The film The Northman is filled with intense, violent Viking motion. One of many standout battle scenes in The Northman exhibits Amleth (Alexander Skarsgard) scale a wall and take out a number of enemies in a single take. Skarsgard did a variety of his personal stunts in that, however he had assist.
The Northman is now accessible on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Within the bonus options, Skarsgaard and the stunt staff talk about how they made that battle look so effortlessly brutal.
‘The Northman’ crew hid steps within the wall for Alexander Skarsgard
On display it appears to be like like Amleth drove his axe into the wall every time he pulled himself up. Behind the ridges, nonetheless, there have been already pre-cut holds for Skarsgard to put the axe in. It’s nonetheless not simple to scale a wall although.
“We were climbing across roofs, leaping down off roofs,” Stunt Coordinator C.C. Smiff mentioned. “We were climbing up over the walls. It’s wet, it’s slippery. The art department cut some steps into it so we could get our hands into it so it looks like we got the axe into it. It took a little while to work that out.”
Even the weapons bled
Every time Amleth killed somebody in The Northman, they bled throughout the entire scene. The complexity of the battle scene didn’t permit the actor to put on blood packs, so the filmmakers discovered one other answer.
“You normally use blood bags but on this job we had to make everything all inside the weapons themselves,” Particular Results Supervisor Sam Conway mentioned. “You’d stab someone, it would spurt blood out the end. The actors had total freedom where they ended up stabbing.”
Alexander Skarsgard did 25 takes of the ‘Northman’ battle
Skarsgard spoke in regards to the effort that went into filming The Northman battle scenes. With all of the crew members working collectively, the actors nonetheless had to carry out the motion take after take. Skarsgard mentioned he did up to 25 takes of every portion of the battle.
“There aren’t a lot of cuts in the movie,” Skarsgard mentioned. “Most scenes are single camera, one shot. When it’s a big fight scene, it’s a nightmare. I’m sure just watching it, imagine the energy that goes into shooting one long shot of that, to get that right is very difficult. If I’m going to punch you, you have to put the camera in a certain position so it looks like you sell the punch. But when you do that with a camera running alongside you as 20 characters also move around, it’s going to be difficult to make it identical each time.”
Director Robert Eggers additionally had fairly a job coordinating that battle. He understood the strain every particular person performer was underneath.
“Doing these long oners where everybody is a piece of the moment,” Eggers mentioned. “When you’re doing a battle scene with all these extras and horses, everyone needs to be perfect because we’re a single camera in this long take. Everybody’s choice, everybody’s mistakes are at stake.”