Ben Curns as Commissioner Gordon
Matt met Ben at the Society of American Fight Directors, where they trained together the previous summer. Since he had the theatrical and stage combat background, Ben was the first and only choice to play the harrowed Gordon. Not only is he the main character in this episode, he is also the only one with an arc. He goes from fed up, to outburst, to hopeful, to calming, to scared, to fighting for his life, then defeated. All within less than ten minutes. Ben also brought a leadership aura to the role, which was absolutely required since Gordon’s a Commissioner. That said, Ben was actually the most reserved out of all our main cast.
His main direction for every scene was “You need more coffee”.
The first day we devoted to the fight scene between him and a random masked henchman (Matt). “Fight Scene First” has been part of the Red Fist MO long before its name. The logic is you get the hardest part done first. Filming anything is exhausting, but doing dialogue after fighting is a lot easier than vice versa. Since Ben and Matt trained together for three weeks (on unrelated scenes for their certification), their chemistry was a lot more evident than anybody Matt fought onscreen before.
Hoe-wielding pilgrims included.
Physically, that was the most demanding scene, since Ben lifts Matt up and slams him back-first onto thinly padded concrete. (Pad courtesy of Sensei Valentine; concrete courtesy of Fat Chimp Studios). He also throws Matt on the concrete, onto his buttocks, with no pad. Oh yeah, and Matt swings chains at him too.
That night, we returned to Cathedral for Ben’s scene with the reporters. Personally, I was excited to see some of my good friends and acting classmates get some screentime. Not only that, but also get to do a scene with an experienced actor. And, this is where Ben improvised his monologue. Seriously, watch this. In my opinion, his speech, and delivery, draw the line between “Batman: Master of Fear” and fan films. We couldn’t believe we caught such gold.
The next morning, we were back bright and early at Fat Chimp to do the main set piece (outside of the fight scene). Again, I was excited to bring in friends and acting classmates. Not only that, but also actress and former police officer Faneal Godbold. Her SWAT experience was the main reason we flew her up. It was neat to watch her show the other actors (Mark Williams and Conor Daniel) how to hold guns, and properly search and secure a building. We also had a makeup artist do all the bruising and blood on the hostages (Phillip Sansone and Abby Swaim). Even my teenage nephew, John, was on set to help with fanning fog, moving lights, etc.
It’s funny how both fight scenes went off without a hitch, but we still had a minor accident on set in a much less physically demanding scene. You know the part where the female hostage gets pulled away in her chair? Well, in an outtake, the rope pulled the chair (and Abby) to the concrete floor. Thankfully, she was okay, but it sucked the air out of the room for a moment. We moved on.
Some of the struggles were figuring out lighting and framing. Since there’s not supposed to be any light in the scene, we had to figure out how to make it dark but also see everybody. Wasn’t happening, because one of the lights in the facility just wouldn’t turn off. There was no switch for it. So, the use of flashlights became sort of pointless. We realized this while filming, so that’s why we figured they’d be pointing the lights at darker areas (which we never filmed, because of time constraints).
And the geography of the scene could have been better. The cops enter the room, look from side to side, then see the hostages mere feet away, straight ahead. That made no sense, even when filming, but our reasoning with ourselves was that the cops saw them from the get go, and were first securing the area before rushing over. Maybe you didn’t have a problem with that (or even the lighting), but both bugged the crap out of me.
Figuring out the logistics of the action of this scene was the main challenge, because by this point we were all so exhausted. Several months before, we mapped out that chains would shoot from out of nowhere and grab the hostages and cops. Cool. Spooky. Onscreen, it worked for when Abby’s pulled away. But we had to change a lot of our wide shots to close-ups, where the chains are only seen (and briefly, at that), since they involved shooting out towards people and wrapping around them.
After finishing all of that, we filmed Gordon hallucinating. That was literally us going into the adjacent room, setting up one light, and letting Ben do his thing. A normal room, save for the mound of broken glass spread throughout the floor. The last piece of the puzzle was the rewritten scene between Gordon and a newly added character--Faye, his secretary. (Fun fact: that role was cast two days before). The actor, Jaynell, showed up with a full tank, while we were running on fumes. She and Ben did the scene where she hands him a folder, and that was that. In retrospect, it was kind of sad that she was so excited to start filming, and we were so ready to end.
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