Art of the Long Take: Episode 5, The Bus Attack

Quarry — Episode 5, “Coffee Blues”

Following each episode of Quarry director Greg Yaitanes breaks down elements of a key scene.

I felt this was an important scene to discuss, given how recent events in the real world sadly mirror the events within a story set 40-plus years earlier.

The sensitivity in handling this scene began during prep. We shot this scene in Algeirs, Louisiana in a predominately black neighborhood. The first step was to alert the community of our plans. Producer George Perkins drafted a letter and distributed it to every home within eyesight of where we filmed.

Internally, we wanted everyone paying attention. As a parent myself, I wanted to make sure the kids were not only physically safe but also mentally safe. This is a portion of a memo that went out to our department heads from our first Assistant Director Kevin Koster, who is my right hand (and frankly, my left hand) before shooting commenced:

This is an extremely sensitive scene as relates to our background kids and Linwood guys. We need to confirm that all the kids and their parents understand what we are staging and are comfortable with it. In addition, I recommend putting the kids, parents and the Linwood group (including Linwood and Stunts) together on the day, before we shoot, so that everyone is clear on what we’re doing, and that we are only PLAYING an attack. We want this to look scary — but for the people watching at home, not the real kids on our bus. Want to make sure our Background Linwood guys understand that we’re actually protecting the kids, particularly as windows get broken, etc.

Working with children demands vigilance. I have mixed feelings with working with kids. Set is work, and my personal philosophy is kids should enjoy being kids for as long as life lets them. A TV series is a demanding schedule with pressures that shouldn’t be imposed onto children. That said, it’s a necessary part of storytelling and working with children comes with strict laws to insure their rest, safety and education. We followed through and made sure all the parents of all the kids participating read the scene. We explained to the children and the parents that they could opt out at any time during the shooting of it if it got too intense for them. Transparency is the key to success. You do not want the parents to be blindsided with what their kids were involved with. That is good business, and I thank Cinemax for supporting our approach and giving me a forum to discuss the measures that were taken for Quarry.

The bus attack was one of the four original “One-ers” that I conceived of for Quarry. When I had read the scripts, I had tagged “Mac coming home” in the pilot, the bus attack, a scene that opens Episode 6 and another scene in Episode 8. Those were the visual anchors I started with. Because Quarry was such a sprawling, nearly-400-page project, you look at it and say, “Okay well that’s how I’m going to approach this,” and just block-by-block you build the visual design. The show tells you what it wants to be. Very often I didn’t come to work with a specific shot list. Instead, I would find a “launching off point” for the scene and the visual style, adapt to the acting and work out from there. With something like this bus attack, there were so many moving parts it required enormous planning. We couldn’t wing it, and getting in front of the moving parts was a warm up to tackling the big one-er that’s coming in Episode 8.

We began this process by doing “pre-vis,” first shooting with our iPhone to get the general placement of characters and the bus. Our stunt coordinator, Richard Burden, played Linwood and all of us played the various kids to work out the rhythm and the timing of the imagery.

The day of shooting presented it’s own challenges, which is why we prepped it so carefully. It was phenomenally hot and humid. This shot took an entire day, and we only were able to do it three times. We also ended up using CGI to fix mistakes. The natural instinct is to look into a camera if you’re not a trained actor because you’re used to taking snapshots. A couple of times kids were looking directly at the camera, and we went back in with the computer to adjust their eye line. In addition, the crowbar was made of rubber and broke in the middle of the take, so we had to restore it with CGI.

The result is a terrifying scene. I also loved lingering on the performance of Linwood, played by Christopher James Baker. He was one of the crowd, until he made the decision to go inside the bus. You see the “What’s next?” moment in his face before he starts to terrorize the children. His actions are shameful and have far-reaching consequences for our story. Josh Williams, who plays Marcus, brought a performance that exceeded his age, making choices I would be thrilled to get from an adult let along a young man.

In this sequence we do what is called a “cowboy switch.” I’ve used this trick in almost every show I’ve done. It’s a term from the Old Western days where the lead actor, or hero-cowboy of the story, would jump out of the second-floor saloon window, land on his feet and then jump onto his horse and ride away. What they did was have a stunt man do the jump, landing behind the water trough where the lead actor was hiding. The stunt man would stay hidden and then the actor would pop up and “dust” himself off (selling he had just landed in dramatic fashion), then jump on the horse and ride away. The illusion being, he made the jump and the landing in one shot. In Quarry, we do the same thing but in reverse. The actor playing Darren, Marcus’ friend, gets pulled out of the bus and, while that is happening, we transition to the stunt person for the physical attack.

Aside from discussion of technical components, the intention behind this was to make viewers feel like they were experiencing the scene like one of the kids on the bus — the terror of being cornered and the paralysis that takes place. You’re singled out. Quarry takes strong points of view in every scene and this one is no exception.

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