By Iain Blair
The Terminal List director Antoine Fuqua has a gift for making highly charged emotional dramas and action films, including the 2001 crime thriller Training Day, The Equalizer franchise and Olympus Has Fallen.
Chris Pratt on-set with Antoine Fuqua
The Terminal List, a new Amazon Prime series based on the novel by Jack Carr, follows James Reece (Chris Pratt) after his entire platoon of Navy SEALs is ambushed during a high-stakes covert mission. Reece returns home to his family with conflicting memories of the event and questions about his culpability.
I spoke with Fuqua — who executive produced along with Pratt and writer/showrunner David DiGilio — about making it, working on the VFX with Oscar winner Rob Legato (ASC) and his love of post.
You directed the first episode and set the whole look and tone for the rest of the series. What were the main challenges in pulling it all together?
(Laughs) The big one for me was not being able to direct all the episodes because I was also shooting the slave drama Emancipation for Apple, with the great Bob Richardson (ASC) as my DP. But we had some great filmmakers come in on this and they took the direction I laid out.
I did a psychological book and a visual book, like a bible, that I gave to everyone. I discussed it all at length with them and the DPs, so that kept the vision, look and tone consistent. Storywise, Chris, David and I kept in touch with Jack Carr to make sure we stayed true to the character and to Reece’s emotional journey.
Can you talk about integrating post and all the VFX?
We began designing all of that stuff pretty early on, laying it out and storyboarding it all. You have to do that when you have a lot of complex action sequences with VFX, and the more you prep for post the better.
How tough was the shoot?
For me it was pretty tough because it was a very short schedule, and I had to build all the tunnels on the backlot at Paramount. My team and I knew we had to design it all and shoot it early, as we had such limited time to get all the coverage we needed, and we had some big action sequences. And filming at the height of COVID was very difficult and very frustrating at times.
Then I had to leave to shoot Emancipation, and that was hard because every weekend I was on Evercast going through all The Terminal List episodes and working on the edit. Then once I got back from the Emancipation shoot, I went through everything with Dave and the team. That break worked out great because it gave me a chance to step away from it enough and become the audience.
Who was your DP on this one?
Armando Salas (ASC). He’s this great Cuban DP who shot Ozark. He shot several episodes after I had to leave, so that gave it continuity in terms of the look and feel. We shot on the Alexa Mini with Leitz Summilux-C and Summicron-C lenses. The aspect ratio was 16:9 HD, which gave us a great cinematic and widescreen image.
Where was the post done
Because of COVID it was pretty much all remote, and we were all on Evercast. So whenever I was talking to the editor, it was on Evercast. Then we did all the sound on the Sony lot, and I brought my usual team. We did a Dolby Atmos mix.
Do you like the post process?
I absolutely love post, probably more than any other part of the whole filmmaking process. You go into making a movie or show with everything you’ve got, but some things work, and some things don’t. That’s just the nature of shooting. Then you get to post, and you have this chance to make the movie or show all over again. The magic of post allows you to take that thing that didn’t work and move things around in the edit and use them in a different way than you’d planned, and suddenly they do work.
And for me, sound and music are always a huge part of the post process. I always tell my sound team that you have to make a movie for someone who is blind. Can you still tell the story with sound and make them feel emotions without the visuals?
We had a great composer, Ruth Barrett, and I told her, “Don’t overthink it. Don’t try to be overly muscular; just feel it.” And she nailed it. But as much as I love music, sometimes you don’t need it, and when I saw Episode 6, I told Dave, “Take all the music out.” All you needed was to feel Reece in the environment, on the run, and not amp up the intensity with music cues. So the sound design told the story with the wind in his ears and rocks under his feet and his loneliness.
Who was the editor?
Jim Page, who’s cut stuff for me before. I remember the big editing challenges had to do with the timing and pacing, especially in the first episode where the opening scenes have all the SEALs going in and coming out of the water. We’d shot a lot more coverage of all that, and I had to constantly chip away at it with little trims here and there without losing the tactical techniques and logical movement.
Antoine Fuqua (left) onset
Overall, the storytelling challenge was deciding what to reveal to the audience and what to hide. And how much and when? What’s real and what’s in his head? Trying to find the right balance was very tricky. And I was very hands-on in terms of overseeing all the editing on all the other episodes.
You’re known for your love of location shooting and doing as much in-camera as possible. This show has quite a lot of VFX, but I suspect you’re not a big fan of working with VFX?
(Laughs) You’re so right. Look, I grew up loving filmmakers like David Lean and the way he used real locations and stuff you just can’t fake. And when I shot Emancipation, we were on location in New Orleans, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Apart from COVID and all the politics, I got hit with tornados and hurricanes, but I wouldn’t change a thing. On location I can see and feel it all immediately. And I got to work with VFX legend Rob Legato who’s won three Oscars, including for Titanic. He taught me so much.
There weren’t tons of VFX on Emancipation, but he helped me understand all the new technology. I was able to sit with my laptop and lay out the whole set in 3D and then go in and work out all my shots. That’s incredible and fascinating. I love that aspect of VFX, but I don’t want to be on a stage doing that with greenscreen. I see guys doing that and they’re so good at it, but I can’t feel it. It’s just not in me.
Anyway, Rob also came and helped me out on The Terminal List with the VFX because we had a lot of them. Plus we had various vendors to coordinate [including Zoic, FuseFX, Ingenuity and Crafty Apes]. They all did a great job. At the end of post, Rob oversaw all the VFX for me and made sure they were all on track, as a favor. That was amazing, but it was still like watching paint dry for me. Basically, with any VFX, I don’t want to see anything until you think it’s photoreal. Otherwise, I’m just not interested in watching some blob move through a frame. It’s just meaningless to me.
What about the DI?
I always work with Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3, and he and the DP worked very closely on the look. The world of the SEALs is in the shadows, and people on the internet can also live in the shadows, so I wanted to get that across – the idea of moving in and out of the shadows. What’s the truth and what isn’t? So we played a lot with light and darkness in the DI, and I’m so happy with the way it turned out.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
