10 GENIUS Ways Recent Movies Pulled Off Insane Scenes
1. The IED Explosion - Warfare
From one Alex Garland joint to another now, we have his ferociously visceral war drama Warfare.
As is virtually unheard of for major Hollywood productions, Garland and Ray Mendoza's film was shot almost entirely in sequence, in turn allowing the cast to experience the chaos of the Battle of Ramadi chronologically.
The movie's most pivotal sequence involves an IED explosion which kills or critically wounds several members of the squad - a scene which involved an immense amount of prep.
Rather than shoot the interior of the house where the soldiers are holed up and the surrounding street on separate sets, as is typical, a larger set was built containing both locations to allow more comprehensive camera coverage.
The production design team built a modular, Lego-like set, allowing them to quickly remove pristine elements following the IED explosion and replace them with damaged replicas which were dressed with debris, blood, and so on.
Also because the film is based on the real experiences of co-director Mendoza, he provided comprehensive input on the sound design for the sequence and the movie as a whole.
Rather than rely on existing audio libraries, the sound team travelled to the Czech Republic to record new sound effects which matched Mendoza's memory of the incident.
It adds up to one hell of an immersive sequence - one which horrifyingly captures the realities of war better than almost any other movie.