Chapter 489: A Change in Action Scenes

At an estate in Malibu Beach, the garden had been freshly decorated. Ribbons and balloons fluttered in the breeze as countless guests mingled, offering gifts and well wishes to a girl with long, golden-brown hair. She smiled sweetly, looking overjoyed, as if she were truly celebrating her birthday.

But the numerous cameras positioned around the perimeter proved this was nothing more than a scene.

Taken officially began filming in Malibu in mid-November. The crew had rented one of Nancy Josephson's villas, and after some setup, they started shooting the first scene—Kimmy's birthday party.

Even though this was the first scene and they had already gone through a few bad takes, Duke's team largely consisted of veterans who had worked together for over a decade. From camera angles to props and sets, they knew his style inside and out. Any minor issues that arose were easily resolved with just a few words.

Duke sat in his director's chair beneath a palm tree, watching the girl on the monitor. He gave a slight nod and shouted, "Cut!"

Next, he gave a thumbs-up to the actress playing Kimmy. "Amanda, excellent work! Keep it up!"

When praise was due, Duke never skimped on it. For these young actors, encouragement was sometimes far more effective than a reprimand.

"Thank you, Director."

The golden-brown-haired Amanda Seyfried ran over to express her gratitude before heading off for a makeup touch-up.

Duke had personally handpicked her for the female lead.

When a partner initially recommended her, Duke hadn't given it much thought. However, during the second round of auditions, he saw her performance and how she looked in makeup. While her acting was nothing exceptional, her appearance was highly appealing. As a result, the eighteen-year-old actress landed the lucky break.

Her performance didn't disappoint him, either. She had done rather well in the two shots they had filmed so far, and the few bad takes had little to do with her.

"John, move Camera One to the garden entrance!" Duke stood up and shouted toward the camera crew. "David, take Camera Two and shoot on the move. Make sure to capture Ms. Ryan's facial expressions."

The crew quickly adjusted their positions to shoot the next scene. Duke walked over to the makeup department and checked on the finished looks for Meg Ryan and Liam Neeson. The makeup artists were all veterans who had followed him for years; they knew exactly what kind of makeup the current scene required.

Nodding in satisfaction, Duke returned to his director's chair. He waited a brief moment until he received word that all departments were ready, then called for filming to commence.

"Taken, scene one, take three." The clapper loader stood in front of the main camera with the slate. "Action!"

This scene wasn't difficult. Bryan, a retired secret agent, comes to his daughter's birthday party and gets into an argument with his bitter ex-wife.

In truth, the entire film followed old Hollywood tropes. Behind every Hollywood-style hero, for instance, there was inevitably a troubled or even broken family.

These elements were incredibly cliché, yet they endured over time. They were exactly the tropes mainstream audiences loved most.

Liam Neeson was the first actor confirmed for the cast. Over the past few months, he had frequently discussed the character with Duke, so he grasped the role with ease. On the other hand, Meg Ryan, accustomed to playing sweethearts, fell a little short of expectations.

"Cut!"

When the camera went in for a close-up on Meg Ryan's face, Duke immediately called a halt. "Meg, you're playing an ex-wife who still harbors resentment! Put away that smile. This character is no sweetheart!"

"Sorry, Duke," Meg Ryan said, gently rubbing her cheeks. "I'll adjust right away."

The role wasn't complicated. After the makeup artist touched her up, filming resumed. Duke called cut once more due to a blocking issue, and after the crew made a slight adjustment, he approved the third take.

This was a purely commercial action film, so Duke wasn't overly demanding when it came to the actors' performances. This had always been his style. Since entering Hollywood, with the exception of Chicago, the vast majority of actors in his films didn't actually face much pressure regarding their acting.

Next up was a horseback riding scene with Amanda Seyfried. The young actress didn't use a stunt double. Over the previous two weeks, she had been taking riding lessons just for this short sequence, which would only last a few minutes on screen. Furthermore, she only had to ride around the garden; there were no scenes of her galloping at full speed, making it relatively easy.

The garden set, which had taken two full days to construct, was torn down and thrown out as trash after barely half a day of use.

By mid-afternoon, Duke announced a wrap on filming, but the day's work was far from over.

There hadn't been any large-scale promotional campaigns before shooting began, as Warner's PR department, much like Duke Studio and Penny Kalis, was keeping a close eye on the upcoming awards season. Still, this was Duke's newest work. It was bound to attract media attention, so Warner Brothers had prepared a press conference.

It was supposed to be a small press conference, yet over a hundred reporters swarmed the event—a true testament to Duke's massive draw with the media.

After more than a decade of hard work, and armed with the massive success of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Duke now stood at the very pinnacle of the directing world, not just in Hollywood, but globally. The directors in Hollywood who shared that echelon could be counted on a single hand.

Furthermore, the rise of the internet as a new medium meant that directors could no longer stay half-hidden behind the scenes the way they once did.

The press conference was set up in the small plaza in front of the estate's villa. Everything was kept simple, and Duke tried to answer the reporters' questions as concisely as possible.

As soon as the Q&A session began, a reporter asked, "Duke, is it true that your new film is a story about a father and daughter? And in the crime genre?"

"That is correct," Duke said after a moment of thought. "Last year, I traveled around the world. While in Paris, I heard someone mention a particular incident. There was a criminal syndicate in the city that hid their true identities and specialized in abducting young women. These girls would then be taken to some luxurious villa on the outskirts of Paris and auctioned off."

Another reporter asked, "So your new film is adapted from a true crime?"

"Not exactly. The things I heard merely gave me some inspiration," Duke explained as simply as possible. "After hearing people describe these events, I realized that this highly compelling real-life case could be transformed through dramatic techniques. We could create a captivating crime story that incorporates the conventional elements action films have always followed, while also blending in realistic, explosive scenes and close-quarters hand-to-hand combat..."

Action elements were undoubtedly a major highlight of the film. The day after the press conference, Duke began shooting an action sequence.

The action scenes in Taken were designed by his action choreographer, Jimmy Carter. Ever since The Matrix, this old-school Hollywood action director had been secretly learning from Yuen Woo-ping. By drawing on the filming techniques of Hong Kong kung fu movies, utilizing Hollywood's advanced technology, and combining various famous fighting styles from around the world, Carter had developed a set of action routines that would be much easier for North American audiences to accept.

These routines eliminated the traditional clunkiness of Hollywood combat, stripped away the overly intricate and flashy movements of kung fu, and incorporated the vicious strikes of Muay Thai and kickboxing. The result was fast, simple, fierce, and direct.

Inside a soundstage at Warner Studios, Duke stood on a set designed to look like an abandoned factory, giving his final pre-shoot instructions to Jimmy Carter and Liam Neeson.

"This is the opening action sequence, and the final edited scene won't be very long. Therefore, you must execute the absolute essence of your action routines in the shortest amount of time possible," Duke instructed.

Jimmy Carter gave a heavy nod and promised, "We've rehearsed this many times. Don't worry, Duke."

Duke was going to hand over the camera work for the film's action scenes to Jimmy Carter. If he was satisfied with the final results, Carter would definitely become the action choreographer for the Batman Trilogy.

In the original trilogy from his past life, although the fighting style Bruce Wayne used was somewhat overly clunky—which was necessary for the realism of the films—Christopher Nolan truly wasn't skilled at shooting action scenes.

Batman utilized close-quarters combat combined with ninjutsu. Duke certainly wasn't going to make it lightweight and elegant; the action routines would still remain primarily grounded in realism, though he would make appropriate improvements.

The filming of all Hollywood-style action scenes was extremely fragmented, generally broken up into countless little pieces. For the most part, Duke simply sat in his director's chair watching the monitor, rarely offering any opinions. After years of devoted research, Jimmy Carter had developed his own distinct style, even if he was still a bit far from true mastery.

What they were filming here was Agent Bryan's final mission before his retirement—the sequence Duke had locked in as the movie's opening scene.

Unlike typical action movies, the original film from his past life had a very slow opening pace.

Whether in Hollywood or over in Hong Kong, an action film's opening inevitably featured a scene designed to immediately grab the audience's attention. Yet in this film—perhaps because the original director had been French—the pace right after the opening was sluggish. While this certainly made it unique, it was by no means a good start.

After all these years, there was a good reason why action movies of the past, present, and future all maintained the tradition of starting off with a thrilling fight scene.

Even though the most moving aspect of the film was the profound fatherly love, what truly compelled people to keep watching were the action elements. This was, fundamentally, an action movie aimed at action fans. To ensure the audience stayed in their seats rather than walking out due to a slow pace—and subsequently spreading negative word-of-mouth—an opening action sequence was absolutely essential.

The slow opening pace of the original film had actually caused a significant impact on both its word-of-mouth and box office performance. One could only say that even among commercial directors, the mindset of a French commercial director was simply different.