Board members Robert Olsen and And Berk Are well known for horror fans for smart, scary and sometimes quite fun thrillers like “body”, “villains” and “significant others.” With their latest film“Novokain“The exact and expressive visual style of the early films remains, but the genre is new: the story of a gentle male banker (Jack Quaid) on an endeavor to save his kidnapped new girlfriend (Amber Mid Dogs) is a full action movie packed with exciting sets.
For Berk and Olsen, it was a long -lasting dream to get the chance to play in Richard Donner and John McTiernan’s sandbox.
“We have wanted to make an action movie for a very long time, but it’s really hard early in your career,” Berk told IndieWire’s filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “No one will give you the 20-plus millions of dollars you need to make an action movie for your first feature.”
While ”Novokain“Has a modest budget for a studio function-none-art just shy for the $ 20 million figure-it has no shortage of scale or ambitious sets, something that the directors say were partly achievable thanks to the decision to shoot in Cape Town, South Africa. “It’s an incredibly versatile city visually,” Berk said. “It has a coastal vibe that can play like Miami or San Diego, but then you go into the country, and the center area can be New York City. And then a few blocks look away like New Orleans. “
ONK AND OLSEN REALIZED How many look’s they could get in one area by Shooting in cape town, they switched the location of the original script from Detroit to san diego, a decision that allowed the movie to shine “Like the More Colorful Dna of Action Mov The Grittier Aesthetic of the “Taken” Movies – Films Berk and Olsen Love, But Were Not Looking to Replicate. That said, photography in South Africa is unusual challenges.
“There is a lot in Cape Town that is structurally different,” Olsen said. “They drive on the other side of the road, so for each outer scene you take in new cars. And for some reason, the banks they have there do not have there as our banks, so the production designer and her team built the entire bank from the beginning. ”
Berk and Olsen noted that the biggest challenge was the fact that ambulances in Cape Town also looked different, which meant that the crew had to build two ambulances for a climatic action scene – one of which had a rotary series Rigg that could spin the interior.
Sequences like Ambulance Chase remember the heyday of Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Silver films, which Berk and Olsen tried to emulate while putting their own spin on the genre via the film’s unconventional protagonist. Nate, the unlikely hero from Lars Jacobson’s script, is not just an Allman who is not In Schwarzenegger-Stallone tradition. He has a rare disorder that prevents him from feeling pain – both an advantage and a major problem when he fights against a bad guy after another on his way to save his love interest.
“What we like about ‘Lethal Weapon’ and ‘Die Hard’ is that they are really fun, but they are not complete comedies where you lose the efforts,” Olsen said. “We wanted to make a movie that was really fun but founded, and what drew us to this movie was the fact that (Nate) couldn’t fight. Jack had to learn how to fluck up every time you get punched as an actor, you will sell the pain. He had to learn all this, and it was really fun to find out how we would fight – we called it ‘Nate Fu.’ “
The fact that Nate cannot fight in a conventional way gives all action sequences in “Novocaine” a chaotic, flaming quality that is still carefully choreographed and, on the film’s own terms, is quite likely. Again, which means that the action grows organically by character band “Novocaine” to its influence, which is part of Berk and Olsen’s larger assignments.
“For some reason, (the industry) has lost its view to building films from character,” Berk said. “We have posted plays too high and the character too low, and the spectacle is becoming less and less nutritious and less valuable when you don’t have characters to make you care. The effect during many years of consumption of films that fall into that structure is that people stop thinking that movies are good. Hopefully we can not only run the genre but the theatrical ecosystem in the right direction. “
“Novocaine” now plays in theaters. To hear more Interviews Like this one, make sure you subscribe to Filmmaker tolkit podcast on AppleThe SpotifyOr your favorite podcast platform.
