's kicking them off. I love it! Loved it. Yeah, it was pretty fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So well executed and so well... It's so complicated. Yeah. When they do that in Batman vs Superman or whatever, Batman is impossibly everywhere. Right. You know? And they compress time and it doesn't matter because there are cuts and cameras and stuff. And in this, there's a sequence where he's taking people out. in different places across the thing. But you're like, that's probably him. He's probably scuttling. He's probably doing a little scuttle under the, under the thing. And then grabbing someone. It's so well designed. Yeah. You know, maybe there is like a fake Scott taking out every other person, but like it probably isn't, it's probably just him, isn't it? No, I mean, the man is an absolute machine. He's, as he's been called many times, a human special effect. Uh, funny. There's just, you know, there's the stunt in the first one where he sort of dives out of the exploding, um, caravan. which is just real. And then gets up and starts acting. It's the sort of Jackie Chan level of, he just falls off that building, breaks his arm, even, you know, fair play to Tom Cruise when he did that jump across those two buildings, broke his foot and then got up and hobbled out of shot because he was like, they're going to have to use this one. That's a trailer shot. That's what Tom Cruise does. It's a trailer shot. the glue of binding these movies together. Just being like, just doing a bit of acting. Oh, I'm just doing like a two minute fight scene and then do a bit more acting and then like go over there. Well that's it. Hit all my marks. But what he doesn't do, he's not stealing the limelight from everybody else. You know, he's a very generous performer and he lets everyone else shine. And then as you say, he's just the glue. He's there and his character's like quite a straight character. You know, he's got his mission. And as they say in the first one, I think one of his, um, com- comrades, maybe that's not the right word. One of his other army buddies just literally says out loud, he doesn't joke. And then, and then you're like, all right, we're not going to have any quips. There's no quips. It's not one of those movies. Yeah, exactly. It's not a quippy. It's not a quippy movie. He's not in the ventilation with a lighter saying whatever he says. Really? Yeah. That's not, that's not this guy. There's no welcome to the party pal. Yeah. He just sticks a knife in your throat and then gets on with it. Gets on with it. But there's something about that makes it feel much more like there is a sequence where he's trying to switch on a communications thing or something and he goes into a space and there's five baddies and they don't know he's there and he's knifing them one by one in the throat. And there's something about the lack of quips that makes him feel like he's actually terrified that he might die. You know, like there's an element there. It's not just like he'll do it. Yeah. It feels like he wants to kill that guy before he gets killed by that guy. And, uh, a hundred percent. There's the bit in the first one being a bit goofy. Yeah, it does. It does. I suppose if you ratchet that tension up by having it be, you know, shot as one take him kind of being like snarky does fully like vacuum out that tension. I'd forgotten the, I remembered the fight in the first one against, um, Lee Charles, the sort of second in command henchman. But I'd forgotten how it's shot, which is it follows Walid's character into the little cell that he's in. And then we see the fight out through the kind of chain link just happen in this tiny room. And it's such a brutal, like full on fight. You know, those guys have like been in movies together. They know each other. Lee Charles is like a lovely Scouse guy. They, but they just, they look like they're belting the hell out of each other. And there's a bit in the second one where a bit of the wall gets dented. And as I watched that, I was like, I've got a feeling that wasn't meant to happen. And sure enough, they just broke a bit of Stansted airport in a fight. Someone's in a lot of pain. Yeah. But you can't go, oh guys, just stop. We're going to stop this. We've broken the wall. You're like, well, we're not going to, now the wall's broken. Like the continuity's fucked. We got to get this, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like it's extraordinary. There's so much like that. The, the, the fight on the actual airport transform on for monorail in Stansted, the train, the moving train. Yeah. It's on the real train. It's the real train. It's really fun. It's also like, if this was a hundred million pound thingy, it would have fallen off the rails and it would have, you know, blah, blah. Right. My favorite thing about that sequence is he pulls the emergency lever. The thing stops. He opens the door. And then I like the word scuttle today, but like, he doesn't want to take on this guy anymore. So he just runs out and then he pushes open some doors that are kind of, you know, conveniently there and you just see him push through these doors and run out. And you're just like, oh, he's just doing a runner. He's just like, he's getting the hell out of there because again, because he wants to like not die. And that's quite an interesting thing. He's not, you know, not trying to be the hero, right? I mean, I guess the reluctant hero is a thing, but. Ultimately, he's like, well, there are quite a lot of armed men here. Quite a lot of them. There's like 20 people in that carriage shooting at me with guns. So I'm going to run away. I'm just going to scuttle out here. Yeah. See you later guys. Yeah. I'm not going to leap off the side. I'm not going to go through the top. I'm not going to jump off into nothing. There's a door. I'm going to open it. I'll catch you guys later. Yeah. Catch you on the flip side. He does roll down a flight of stairs in this, which I... It's not to say that he doesn't do mad things, but yeah. I did mention Ellie and I still... I rewatch it and I asked James about it and he said it wasn't a Texas switch and it was Scott doing it. And I was, I still don't, it's, I mean, I say it's, it's only a small flight of stairs. I'm not rolling down the flight of stairs anytime soon. Incredible move. And then he falls fully off the side of a balcony and then the camera just goes over and looks down and he's there. And there's no amount of time. I feel like what we've The action replay moment! Who's going to claim this as their action replay is the problem? Well, let's, we can talk about it. It gets, it gets kicked off. We haven't mentioned Aaron Toney, who is the guy who plays the sort of, I guess the second, third, one of the chief henchmen, but he gets three solid scuffles with Adkins in this movie. And if you don't, you might not know this, but Errantoni is an actor, but also like a big time stunt guy who was for a lot of the Marvel movies in the Black Panther costume, doing the physicality of the Black Panther. So doing a lot of the cool fight stuff. And I think you won't disagree that the boy can move. He really holds his own in this and they fully use him to its full potential. Like three. absolutely quality dust ups with, uh, Adkins in this movie, which is to say one of them ends with him kicking Scott Adkins character over a railing where he seemingly falls. It's impossible. At least one story onto the floor. There's no cut. The camera just runs over and he's there. Whatever they did. And rightly so. Every single villain walks away, assuming. that person has died. Do you know what I mean? There's no surviving. Should we check? Assuming, well, they've, Scott Atkins must have died filming this. How have they done this? No one goes, well, he has been a bit of a tough bastard. Should we go over and just check his pulse? They look over the banister and they're like, deed. And then they just carry on with their mission. Incredible scenes. All right. I don't, if you have that as your action replay. That's mine, sorry. Yeah. What's yours? Oh, you little shit. Well, how about this? I have been quite, um, underwhelmed by a lot of Michael Jai White's recent output. So I was quite pleased to see him being fast in a fight. He's a such a, he's so hulking and huge and he's such a talented martial artists, but I feel like his lap, a lot of his... In Undisputed 2, I want to say, where him and Scott go to her too, he's like, he's an absolute beast. And he has made some great movies, but I feel like I haven't seen one in a while where he doesn't just kind of do some very blocky karate and then just kick people. This, he has a really nice back and forth, like lots of moves and he looks fast and dangerous. And I really liked that. I mean, it's not, it's not a single moment like Scott falling over the balcony, but it was obvious we were both going to pick that. It was that or the monorail or the fun bit where he's taken him out one by one. Those were the standout moments. But also like my favourite bit is just the opening terrorist encounter where like the speed with which he realises that something's amiss. And like, he doesn't know that these people are terrorists about to murder everyone, but they are holding guns and he doesn't know who they are. and he just starts killing them. Like there is like, you know what, I'll ask questions if anyone survives this. He does overhear them saying something about the Walid's character, like Mansur, that's what it's called, isn't it? They're like, remember Mansur is the target or something like that is kind of, you know, ADR'd on. Completely without precedent. Yeah. He's not, he's not going in completely, but yeah, they're not talking about. Mr. Bates versus the post office. It's true. They are like, but you're right. He does fully assassinate three or four of them quite, quite quickly. Quite quickly. But I loved it. That was like, yeah, fuck yeah. Let's go. Let's do this. Yeah. It tells you very quickly who this guy is and he is, he's getting shit done and he's not to be messed with. Yeah. Also, I wanted to mention that there is a delightful amount of practical effects in a movie, in, in shots that are happening. as live, to give it a sort of TV term. There's obviously there's CG for gunfire and fire and explosions and probably all manner of things that aren't as obvious as that. There's and it's quite seamless. There's nothing I think that stands out as you know, quote unquote, like shonky CG, but there's also just lovely little touches of like a van explodes and I'm sure they kind of ameliorated it with CG. But there is an explosion and stuff flying out. You know, when people throw grenades, there's bits of stuff exploding in the room. There's gunfire where bits are like, off cardboard boxes, that makes it just feel real. It just adds to that sort of real time reality. I love that. And it's so hard to do. I mean, I don't know. where the joins are, you know, I don't know what's real and what's added. Like there's a scene where they're trying to get away from, they're in a car. It's very tense. They're in a car and it's bulletproof glass and you just keep seeing bullets hitting the glass and kind of creating a more obscured vision for the driver. And I assume it's VFX. I assume. I don't know how you do it. Special effects. You mean the bullet hits on the car? The. Yeah. And, but like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. He could tell us, but like the fact that it's that seamless. It's great. Isn't it? And then the end of that scene where somebody, they come out of the car with like a sledgehammer, which is just a delightful bit of practicalities. I think that the CG of the glass breaking, then it pans away and then the, you know, the terrorist baddie takes the window off. And then the camera is passed out of that window. It's just so, it's a chef's kiss bit of sort of technicality that I think if you're, if you're not watching it with that sort of nerdy filmmaker eye, which I'm not saying you have to, to enjoy it, but it's just like, I think there's an extra level of enjoyment if you, if you can appreciate just how well done bits like that are. I almost felt like, cause I heard you ask him that question. that I posed to him on WhatsApp and his answer was like, you know, well, I'm just, I'm busy and I, you know, I can't really stop to enjoy what's happening. I just have to get on with it. And so I'm like, oh, that's very sad, but I know the people who are enjoying it is all the grips and the camera people who are like seamlessly getting the camera through the window and passing it onto the next person. And I just know the second that they get it and it passes and there's no like bump as it hits the window that they're going. Yeah. Just enjoying it. Just enjoying like the madness of the thing that they're trying to do. Yeah. I mean, you just, it must be, I mean, I'm sure it's very tense to be on set because like everything is sort of, you know, on a knife edge of, oh my God, like everyone, everyone has to do their job. We've only got four hours, but like that, it was like also the question you asked him about, you know, the feeling of when this, when it's working, it's, you know, it's just magic. You know, it's just. beautiful symbiosis of like 15 different departments work coming together and them just absolutely smashing it. People always say it's like theatre, but it's like, it's way more complicated than theatre mate. I mean, I know that there's lots of tech people up in the stands and the musicians and whatever else, but like there are so many departments, you all have to click for a one shot. Just hearing that there is, I mean, I suppose it's obvious, but I just assumed everyone is got radio mics, but there's a boom operator following everyone around. Of course, I guess you need redundancy, right? In this situation. I'm sure everyone has like two or three mics on them. God forbid. It's like in Hamilton, you know, everyone's got like one coming out of their hair and then one sort of at the side of their head because, you know, halfway through the show, if one goes out, I assume it's the same for this, but just the idea of that boom operator, like running around following everybody. What a great job that guy's done. 20 miles of running every day. Yeah. Or who knows, again, I'm sure there must be a few bits of CGI boom removal, no shade on the boom operator. That job is... That's a tough ask, isn't it? Just run around an airport, and quite a... Oh, but don't impose a single shadow once, please. Yes! The camera will be moving in order... I wanted to ask about lighting as well, because how do you just... You've got to light everything to shoot from every angle. Yeah. It's, it's just completely pre-lit for every angle. And God only knows that's not my area at all. No. It's terrifying, but these people, they know what to do. I don't know how they still manage to give it shape and... Yeah. How does it not? It doesn't look like a, you know, like a neighbors or a soap opera. It still looks like a movie. They must have like marks that they know things are going to happen at and the car will reverse into this mark. And at that point there will be a backlight. that will serve as someone else's key light later on. And you know, they must just do it like that. But how you organize it. Yeah. It's like an incredible puzzle. Benno, I feel like we're both on the same page with this one. I'm glad you enjoyed both of these movies and thank you again for doing double, double homework on this. I'm very grateful that you asked me to watch them because I enjoyed them and it was a pleasure listening to James's interview that he did with you and posing him questions and hearing his answers. And I read about him as well. Like I did my research. So, yeah, thank you very much for sending me those voice notes. I'm sorry. I couldn't get all of them in. You do a very, you did really good homework. You sent me several great questions on voice notes, which I think I mentioned this when I was speaking to him, which were as verbose as the questions I asked him. Yeah, yeah. They're quite chatty, aren't they? It's not like, what's your favourite colour, is it? It's, uh, yeah. I learned during that interview that, um, summing up a question in two lines is actually a real, a real skill. I've never cracked it. Yeah. But also I think when you watch, you know, like a late night talk show, they know what they're going to be fed. So they know what their answer is. Whereas this is more of a conversation, isn't it? You've got to kind of set the scene a bit, then lace the question in there. But thank you so much for your input there. Thank you for joining us today. If people want to find you on the good old worldwide web, is there somewhere you always point them? Yeah. I got a website, benmalleby.co.uk. Love that. benmalleby.co.uk. And, uh, my films are on there. Uh, yeah, that's about it. I'd say that's, that's all you need. Isn't it one place they can find everything. Ben Malaby. Code at UK and, um, Facebook.com forward slash Malaby. So that, uh, people's parents can find out what you're up to for the races. If you want to follow the pod itself, it's still on, uh, I'm still calling it Twitter. at dodge this pod. You can find me and all my stuff through my website, SimonFielder.com. Second issue of my newsletter just went out. Very excited that I've managed to get two out so far this year. It's my plan to do it every two weeks. We'll see. I'll keep you updated. The newsletter reminds you to listen to the podcast. The podcast asks you to subscribe to the newsletter. You got to love that. There's a link below if you want to watch the trailer for one more shot. please check these movies out. They are the cream of the crop of DTV movies. And I don't want that to sound like a bad thing. They're just great movies. And if you love action movies, if you're here listening to this podcast, you're gonna be in for a great time. And man, if you even have an ounce of filmmaking experience or enthusiasm, then you're gonna have a whole nother layer of enjoyment watching the movies and trying to figure out. How in God's name they made them! That wraps up another episode. Dodged this. Action movie's unleashed. Hey, if you want to make some kind of donation, you can do that. There's a link down below. Otherwise, we will see you in a couple of weeks time for another episode. Ben, please join me in screaming at the top of your lungs. Goodbye.
