Earlier this week, I posted a red carpet interview with The Raid 2 stars Iko Uwais and Julie Estelle while covering a special NYC screening of the action-packed film. That same night I also had a chance to speak with the amazing director and writer behind the highly anticipated sequel, Gareth Evans, and got to pick his brain a bit regarding his choices for the score, what his plans are for the third film in the trilogy, filmmaking in general, and Iko Uwais’ hand speed. If you love The Raid and plan on seeing the second one you should definitely give this a read, it’s full of some fun bits of info.
Movie Buzzers: So no Mike Shinoda for the score for this round, what was the reason behind opting out of it?
Gareth Evans: Well I mean he was busy with the Linkin Park album so it was never an option for him to be involved but to be honest with you, he did the score and did the first soundtrack and that was of interest to him, but if he was going to do another soundtrack at some point he’d want to do a different kind of genre. He’s the kind of artist that likes to push himself in different directions and he’s gonna go, he’s done that now, so it gave me an opportunity to bring my composers from Indonesia and combine them with Joseph Trapanese to be able to work together on something where there would be one score this time. Because that was that hard thing for me on the last one was that idea that I had two scores for the film and when it came to the foreign markets my guys got sidelined a little bit, they didn’t get to have theirs played anywhere and now they’re guaranteed their stuff will play all around the world.
MB: Well it sounded pretty atmospheric and pretty on point with the first one.
GE: Yeah exactly, but it was a good combination. I mean they both brought, they decided that they would fuse together and bring elements of the original score and then elements of the US score and then we kind of combined those together to bring a uniform feel between the two films.
MB: Interesting. The scene where Iko’s in the prison and he’s punching the wall, was that all his speed or was that fast forwarded slightly?
GE: That’s 100% his speed, it’s crazy! We were kind of impressed with it in the shoot as well. Every now and then we do add speed-ups to certain things but that was one of those rare occasions where we just let him flow. I guess it’s because the wall isn’t a human being and we can just let him rip and go for it, but yeah, that’s his real speed.
MB: I had followed your production blog for the first film and then followed this on twitter, it was a really long shoot, is it exhausting that long of a shoot and how long did it take to shoot that mud brawl in the prison?
GE: Yes. It is exhausting, the whole thing is kind of like that. That’s the one thing when it comes to filmmaking. It’s one of those things that just takes over your entire life, you don’t have a social life when you’re shooting and this one was seven months so it’s a long time to not have any contact with the outside world, you get institutionalized, like being in prison almost ya know? And I go straight into editing after that so it’s a totally different experience. I go from being with 150 crew members and a bunch of people asking me questions every single day about this and that, this element and this element, and suddenly I’m in an editing room and it is pitch black and it’s just me and the computer and it’s silent.
MB: A little depressing?
GE: Oh fuck yeah. I tend to watch a lot of sitcoms and shit when I’m editing just to have something playing in the back that I can laugh at. Then one day I started watching documentaries, like three documentaries in a row, I watched the most depressing things I’ve ever seen in my life so I was like, ok, back to sitcoms. But yeah, it’s a long process. What was the other bit?
MB: The mud brawl, how long did it take to shoot?
GE: The prison riot took us about eight days to shoot. That was eight days in the mud and that was chaos. It got worse and worse because at the start we had a base level of mud, then we started adding water, then every day we added water, the next day we’d have to add more water but then in order to do that we’d have to add more mud. So then it kept on building and building and building so that by day eight it was up to our ankles, I lost a pair of fucking shoes, so yeah it was a nightmare situation.
MB: After the first film premiered, I mean it skyrocketed, I was telling all my friends “you’ve got to see The Raid, you’ve got to see The Raid” and I imagine your profile elevated drastically. Your shooting style is intense, it’s close-up, the camera angles are ridiculous, did you get approached for big blockbuster projects and what did you turn down?
GE: Thank you! I got approached for some stuff, obviously I didn’t take anything on board because I wanted to do this, this is the one I was desperate to make first so this was the one that took priority for me then. Fair play to my agent and manager, they were super patient waiting for me to finish this first but now it feels worthwhile. It was a good choice to make and I wanted to use this one to learn more because in the first one, I mean we did that in a vacuum and we did not expect it to take off the way it did. So to a certain extent I was nervous in a way in that “did I fluke that one, am I going to fuck up the next one, what’s going to happen?” So I wanted to be able to do something where I was in control of it more, so that I’m able to do this properly on a higher level and that’s where this came along so it was a good opportunity to try things out.
MB: Is there anything specific you can say in terms of passing on?
GE: Ah, no. I wouldn’t do that because it’s one of those things where you never know I could get offered something by the same guy later on and “I’ll be like, yeah, I’ll take that,” it’s political, but since then I’ve started developing ideas about another project so fingers crossed I’ll do something on the outside soon.
MB: The third film, how do you plan to top the epicness of the first two? It seems like it’s going to be tough.
GE: The plan is not to think about it on the epic scale but to think of it, for me it’s always been first off, it’s going to be a trilogy, each one has to be different from each other, each one has to be super interesting in its own special way, in its own unique way. I have an idea for it, I already have ideas of how I want to take it and so far, where the second one starts, two hours after the first one ends, then the third one begins three hours before the second one ends, so we jump back in time and then branch off. It’s something very different.
MB: Last question, if there were any other actions starts that you could work with in any language who would you work with?
GE: Jackie Chan, without a doubt.
MB: Good man.
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