Flipping the script
Atomic director Shariff Korver discusses shooting the opening sequence of the action-packed Sky drama, which blends action spectacle with humour to tell the story of two friends who embark on the unexpected journey of a lifetime.
The scene itself is deceptively simple: Max, a drug smuggler played by Alfie Allen, is driving through the desert with Carlos, a Venezuelan cartel member, when insurgent militants ambush them. Gunfire erupts, tires are shot out, the car flips through the air.
But instead of the imminent death Max expects, one of the rebels – JJ, played by Shazad Latif – kills his fellow militants. He spares Max, and takes him hostage. They rush away from the crime scene as Max’s old vehicle explodes, creating a mushroom cloud of smoke. ‘Simple’ might not be the right description after all. Let’s break it down.
Produced by Pulse Films for Sky, Atomic is at its heart a buddy movie, so having our two antiheroes meet as soon as possible was a top priority for writer Gregory Burke. As scripted, the ambush used to happen immediately. But during pre-production, I asked Greg to add a couple of lines of dialogue between Max and Carlos before the attack. I wanted to create a sense of false security for the audience, to establish that Max wasn’t expecting any danger. He’s listening to his music, busting Carlos’s balls… and then bang! Carlos is shot dead through the front window, and Max loses control of the wheel. Cut to black.
To enhance this sense of false security, we shot a sequence of desert establishing shots before introducing Max’s 4×4: vast drone shots of endless desert, no one in sight, until a roaring engine enters the frame followed by a trail of dust. Within that dust, a chameleon, just minding its own business, is suddenly enveloped by the force of the passing vehicle. I added the chameleon as a tonal detail: this is not going to be your typical action piece. It was inspired by Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant, where a coked-up Nicolas Cage rushes through the heat of the city, and Herzog would occasionally cut to a crocodile’s perspective.
The script called for chyrons specifying location – especially important in episode one with its frequent crosscutting between countries – to orient the viewer. I took it as a challenge to do something more interesting with them. This resulted in a simple but playful idea: we made physical road signs for each location and shot them practically, creating a recurring element for the edit. Again, we were trying to establish tonally that this is not your typical action show. So after the opening desert shots comes the first sign: Sahara Desert Algeria. We push in and the letters change to ‘A smuggling route.’
We used this sequence to introduce a track that would convey Max’s state of mind: You Sexy Thing, by Hot Chocolate. The track puts us at ease. Nothing bad can happen when you’re listening to You Sexy Thing! We as an audience don’t expect it, and equally important, Max doesn’t expect it. And then… bang! Carlos gets shot. Bullets and breaking glass were to be added digitally in post. The car flips. That we were planning to do for real. On the first day of shooting, no less. If we can pull this off, we can pull anything off.
The biggest challenge was securing the safety of the actors, who would be doing the stunt themselves, while making it look crazily unsafe and dangerous. We had three versions of our hero vehicle: one to drive, the second for post-explosion shots, and the third attached to a Manitou truck’s arm.
Cedric Proust, our stunt supervisor, rehearsed the stunt with our actors and made sure they sat safely and felt comfortable doing it. Our SFX supervisor Stefano Corridori had the harder job – he had to find a way to flip the car while reaching a speed that resembled the actual velocity the actors were driving at. We shot all the driving up to the point of the attack, then moved the actors to the Manitou-mounted vehicle and had them perform the last line of dialogue there before being turned upside down.
In the flipping vehicle, we had dust and debris ready to fall in after impact. We had two mounted cameras: one in profile of Max and Carlos, and one from the back. I think we did three or four takes with the actors, plus a couple more of the car sliding across the sand, ending on a push-in of Max hanging upside down. As the dust settles, he sees another 4×4 coming to a stop and a mysterious man in silhouette looking at him. Cut to black. Carlos is lying dead on the ground. Max thinks he’s going to be executed, but no: there’s another lost Brit in the middle of the desert, whom he later names JJ and who spares his life by killing his fellow militants instead.
This opening scene trains the audience to expect the unexpected. You think you know who the heroes and villains are, but the scene immediately turns that upside down, literally. Looking back at the end result now, I’m struck by how that opening scene contains the entire series in microcosm: sudden violence, unexpected humour, a relentless pace and two radically different men forced together. It’s a hell of a ride, and it starts with a flip.
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tagged in: Atomic, Cedric Proust, Pulse Films, Shariff Korver, Shazad Latif, Sky