"Getaway" opens in theaters Friday and Latinos Post spoke to director Courtney Solomon about the style of the film and directing Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez.
Latinos Post: How did you get involved?
Courtney Solomon: It was submitted to us as a potential producing project by the writers.
LP: Why did you decide to direct the film?
CS: It was just an interesting concept to do this film, which was more modern than car chase movies that I've seen before. Essentially it was a throwback to a classic car chase. It was sort of incorporating what the police cars and world are doing right now and this generation with cameras everywhere in the world. Where you would see the film from the perspective of as if you were flying through it. You know from the perspective of all these cameras. So, that to me was interesting and the story itself was extremely simple. To me it was just a love story about a man willing to do anything to save his life.
LP: What was the experience like working with Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, and Jon Voight?
CS: All positive across the board. Ethan is obviously a fantastic actor as is Jon. Both well established. And Selena is super talented and put in a really good performance that was able to adjust very quickly. In her scenes with Ethan Hawke she was able to always rise to the occasion. They all gave me 1,000 percent. They were really fantastic to work with and really good people. I'm not just saying that. They just really were. It was a very positive experience.
LP: What was experience of doing a lot of the stunt work before the actors arrive? How was it different from your previous work? How did it help the actors and how did it help you as a director?
CS: Pretty much you never usually do it that way. Sometimes you do a little bit of the second unit stuff first and then you bring in the actors. But because of the complexity of all these chases and the movie essentially being one long chase because they're in the car for the whole movie, it was essential to do that first. Then it was a process of explaining to the actors and cutting some of the footage together so that they'd understand the direction the car was going in, to give you a simple example: turning hard left or turning hard right. Flopping through the car one way or another. It was sort of a backwards process. It's something people usually don't do but it was necessary for this. And then there was a third element that was once I added the actors in, I needed to add Jon Voigt's voice after the fact because he wasn't actually there.
LP: So the actors saw some of the footage before they went on set?
CS: While they were actually on set. We had it on an iPad. That way they would know the trajectory, what section of the chase was going on and where they were going and how many cars were behind them and what they were reacting to. The way we actually shot them was on the road in a specially made car that could be pulled at a very high speed that could match all the stunt work.
LP: How many cameras did you shoot with and what kinds of cameras?
CS: We shot with up to 42 different cameras. I think the average was somewhere between 22 and 27 on a given shot. There were seven different formats. So you were literally seeing formats from GoPro all the way up to RedCam. And that was the idea because part of the story is that the voice has cameras on the car and is watching them and is also tied into all the cameras on the street. And the police cars also have cameras on them. All the other vehicles have cameras on them so you're constantly moving from one to the other in extremely short cuts as opposed to the traditional way that these films are done where you just show the full take of this particular turn or that particular car crash and everything else. This was far more frenetic and purposely so that you actually feel like you were in it. Like it was more of an experience of being in the situation and they're sort of watching the situation from the outside. And then towards the end of the movie we sort of flip and give you one shot and we sort of show you Ethan Hawke's point of view during the course of all this craziness that has been seen from the perspective of the voice.
LP: Was the style something you immediately envisioned?
CS: We developed it. The risk of it is in developing it, that was the vision in the script. From moment number one, page number one it tells you it is clicking from camera to camera to camera to camera and showing it from different points of view on the inside and outside of the car. That was always the concept behind the movie as far as what the style should be. But then again we had to develop it and it's a risky thing to do because certain people think you shouldn't of done it that way and do it like everyone else has done it before and bring nothing new. So what can I tell you? That's what we did because that's what the script called for and it actually gave a fresh approach to it. And I'm pleased with the approach to it.
LP: Was that the greatest challenge of the film?
CS: Technically it's a huge challenge between the camera work, the sound design and the editing and mixing all those formats together, which nobody's really done before. Because we're mixing a whole bunch of digital formats together and some are really low resolution and some of it looks like shoddy photography. In reality, if you have those cameras on a car and that's the way you were looking at it, then that's the way it would look. We did experiment in the post process in treating those things and bringing up the resolution and making it look like it was perfect as red cameras. That was extremely challenging and it was challenging to incorporate the actors into it as well. On the other hand it was a godsend that they were in one environment and blocking-wise it was extremely easy because obviously they're in the car. But on the other side it was hard to try and find a way to keep it interesting as far as what they were doing in the car. They do get out of the car at various places and we go to different places. So they weren't always in the same place. It was a 75 - 25 split I would say.
LP: How do you interpret the character of The Voice? How did you work with Jon Voigt on interpreting him?
CS: We interpreted him as the mysterious guy that we didn't need to know a whole lot about. All three characters, we don't learn a lot about them. The idea behind this movie was to break the conventional standards we see of every movie in this genre. Look, if this happened in eight hours and some guy went and stole your wife and had some heist planned and used you because you have the skills to help him pull it off that plan. In the process he's picked the car he wants to use that comes from Selena Gomez's character because he's picked her specifically for a reason because she has specific skills that he needs to pull this off. And he planned this whole thing out because essentially he wants to rob something and steal money. Did we need to know who he was? Did we need to know why a criminal wants to steal money? Did we need to know where he came from, who he's married to, how many kids he has?
Those were conversations we had. He was mysterious because he would be mysterious. He doesn't want to be caught. He doesn't want to be seen. He doesn't ever want to have anything to do with this but get away with it. That's why it's called "Getaway." As far as Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez's characters, they're no friends. They wouldn't ordinarily meet unless they were thrown into this situation. They're in a situation where Ethan Hawke is trying to save his wife and they wouldn't sit and have a conversation like "Hey, who are you? What's your name? What school did you go to?" I know they do that in most movies. I think it was better that they just be thrown into this circumstance with all the frenetic energy and just go with it as if it was real because that's how people would react in these circumstances. We broke a few times to be a little bit more conventional but that was the vision we had. The movie itself is supposed to be a fun ride. A popcorn movie, but we did want to stay true to how these people would react over these eight hours.
LP: If you were to make a sequel, would you develop the voice's character more?
CS: This was just envisioned as one film. The whole idea was that [the voice] was on the other side of the world and he was off in some bar pulling off his plan and he had probably pulled off other jobs before. If there was a sequel, he might do his next job. Would he do it with Ethan and Selena's characters? Probably not. He'd do it some other way. Some other plan. And then you'd find out more about that character because then we'd learn what makes him click and why he does all these elaborate and crazy plans as opposed to doing it in a more simplistic way. I think somewhere along the way, people forget that they're supposed to be movies and they're supposed to challenge our imaginations and be a bit more fun than real life. If there ever was a sequel then it would be from the perspective of Jon Voight's character.