Our Indie Stunt Oscars: Indies That Wowed Us with Their Stunt Work
After years of campaigning from industry folks and critics alike, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this month that they will be adding a Stunt Design category for its 100th Oscar ceremony in 2028. Something tells me we might get new Mission Impossible, John Wick or Fast and Furious installments in 2027.
Those stunt-driven franchises have been some of the most reliable box office highlights this past decade that aren’t draped in spandex. Seeing death being defied is still one of the most reliable ways to get people to go to the theater. It’s been that way since Buster Keaton. It transcends culture and language, which is why Jackie Chan can become one of the planet’s biggest stars and why The Raid, a film made for $1 million in Indonesia, could become a world-wide success.
A well-executed stunt requires lots of planning, teamwork, and ingenuity, all things that indie filmmakers also happen to specialize in. While the Cruises, Keanus and Ludacris’s of the world do tend to get all the glory, we want to highlight a few indie darlings that we think are just as award-worthy.
EL MARIACHI (1993)
Realistically, we had to start here. Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi is the stuff of legend. The director raised half the $7,000 budget for his film by being a human test subject for drug trials.
Condoms were used as squibs to hold the fake blood from gunshot wounds. Wheelchairs were used instead of dollies. And [DO NOT EVER EVER EVER DO THIS] rather than blank-firing fake guns, real guns were used with cuts hiding the guns jamming from empty cartridges.
Safe or not, the creativity of both the stunts and the filmmaking were impossible to ignore, which is why El Mariachi launched Rodriguez’s career (the film won the Spirit Award for Best First Feature), and it’s one of the most famous ‘just go out there and make a movie’ stories out there.
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)
The 2022 hit from the Daniels has also been lauded for its creative approach making a blockbuster on an indie scale. It’s famous for having a five person VFX team, but its stunt work is equally impressive. The shots where Michelle Yeoh flies back in an office chair were done in camera, done in slow motion while being under-cranked, to create the streaky visuals. The directors had her in a wheelbarrow acting in slow motion, while shooting a leaf blower at her face to create the wind effect.
Stunt coordinator Timothy Eulich also worked closely with Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan on fight choreography. Both practiced their fight scenes at home to save on rehearsal time, and Yeoh filmed herself on her phone so she could dial in her moves. All of that along with practicals like racoon puppets and hot dog fingers sold the look of being in another universe. The film ended up winning the hearts of audiences everywhere, along with 7 Spirit Awards including Best Feature.
DRIVE (2011)
Talk about turning limitations into assets. The genius of Drive is that it puts the audience in the car with Ryan Gosling’s driver character. The POV style of the opening chase sequence lets you feel like you’re a participant rather than a viewer, but it also cut down the need for exterior shots of the hero car, and ended up as a great cost-saving choice as well.
In another scene, our hero’s car is chased by a Chrysler 300. The team, lead by stunt coordinator Darrin Prescott, rehearsed it on video beforehand, but they could only afford to shoot it once. According to Prescott, “The 300 was supposed to hit a barrier, reverse direction violently and twirl around, like a rally crash we had seen on YouTube. Instead, when it hit the barrier, it went straight up. You could hear people on the set muttering, ‘It wasn’t supposed to do that.’” The result was thrilling all the same, and ended up in the film.
NIGHTCRAWLER (2014)
Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy agrees that the limitations of where you put the camera can actually help the audience feel like they’re in the middle of the action. “Chases now have become spectacle. It’s like, ‘Let’s shoot the hell out of it. Let’s jump to the intersection where we know there’s going to be a crash. Let’s get out of the car and shoot as wide as possible, 80 cuts in like four seconds.’ Staying in the car makes it more frightening.” It took 6 weeks to plan the climactic chase sequence, and the team used a model and Hot Wheels cars to visualize how it would all go down. All that planning let the team shoot principal photography in just two nights, with second unit shooting two more. The film ended up nominated for 7 Spirit Awards and won Best First Feature and Best Screenplay for Gilroy.
UPGRADE (2018)
The best gyroscope is the one you have with you. At least that’s what the filmmakers behind Upgrade thought. They strapped an iPhone to actor Logan Marshall-Green in its fight scenes and through an app, translated the actor’s movement data from the phone’s internal gyroscope to a special camera rig, the MKV Omega-R, so that the camera would rotate and move in sync with the actor’s motions. The result was that the fight sequences looked like nothing else out there. Of course, making a great fight scene isn’t all camera trickery. Stunt coordinator Chris Anderson and star Marshall-Green made the dynamic brawls come to life through their choreography as well. Director Leigh Whannell and company really did take iPhone filmmaking to another level.
For over 40 years, Film Independent has helped filmmakers get their projects made and seen. The nonprofit organization’s core mission is to champion creative independence in visual storytelling and support a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision.
Keep up with Film Independent…