PRODUCTION CAUGHT STEALING
Postmates bikes passing by carrying giant bags of food. We also recreated the fronts of places. There’s a legendary restaurant called Benny’s Burritos that appears in the film, as it’s on the corner where Hank lives. Down the street is a place called Kim’s Video and Music that he goes past after a big shootout at the bar. They were iconic East Village locations that we recreated because anyone who lived in the city during that time would be transported back there by seeing those establishments. People would actually walk by when we were shooting and ask if they had reopened.” One of the locations that didn’t require much alteration was Chinatown, as it hasn’t really changed since the nineties – except for the neon lights, which were removed in post. In one of the Chinatown sequences, Hank is chased by two Hasidic hitmen played by Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio. “That was great fun to shoot,” admits Libatique. “When the van goes up on the curb and Hank is running away, I couldn’t believe how close it was to him. The van was driven by Vincent, who’s an excellent driver. We used the DJI for a lot of that sequence, as we were trying to run through the small spaces. It was a combination of using the VENICE 2 on the Ronin and the DJI handheld on a sandbag cart chasing Hank to try and create as much fanaticism as possible.” The shoot involved capturing a number of car chases and crashes, which required extensive planning. The
IT WAS EXCITING TO take these toys into this iconic place AND PUT THEM ON DISPLAY”
Flushing Meadows car crash sequence was particularly exciting for Libatique. “Darren has never really done an action sequence like that before,” he says. “When Hank and Russ (Matt Smith) are chased down by Roman (Regina King) at Flushing Meadows near the Unisphere we employed the EDGE arm – similar to the Russian arm. We had what’s called a biscuit, which is basically a trailer being driven that can accommodate a vehicle, so the actors don’t have to drive.” Libatique relied on his previous work shooting stunts and applied his knowledge and skill set to creating the scene. “We had a stunt driver driving the car on a trailer; we were able to fix cameras inside for our coverage and
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