Hi, this is Justin Lin, director of Fast Five.
And here we go with the commentary for the film.
You know, for me, I thought I was done with the last one,
I thought that, having done two,
I thought that was, kind of it.
It wasn't until we went on this world tour;
when we were doing press and stuff
I think around Germany and France,
that I actually got to spend a lot of time with the fans
and just talking to them.
Their passion and their connection with the franchise
got me excited about the characters
and the themes that we've been always playing with.
And it really, for me, personally, it gave me
a really great push into doing another one.
And when we were doing the fourth one,
obviously, I talked to In and Chris Morgan
and everybody a lot about planting seeds,
Trying to build a bit of the mythology
in the relationships between the characters,
and those seeds, obviously, in Fast Five, they all came true.
And it was so great to get that,
finally, when we decided to do another one,
to get in that room and talk about what that would be.
I’m gonna talk about, actually, the bus, real quick.
This here, this stunt right here,
we found out, and this is what I learned,
busses aren't made to swerve, busses aren't made to overturn.
it’s just amazing design.
So, for us to be able to do that,
we literally put three cannons underneath that bus.
And Corey Eubanks, the best driver out there,
was driving that bus at 60 mph when it went on that crazy tumble.
So, it was a great effort by everybody.
We talked a lot about visual effects, or this and that.
There was all these different theories,
but at the end of the day, I just wanted that bus to be going 60 mph,
and to just put enough dynamite
underneath it to be able to really make it fly.
So, I think we wanted to do something
to start the movie, to set the tone
and the goal has always been to do everything practically,
and to have a team to be able to pull that off was unbelievable.
Matt Sweeney, Mike Gunther, everybody, unbelievable job.
...Where Toretto and O'Conner are now is anyone's guess.
So, kind of going back to talking about Fast Five,
to me, I always love sequels because it means that it's a privilege.
It means that you don't just go make a sequel,
you make a sequel because the audience,
they want to continue the journey.
So after the trip to Europe and stuff and talking with the fans,
I got really excited
because, when I looked at the four Fast and Furious movies,
I thought, it just became obvious
that if we're gonna do a fifth one
it had to be a reunion of all the characters.
Obviously, the overlaying theme in this franchise
has always been about the idea of family,
so, what better way to do it
than to actually see all the characters and their relationships?
And so, by doing that, also it creates a motivation
where you get to have this new antagonist, which is Hobbs, The Rock.
So I was very excited about that.
Here you see the favelas_
When we went to Rio and we were location scouting,
we weren't sure where we were gonna set it. We 'd talked about Europe,
or, you know, maybe South America.
And when the idea came of reuniting everyone,
soon as I landed in Rio, within 10 minutes, just, kind of driving around,
I knew that was the place.
Because I felt like our cast was very diverse, ethnically,
and it just seemed like Rio has such a rich history,
it's visually stunning and it's also very diverse.
it just felt like if they were gonna meet
anywhere around the world outside of the US
Rio would be the first place.
And it just became a really great fit.
Let's get out of here. VINCE: Whoa, whoa!
(VINCE SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
Easy, friends.
She's with me.
And here we have Schulze,
Matt Schulze, from the first Fast and Furious,
and this is the beginning of the links between all the characters.
Come on.
Matt came in, very serious. I love Schulze.
With a lot of these characters,
part of what I wanted was for them
to really challenge the script,
to challenge the character arcs.
Because, you know, these characters are very dear to them,
and, I think, doing a part five,
one of the challenges is to make sure
everyone's there for the right reasons.
And Schulze definitely was very vocal, and we had heated discussions,
but it was all about trying to make the film better,
to make his character more believable, the motivation.
So it was always fun being on set with Schulze.
We literally would go at it,
but it was all, you know, I think, at the end of the day, I loved it.
Good night.
(BABY CRYING)
And here you see Vince's baby.
It was unbelievable. This is actually three babies involved.
When we were shooting the scene
originally in Puerto Rico, we had twins,
I thought, ”We got twins, we're all set."
And we'd just gone off shooting the fave/a chase,
where it was supposed to be a week and a half
and we did it in two and a half days,
and our crew did an amazing job,
and I thought, ”We just pulled off
one of the most amazing feats. "
And the next day, we had the baby scenes,
and the baby just would not stop crying.
We were able to do all the action, but the baby killed us.
We most a day of shooting,
and we actually had to rebuild everything
in our interior sets in Atlanta,
and actually cast another baby
because by the time we got to Atlanta, it was about four months later
and those babies in Puerto Rico, the twins,
they had already gotten way bigger.
So we had to recast the baby,
and to find a baby that would actually pass.
And we were very fortunate,
the baby in Atlanta was an angel, unbelievable.
So, listen.
There is a job coming up.
I was hoping Dom was going to be here by now
but this one is clean enough we can do it without him.
It's a good gig. Couple of high-end cars, easy targets.
I felt like, in the beginning here,
having Brian and Mia where they are
in their, you know, post-bus crash,
stylistically, visually, we wanted to set the tone for the film
to be very different than any other Fast and Furious.
And that's also the other thing I love about this franchise,
is that, if you look at all five films,
they've all been very different,
stylistically, visually, and I like that.
I feel like the characters have grown,
they've matured, they've evolved,
and I really wanted the style to reflect that.
And also, obviously, the stakes are much higher now, for them,
and I wanted to really design a movie that reflected that-
We're going into our first set piece, which is the train sequence.
it’s funny, because you think, "Okay, we're gonna do something on a train. ”
But actually, logistically, it was the hardest thing ever.
It was the most costly.
This was about a $25 million sequence just to start off
Because what you have to do is you actually had to buy out a live track,
and then we had to go and buy our own train
because we were gonna wreck it.
I mean, it's about 120 degrees out there,
and to be able to execute everything,
it became the most demanding sequence, for sure, in the film.
I got that dreaded call after the first day,
after we planned, and planned, and planned,
did storyboards, pre vis, everything,
and I sent the crew out,
and I get the call coming back saying that, after the first day,
that we were basically two weeks behind.
It was gonna take another two weeks,
so we had to adjust.
Obviously, I had Alexander Witt,
who's an unbelievable collaborator.
He's someone that shoots for Ridley Scott, he DPs for Ridley Scott,
so it was great to be able to talk to someone.
When we were shooting in Puerto Rico,
to be able to prep with Alexander,
and have that conversation with him to be able to adjust.
Obviously, all the shots were designed,
every lens, everything you see here.
If I show you the previs,
it was, basically, the exact same thing.
We had to adjust because a lot of the shots that I wanted to get,
we just were running out of time,
so I’d be on the phone with Alex every night,
we were three hours ahead,
and we'd talk about what they got and how
we were gonna be able to adjust shots.
But it was great having that crew out there,
he has these unbelievable people,
and we were shooting three crews at one time,
so, really, I think, for this to work,
to be able to have the first unit and second unit be seamless,
it really took a lot of prep.
Because a lot of times, directors will just hand things off
to their stunt coordinators or their second unit guys,
and they just see what happens, you know.
But I felt like, stylistically, we had to be cohesive.
The only way to do this, I felt,
was to have three units going at once,
but I also had Fred, Kelly and Chris cutting,
so I was having three editors and three units.
And to be able to, visually and stylistically, have it really be in sync,
and be able to tell one story,
it took a lot of coordination, a lot of communication, a lot of talking-
The great news is that, you know,
I had the best crew in the world.
And not only just technically the best crew in the world,
but, I think, through making these films
I was able to find people that I can really work well with.
You know, to have the same work ethic,
the same way of thinking about how to approach things.
So, by now, I feel like that's been one of the perks
of having been a part of this franchise,
and being able to do the third one and to really have that team.
That was very important,
because, coming in on Tokyo Drift,
obviously, you're working with the best pros,
but it was very much a cultural shift.
I think that the sensibility of the franchise and where we wanted it to go,
where I wanted to try to evolve the franchise,
you know, it took a lot, a lot of pushing and talking to make sure,
because there's always a lot of assumptions that get made,
especially, I think, with a successful
franchise like Fast and Furious.
It became its own adjective,
so to be able to try to change it tonally, the sensibility of it,
I think that's always the challenge, coming in.
So, that, for me, now, this is the third one in the series.
I feel like it's part of my evolution as a filmmaker,
but also as a filmmaker in this franchise.
See you, baby.
It's okay... we're all going to the same place.
We'll get the car there.
And now you see the GT40
Obviously, the cost of that car was quite a bit,
and we wanted to have classic vehicles
that, obviously, were very valuable for the sequence,
but we picked that and the Corvette
because every time you see that car
we'd need about eight versions of those cars,
so we were able to get the kits,
so that they can double for the real cars.
Hey!
We're being robbed! Whatever happens, don't stop the train!
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
Go after the girl!
Hurry up!
And here you have Oakley and Paul-
This was a real challenge, because, once everything was designed,
you have Oakley, who's one of his best friends,
and also his stunt double, out in Arizona,
and eventually we get the first unit.
We’re in Atlanta shooting the Paul and Vin and all the first unit stuff
And to be able to coordinate everything, again,
you don't just show up and shoot it.
It takes a lot of prep to be able to glue everything together,
to tell cohesive stories.
So, to not only have a great second unit team,
a great second unit director,
but also having Mike Wassel,
who is absolutely the best visual effects supervisor.
His philosophy comes from, very much, in a practical approach,
and he's the best.
I've been very fortunate to be able to work on three films with him.
And I feel like we're really growing together
and he's so valuable in helping us construct and glue everything together.
Oh, and then here it is. Here's the truck going into the train.
After the first day, I was getting memos from the studio saying,
”You can't run the truck into the train.
"It costs too much. It costs too much. "
Everything that I thought was cool about this sequence,
basically, I was getting memos from the studio saying,
"No. We can't afford it. We can't afford it. We can't afford it. "
And part of being a filmmaker with the budget that we have,
is that you have to be accountable,
but at the same time, you have to keep pushing it.
Because a lot of times, you know,
you have different departments,
and if they're truly looking at this money
just through dollars and cents,
we wouldn't even have a trailer.
I mean, everything you see in the trailer
is stuff that they said we can't afford and we can't do it.
And I knew that we were gonna be able to do it
because we were so well planned
that we were able to take out beats
to be able to save money, save days.
And so, I just told Matt Sweeney and Alexander,
”Just crush that fucking truck into the train. ”
And they just gassed that thing up and they did it,
and it looked spectacular, because it was real.
The only potential downfall was that
it was so much momentum on that truck,
it almost overturned the train,
which would've been, actually, disastrous,
because we could only afford one train.
So, for it to, basically, be six inches
of overturning and coming back,
not only was it spectacular,
but it was probably the scariest set of dailies
that I've ever been a part of to see.
The other thing that I think is an important component
to having all these different units prep and everything
is having a great script supervisor,
and Valeria, who's been a part of all this, she's the best,
not only at what she does, but she's also a great person,
because she's right there next to me every day,
so, to have that great energy
and to have someone that proficient and great at what she does,
really was able to make this sequence sing.
And here you see them jumping off the cliff
We did that practically.
We basically launched two Corvettes off the cliff
and then Mike Gunther had designed this descender
to be able to have the stunt guys jump off
I think a lot of people were saying,
"Oh, well, you can't technically survive
"that 250-feet fall, " and stuff like that.
And I know that, everyone knows that,
but I think part of what makes this franchise fun and great
is to try to do everything practically,
but at the same time, push it.
Push it and embrace the ridiculousness of it.
When I was talking to everybody
and seeing the highest that we can have
the people jump and actually survive,
it just wasn't spectacular enough.
And our challenge was to really just push it,
but actually figure out a way, practically,
to do it so that we don't kill anyone.
And I think that's part of the fun of doing this,
is coming up with these ideas and challenging each other.
Because, at the end of the day,
Hollywood cinema is the only place in the world
where you can do something like that.
I mean, you have all these great cinemas around the world,
great films that come out of it,
but this is the only cinema where you can wreck 200 cars and it's okay.
You can come up with rigs and throw people 200 feet and it's okay.
So, I think that's something that I don't take lightly,
and, in fact, I try to have as much fun with that as possible,
especially with this, you know, what we're trying to do here,
which is, hopefully, working with the actors and Chris, on the script,
to try to, hopefully, have that emotional connection
with the fans, with the viewers,
but at the same time, embrace the craziness,
and seeing how far we can push every stunt,
and to be able to still live in that world, to be able to do it.
It might be crazy and not possible to jump off 250 feet,
but to actually try to do it for real
and just see if we can handle it.
The other thing that I really appreciated about this film
was, you know, this is the first time
I actually had Chris Morgan with me
for, pretty much, the whole way.
With these films, a lot of times, you know,
my job is to make sure that I have the blueprint,
that I know, thematically, what we're trying to get through,
so I can talk to the actors, all their arcs,
and then we have to execute, script-wise. And there's never enough time.
So, to have Chris there,
it was actually very much, you know, for us
to be able to finally do it on the third film,
it was definitely a pleasure, you know, to be able to have him there,
to bounce off ideas, have him write,
and try dialogues and stuff like that.
It was really cool to have that time with him,
you know, to have that cohesiveness,
because this is the ultimate challenge.
We had 13 characters to take care of
and I wanted to make sure that everybody that came on board
weren't just there to be on the poster.
I wanted to make sure everybody had an arc, a reason for being there,
but at the same time,
there 's just so little real estate to be able to carve that out,
and some of the stuff you actually can't even plan,
because you just don't know how chemistry works sometimes.
So, that was the big challenge.
it’s usually a challenge for doing Fast and Furious films.
Which means we just jumped to the top of the wanted list.
The feds have got to show everyone their agents are off limits
and they're going to send their best guys. We got to get out of here.
One thing we know for sure
is that they wanted this car.
Because something is in it.
If we find out what it is, we'll know what we're up against.
And here, you see the great matte painting by Kelvin from Kaliber.
it’s really great.
I think part of doing this is that you can come up with some people.
Kelvin, he was a matte painter for Annapolis, way back,
and to see him grow, and have his own company,
and to be a part of this is great.
And he's really brought a lot of scope into our film.
And, obviously, here you see Hobbs,
played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
He was always my first choice.
I got excited when we decided to bring everybody back,
and I realized, right there and then,
we needed an antagonist who's bigger than life,
who can stand up to Vin and to be an opposing force,
and The Rock was my first choice.
I didn't? know if we were gonna get him,
but having that meeting with Dwayne,
who is the ultimate professional,
he asked the right questions,
and for him to wanna be a part of this, it meant everything.
I think having him be a part of this was big.
I feel like, for many reasons,
that validation of someone of his stature to want to come and join us,
I think that created a really great energy on set.
And to have him on there also got everybody pumped up
physically, mentally, to wanna bring their ”A” game.
But here...
You get that one F bomb.
And I'm trying to get even better,
every film I make, a PG-13 movie,
to maximize the F bomb.
And I was very proud of that.
Brian. Hm?
I have something I have to tell you.
Going back to Dwayne,
again, it's like the actors coming in,
and I wanna have a healthy dialogue,
I want healthy challenges,
I want us to be able to always try to be better.
And it was just great to have that.
I think a lot of people can say,
"Oh, it's part five, we 're successful.
"Let's just cash in and do this."
I didn't want that.
That was a challenge,
and to have a cast that came on board, and for everybody to do that,
to say, "Look, let's just keep pushing. Let's be competitive.
”Let's just do everything we can to make this better."
Go walk it off.
I only had one rule on set,
I don't care, you can go lift weights, you can do whatever you want,
you wanna be bigger than the other guy, do it.
The only thing is, you can't be selfish, and I never had a problem.
And that makes it a joy waking up at 4:00 a. m- every day to go to work.
...But, quite frankly, your business methods are too violent.
Let me tell you a true story.
Five hundred years ago, the Portuguese and the Spanish came here,
each trying to get the country from their natives.
The Spaniards arrived, guns blazing, determined to prove who was boss.
And now here is the MacGuffin antagonist, played by Joaquim,
AKA, the Latino Phil Hartman.
But he's actually not Latino, he's Portuguese.
But I've always really enjoyed his work,
and it's definitely a pleasure to get an actor of his skill set,
you know, someone who just comes and just kicks ass every day.
But with him, for me, I grew up watching him,
and so it actually took me until about the last week,
before I can approach him and talk to him about
"Hey, do you know that you ever look like Phil Hartman?"
And he went on this 10-minute monologue about how there's websites
that's been created, dedicated to talking
about him looking like Phil Hartman,
so, it ended up being a lot of fun.
But he's a fun guy.
(KNOCK ON DOOR)
Here's Irby.
I love guys like Irby, always, on set.
Again, professional, great actors, who come ready to play,
and they just make the team stronger.
I thought Debra, the casting director did an amazing job.
I think assembling, bringing everybody back,
but filling in the rest, with just great,
very talented actors who come ready to play,
that just makes it fun.
Almost.
Wait, Dom.
And then here we have the scene of Vince's betrayal.
And this is one of the toughest scenes,
because, no matter how it's written,
you just never know until you get on set.
You have two guys, Vin and Matt,
who really work in similar fashions.
I mean, this is the day where I had
the crew sit around for about four hours
while we rehearsed, just to get it right.
So, I think, what Chris and I did on paper,
it was just merely a blueprint,
and to be able to get them up to that level, emotionally,
that was the task.
This was probably the toughest days on set.
Because, I think, not only was it intense,
but it took us so long to be able to find that place for the actors.
But I felt like it was important,
because this is the one moment where
Vince, the character, can really hit Dom hard,
and say everything that nobody else can say,
so it was great once we found that.
I felt like this was, for me, one of the most pivotal scenes to get,
because if you just don't get that
then the action doesn't mean as much,
you know, the motivations don't mean as much.
This is the intro scene for Elsa,
who is the wife of Thor, the actor who plays Thor.
And it was funny because when we were shooting this
Chris would be hanging out,
and it was just surreal, because you're just walking around going,
well, Thor is, like, walking around set,
he's walking around Puerto Rico.
But, again, it was great to get someone of Elsa's caliber.
One of the things I really enjoy,
every time we get to make another Fast and Furious
is that we try to create new characters
and we have these worldwide casting calls.
So you get these really talented
actors, actresses, you know, they submit.
And to be able to explore in that global sense,
it still blows me away.
So, to be able to find her from Spain,
and to see her body of work, and for her to be a part of this,
I love working with her, she is very talented.
And, you know, on the last film it was Gal.
But, I think, when people think of Fast and Furious
a lot of times they think about,
"Oh, it's just fast cars, beautiful women, blah, blah, blah. "
But I think the one trademark that I know I'm proud of is that
on top of all that, you do have...
I love the female characters in this franchise.
They're all very strong.
And it's just always fun to be able to find the strong actors,
to be able to get on set and work on those characters.
And here, we're shooting in Brazil.
It was tough getting those big cars, the streets are so narrow.
But it was one of the things that I wanted to make sure that we shot
in LA, Arizona, Puerto Rico, Atlanta and Rio.
(MACHINE WHIRRING)
This is a testament, again, to Peter Wenham, the production designer,
and also, James Lin, the location manager,
to be able to glue everything together to be cohesive,
and to be able to design something, to create something,
so that it all feels like Rio.
It was just an amazing job.
Ideally, as a filmmaker, I wanna shoot
everything in the place that we write for.
But the truth is that Rio is just a very hard place
to shoot for a big production.
And also, I think just financially it was such a huge obstacle.
And I wanted to make sure that every cent we spend is put on screen.
And to do that you have to be smart,
and you have to find alternative ways of showcasing.
I think, part of what Peter, James and I talk about
was really a lot about the energy, about the feel of Rio,
and to be able to find that in Puerto Rico,
a lot of it in Puerto Rico, that's a testament to them.
To be able to collaborate.
To be able to take something that's not literal,
and to be able to find a...
Right here, actually, the favela,
we shot some of it in Rio, and we shot some of it in Puerto Rico.
And to be able to find that perfect match is just unbelievable.
I thought so.
So what is that?
A 100-million plus in cash houses?
What you're about to see is the favela chase. It's about to come up.
And this is, again, another sequence where,
when it came down to it,
I got the memo from the studio saying,
”You cannot do it. It's too costly. ”
The schedule, when we looked at it, was a week and a half
which is very normal,
but I remember looking at it and we could only afford two and a half days,
and I remember sitting down the crew and the cast saying,
”Look, we're gonna approach this
"like the biggest independent film ever made. "
And that is what we set out to do,
and to be able to shoot a week and a half worth of chase
in two and a half days.
Again, the crew was up for the challenge,
the cast was up for the challenge,
I’d get up in the morning and say,
"Hey, good morning, Vin. I’m gonna throw you out the window."
And while he's doing that,
Paul and Jordana are in the alley getting ready.
So I had three camera crews and I would rotate.
And then Dwayne would be somewhere else.
This whole chase actually, the way it's designed,
if you logistically look at the location,
they're all 100, 150 feet apart from each other.
It was the ultimate riddle, but it was the ultimate challenge.
And I felt like it was worth it,
especially for coming up right here.
This is the intro, face to face,
between the two big characters,
and, you know, I had to have it.
e didn't care what the studio said.
I had to have it, and we went and got it.
And that was about the second week of shoot,
and, I think, it energized everybody
and it set the tone, and it really kind of..
I felt like it helped the movie in ways
and levels that you can't articulate,
you know, to be able to basically set the tone in the second week
with this huge sequence done in a very small amount of time.
It was just, you know... I think it became a gift.
And here you see, you know, really, the Hobb doing his thing,
and it was important to me because, again,
he doesn't have a lot of real estate.
And to be able to have that
so that you know who Dom and his crew are dealing with,
that was very important to me.
I had Jordana running...
You see right there, she actually has bandages on her hand.
She cut her hand on one of those tin roofs
and they wanted to take her to the hospital,
and she said, "No, no way. I'm going to do it. "
And I’m so proud of her because, you know,
this is the third film I've done with Jordana
and I feel like I'm growing and evolving as a filmmaker.
I've seen her grow and I'm so proud of her
because of just the way she shows up ready to go.
And she's never satisfied, she always wants to get better, you know.
And I thought, for sure she had the toughest line in this film,
and we're about to get to it.
And just a lot of stuff with her, being pregnant and stuff
I felt it was really important that we have the strength in Mia,
and we talked a lot and we adjusted a lot.
And for us to be able to get there, again, I'm just so proud of Jordana.
And here, again,
you see the actors jumping off the building
because they were jumping off the building.
We had them in harnesses, and we sent them off
I don't know if they even knew what they were in for,
but, you know, there was no complaints, they were in for it,
there was that trust and I had, you know, Gunther and his whole crew,
and it was great.
I love going to work with that kind of energy.
I love it when everybody shows up
wanting to do the best they can.
And it might sound easy, but, you know,
the sad thing is that it's the hardest thing to achieve,
you know, when you do studio films because it just...
I think the layers and sometimes the politics,
and to be able to get a group of people
who, you know, really, at the end of the day
we became a family, you know.
And we have our obstacles, everything,
but to really have that, you know,
because we're, you know, in different cities
and to have meals together afterwards,
it's important because a lot of that will show up on-screen.
The other thing about shooting in Puerto Rico that was so tough,
was that we would lose an hour to two hours a day on rain.
But it was so hot that...
When it's raining, a lot of times you think, "Oh, it's over."
It just pours so hard.
And then, all of a sudden, it would dry up.
And then, in 10 minutes, the surfaces would dry up.
It was the... I've never gone through anything like that.
And this is actually an example, this scene.
This, to me, you know, you can talk
about the action sequences, everything,
and all those are difficult, but it's prepped,
it's designed, and I have plan A, B, C, D.
But scenes like this, to me, is the hardest.
You're going into this line right here.
I'm pregnant.
And I thought the ”I’m pregnant" line is the one line that...
it’s the most important line in the movie.
It’s tough.
I think if it's done wrong, tonally,
it would just become, you know,
it would not have any weight.
And for Jordana to be able to deliver that tonally,
and for Paul to have that reaction,
to have Vin have that reaction...
if you actually, really, watch this scene closely,
their shirts are getting wet because it started pouring,
and we had a very finite amount of time to get that scene in the can.
And so, for them to be able to do that, you know,
it was probably, also...
You know, this and that Matt Schulze scene was probably...
Either of them could be the hardest day, I think, on the set
because it was just one of those things where I felt like,
tonally, if we just didn't get it right, it just would not work.
Because it is one of those lines
where it could just become ridiculous.
But, again, I feel like if we could be sincere in our attempts,
and if we could be sincere in delivering
and respecting the audience emotionally,
then it allows us to be ridiculous.
It doesn't make any sense.
Here's what makes sense.
You know, that throwing the folder thing was
courtesy of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
It was one of those things where
we talked so much about his character
in pre-production and on set that when he did it,
I remember he looked at me and I looked at him,
and I thought, "Yeah, that's Hobbs."
He's always trying to push the button.
He is the guy who's always trying to test.
And obviously by picking a rookie officer, he is doing it for a reason.
So it ended up being appropriate,
but I can't tell you how many people would come up to me
after these, you know, screenings and stuff and would tell me
they wanted to go to work the next day
and do that to their co-workers.
So, you can thank The Rock for that.
Let's put all this mess back together.
That's going to take a while.
Then you better get started.
And here you have Rock's crew,
and, again, there's not a lot of real estate,
but I think crafting with, like, Fernando, Ali,
you know, everybody just trying to make sure
that they're just not characters who are around.
And they came ready to play. I love Hobbs's crew.
They came, and they were a unit.
It was so much fun to be able to work with them.
This is another scene that, you know,
you just never think is gonna be in a Fast and Furious movie,
and also, you know, these lines are tough, you know,
because, at the core of it, it is really about two guys.
You know, it's about Brian being really, you know,
insecure about what's about to happen, about his future,
and Dom, like, taking his position
as the father of this family unit.
And these are tough lines.
I know that, you know, at the end of the day, it took a lot.
We went at it hard,
because I felt like at the core of it, again,
the emotions have to connect somehow.
We had to connect with the audience
because if we can do that, you know, in this very sincere way,
then the action sequences are gonna mean something,
and this movie will mean something.
And it will... You know, we wouldn't just
be wasting the audience 's two hours.
And that's always the challenge, I feel,
the biggest challenge of doing these films
because a lot of times people talk about Fast and Furious
and they just think it's, you know,
hot girls, fast cars and that's it.
And really, if you think about it,
if that is the only reason why it's successful,
then every studio would just put fast cars and hot women,
and they would just make money.
And I think the reason why we're onto part five
and moving, you know, part six, seven, eight, nine, 10,
is because, I think that a lot of effort is put into the relationships,
the arcs with these characters, you know,
and it's the ultimate challenge.
And that's something that, you know,
I think people might not even acknowledge or feel or even know,
but it doesn't matter.
I just feel like we have to work that much harder
to try to be sincere and get that in there.
You're right.
Here's how we're going to do it.
And right here, actually, with this chip...
We're going to use this.
...it's interesting because as I was prepping
this movie, it was like three movies.
You know, we're going from this kind of chase movie,
and we're about to enter our second movie, which is the heist movie.
So, tonally, it was gonna start changing up.
And, I think, for us to be able to earn that,
we needed something that was grounded.
And the pregnancy, you know, the Hobbs, all that,
I think it was important to, you know...
And once I knew that we had that,
it just made this much more fun to go get.
Let's run through the bases real quick. Who do we got?
First we're going to need a chameleon.
And it was fun to be able to see Han there
with Roman, and Tej and Tego and Don Omar
and Gisele, everybody from all the films
that are somehow connected, one way or another, with Dom or Brian.
I just love this. I love...
You know, I always wanna see characters connect.
I always wanna see how the relationship...
So, it took us till the fifth film to get this,
but I feel like it's worth the wait.
You know, I think this franchise has gone in, like, different directions,
and to be able to bring them all in,
it was, in a way, the ultimate challenge
creatively, financially, to be able to get
all the actors together, but it was worth it.
This is why I feel like you go make part five,
is because you try to raise that bar.
You try to do something different.
You try to push it, take it to the next level,
and then, go get it, you know.
You know, the example of Tyrese is that
he's gone on and, you know, he was shooting Transformers
and to be able to work with Transformers production
and to be able to get a schedule so that he can be,
you know, jumping back and forth,
that took a lot of coordinating, but it was worth it, you know.
Aw, hell, no!
I see they really scraped the bottom of the barrel, huh?
There's Ludacris, who... This is my first time working with him,
and he was the ultimate professional.
I can't wait to, kind of see where he's going with his acting career,
because he comes and he wants to be better every day.
And that's actually very, very, you know, rare.
Because, I think, a lot of times people will...
If they're good, they just wanna, you know...
They will fall into what they're very good at doing.
And, I think, Ludacris, you know,
having worked with him now on this,
it's kind of such a rare quality
of always wanting to be better.
Want me to open them?
(TEGO SPEAKING SPANISH)
I told you the skinny chick had balls.
And there's Tego and Don Omar who's always fun,
and they always come...
it’s funny, we'd script it and they always come doing it in English.
I always make them go back and do it in Spanish
because I just think they're so much more comfortable and funny,
and I love their characters.
Who are these clowns, man? Circus clowns.
(ALL CHATTERING ANGRILY)
And there's Gal from the fourth one,
and that's also one of the things
that I got really excited about doing this one
because I saw the potential of Gal
when we cast her in the fourth one,
but only a fraction of that was really utilized in the fourth one.
So, to have her back,
I remember talking to her and telling her that,
you know, a lot of the scenes were designed
to showcase what I love about her,
her strengths.
You know, I was very happy to have her back
and I thought she did a great job.
Yeah, well, the Ritz was sold out.
So what's this all about, Dom?
Yeah, man, why did you drag us halfway around the world?
In these scenes, having all these actors,
I remember, on that very first day
we had them all on set together.
It was just so many different energies.
And a lot of them actually had not worked together.
So, to be able to find that kind of rhythm, it was a challenge.
But also just logistically covering these scenes,
I remember having this conversation with Valeria,
the script supervisor very early on,
and I said, "Man, the eyeline and the coverage of this is gonna be nuts."
And it was definitely one of the things that she brought up.
But luckily, you know, in between the fourth
and the fifth one, I had a little time.
I got a call from my, you know, good friends, the Russo Brothers
to direct a few episodes of their show, Community.
And on that show there 's, like, I think seven characters,
and it was just, you know, comedy,
and it was just tons of coverage,
and you had to shoot eight pages a day.
And so, having gone through that, like,
having this around the table stuff
it's very much like the Community coverage.
It was like a cakewalk, it was nothing for me.
So, you know, I think sometimes doing films,
different genres, different challenges,
it all helps, you know.
Aside from just the coverage, I think trying to get that rhythm in the group,
that was ultimately the biggest...
Because I think a lot of these actors,
they're used to being a number on the call sheet,
and to be able to show up sometimes and not have a lot of lines,
to make sure that they're not just stagnant, that was the challenge.
(CASH MACHINES WHIRRING)
And here you've got the cash house, which is our day one.
I mean, we hit the ground running on this movie.
To be able to shoot this in one day,
it was a challenge to be able to coordinate it,
to be able to get the crew together.
It was a tough day.
It’s so funny because on a big-budget movie like this,
to be complaining and say, ”We didn't have enough money,”
it sounds silly, but it was so true, you know.
Because when you look at the scope of this film,
just the set pieces, like this in itself is an action set piece.
You know, it has to designed, it has to be shot.
You have Guillaume, who is a great prop master.
There's so much guns in this film,
and, you know, we have fire, you know, we have special effects.
If you look at all the other Fast and Furious put together,
I don't think it even has as many set pieces as this film.
But I think that's what was so much fun about, again, doing this,
is to be able to say,
"Hey, you know, we know it's part five,
”this is definitely a privilege,
"and let's just go all out, every day, every night, you know. ”
Soon as my head hits the pillow, it's... I’m out.
Might be only for an hour and a half's sleep, three hours' sleep,
but I’m out.
And it feels good to get up every morning and go for it again.
Voilá.
Turn it over.
(ENGINE STARTING)
For me, working with the Hobb team was so much fun,
because tonally it was a whole other cast.
I mean, they barely interacted, you know.
So they had their own separate scenes.
And they were a unit.
I mean, they took it upon themselves to train together,
to eat together, to hang out together.
And so, to have two different energies is great.
And here, this is a line where, to me, I loved it
because it's a callback to kind of an earlier Fast and Furious
about the neon lights and stuff like that.
You may as well slap neon lights on it.
I thought it was important to have that.
Especially have a character like Hobbs coming into this franchise,
and to be able to laugh at ourselves,
and to be able to "wink, wink” a little bit with the audience, you know.
And I think those are the layers that
sometimes, you know, brings levity
and also a callback and understanding that,
hey, look, we know we're Fast and Furious, we've grown,
and we can also laugh at ourselves, you know.
And so, you know, there's a few of those lines that
I felt, for me, I love having it in the movie,
you know, because I know that a lot of times there 's people saying,
”This is ridiculous. How would a car do this, or that?"
And my reaction to that is, well, we did do it, you know.
And it is bigger and it is crazy,
but that's what you do, you know.
If I did everything that basically is what it's supposed to be
then, you know, these actors would be
jumping off like, 20-foot cliffs
and I don't want them jumping off 20-foot cliffs.
But I thought the levity is important to at least acknowledge,
to give the nod to the audience and say, ”Hey, we get it. We get it. "
And we want you to have fun and we're having fun.
So that was something that I felt was appropriate for this film.
It was something that on the last one was very hard to do,
because tonally the last one was much darker, much more personal
and it didn't have the opportunity
for the levity that we had on this one.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
Then this...
...is what we're going to do.
This is one of those, kind of the standard, you know, bad guy scenes.
And I gotta tell you, I had a lot of fun.
We knew that this scene had to be in the movie,
but, for us, to be able to go and really,
you know, take it and just have fun with it,
you know, the Latino Phil Hartman and Irby,
it had so many different personalities on this film.
And, you know, I had three groups, pretty much.
You know, and to have that group of accomplished actors
and just to be able to play, you know,
it's always good to be able to mix that up.
Number One is on the move, man.
These scenes in heist movies is always fun.
I think it's the group getting together
and them scoping out the opposition is always fun.
To be able to, you know, go...
And again, we didn't have a lot of time to do this.
So to be able to find locations that are close by
that feels like it's miles apart.
That was, you know, again, a testament to James Lin.
And there's Rio.
And to be able to incorporate that, I just think...
Rio, again, is just stunning.
There's nowhere on Earth that looks like that.
And also, at the same time, to have, you know, favelas
with the best view anywhere, you know, of the ocean,
and to have these favelas next to million dollar mansions.
You can't help but really be confronted with the idea of class,
of a different economic class, all in one city, you know, how close they are.
And, you know, I had a lot of fun going
on the aerial scouts when we were in Rio,
and it was tough, and we wanted to push it.
I have, you know, Fred North, who's a great pilot,
and he went down to Rio with us to get those shots
because a lot of times, you know, you...
I think when you think of Rio there 's,
you know, obviously Christ the Redeemer in certain shots,
but I really wanted to get in there, and he really pushed it hard.
And it was a tough place to do aerials even
because you have to know the terrain.
When we were up in the air, you know,
we had to have two pilots. The Brazilian pilot
was there to tell us, "You can't shoot here. You can shoot here."
And they've had helicopters get taken down by RPGs, by the favelas.
So, we had to take that very seriously and,
you know, unfortunately, for me,
some of the most visually striking, you know,
shots that I wanted to get, I couldn't
because there was a chance that we were gonna get shot down.
But there was plenty other great locations to get those shots
but I've never been on a helicopter ride where the pilot was saying,
"if we go 100 yards that way, there's a chance
"we might get shot down, ” you know.
So, it was serious stuff
What time was the robbery?
Around 11:00.
Here we go.
Enhance it.
Their faces are covered.
Run it through FRS.
And here with the facial recognition and stuff like that,
I mean, it's just part of suspending your disbelief
And it's, kind of also part of the fun
of making Fast and Furious movies,
because a lot of times, I think, there 's
a sincere effort that has to be put in
for these characters to live in this world, you know.
But at the same time, we know that they exist in this world
and that, in a way, is quite a bit left of what reality is, you know.
It’s just funny sometimes talking to press and stuff
and they would ask these questions
as if like, I’d never thought...
They're like, "You know this is not realistic, right?"
And I’m like, "Yeah, I kind of get that. "
And actually I would take it a step further, I'd say, you know,
if anybody would watch Fast and Furious
as if it's a documentary on Rio
or a way to steal vaults from banks,
they probably deserve to get arrested
because, you know, that's part of the fun of doing these films.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
Handle him better.
Look... He requested a rookie patrol officer as his assistant.
They won't be a problem.
And here, you know, on the set we had the reveal of the vault.
And this vault, you know, obviously we had to reverse engineer.
I knew that we were gonna be towing this thing around streets
and taking out buildings and stuff like that.
At one point, the vault heist actually was in the second act.
It was in the middle of the film.
It just shows you the scope of where this movie was trying to go to.
But I have all our officers searching.
This actually wasn't the biggest set piece.
But I think as we developed a script,
it became evident that this was the perfect, you know, ending piece.
But to be able to come up with that idea, it was fun, you know,
and I would have David Chan with his camera and we'd have toy cars,
and we'd just start playing and I would just come up with ideas.
And then, we would actually have Spiro and his whole team actually
with a temp vault, go out and start,
you know, playing around with it,
and see what it would do and how it would articulate.
And so, we kind of reverse engineered everything.
Is anyone listening to those words?
Anybody? Popo?
Five-O. One-time. Pigs.
People we don't like.
You know, police stations are designed to keep people in, not out.
That's why it's a stealth mission.
We'll be in and out before they even know we were there.
Again, talking about the vault and all
the action set pieces, those are challenging.
But I have the best crew, the best craftsmen, you know,
they are just so great executing anything that I can come up with,
Chris can come up with.
But the hardest thing sometimes is scenes like this,
where, you know, there's three jokes
and you're trying to make those jokes work,
because if they don't work on set,
they're not gonna work the theater.
That's for damn sure.
(ELEVATOR DINGS)
(HUMMING)
And there's Tyrese singing...
I remember he wanted to sing this Brazilian song
and we didn't have the rights to it.
And he said. "I wanna sing, I wanna sing. "
I said, "Okay, just sing tudo bom, tudo bom."
And tudo bom or tudo bem, which is my favorite saying
that I learned in Portuguese,
which is now officially, for me, my favorite language.
Tudo bom or tudo bem is basically...
Translation is like, "Everything good?”
So you can basically ask it as a question,
and then you can say, "Tudo bom, tudo bem,"
which is "Everything's good," so you can use it also as a statement.
So, it's now, like, one of my favorite sayings, you know.
Any time I walk around, I get bored,
it's tudo bom, tudo bem, tudo bom, tudo bem.
Ah, Shit.
Look, I'm just trying to do my job, man.
My boss sent me here to just make sure that everything was safe.
It will be safe.
In this scene, this is a Roman scene.
I remember having a lot of conversation
with Neal, our producer, about this,
and he kept saying, "This doesn't feel like Fast and Furious," you know.
And he would say that a lot as we were making this film.
And part of my reaction is that it's good.
Because, in a way, Fast and Furious is evolving.
And if I feel like it's appropriate for the movie
and it's good for the characters,
it's good for the story, then that's great.
That means we are not the same Fast and Furious as we were 10 years ago.
We weren't the same Fast and Furious as,
you know, six years ago, as two years ago,
and that's a good thing.
And this is another scene, you know, he'd be, like,
"ls this Fast and Furious?"
I just kept saying, ”Look, let's redefine what that means, " you know.
We have the core of what Fast and Furious is,
but why can't we grow, you know?
And that's always the big discussion.
Part of what I love about being part of this franchise,
is that I do have a studio that really supports me,
supports Chris, Chris supports everybody
in trying to further this franchise.
You know, because I think a lot of times with sequels,
especially at stake this kind of budget range,
people tend to get a little conservative,
you know, and they tend to say,
"Okay, well, it worked for part one,
”let's just do the same thing over and over.
"Let's just go with what works. ”
And to have a studio to say, "Hey, we trust you and your team.
”Go and do what you think the fans want. "
That motivates me. That inspires me.
That makes me wanna get up and come up with new ideas,
and push new ideas and stuff like that.
And I love working in that environment, and, I think, all of us do.
I don't think anybody likes to show up to work and say,
"Oh, just do this and just do that. ”
You want to be in a situation where you can show up and try new things,
and to prove yourself you know, and to grow.
That's what we got here.
That last scene was more about showcasing Roman.
This scene is really showcasing Tej,
and Ludacris was just so great at showing up and hitting those beats.
(ALL LAUGHING)
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
Two to one says you blow the wrong pipe.
Yo, why you got to be so negative all the time, man?
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
I ain't negative.
I'm just positive you're going to mess it up.
I'm telling you, man, you got issues.
Next time if there's no elevator, I'm not coming.
You need to learn to relax, loco.
This toilet explosion scene,
I remember when Chris came up with it and I read it,
I kind of thought, "Okay, I don't know, I'm sure it's funny,
"but, you know, we're gonna have crap everywhere.
"Should we really do it? Should we not do it?”
Then I thought, ”Okay, great."
I said, "We should have the tech
from the Roman scene in there."
So once that was decided, I literally had days and days of meetings
about the consistency of what that crap in the toilet was gonna be.
And, finally, we settled on oatmeal. That's what it was.
And on the day when that thing exploded, I started laughing,
and I was the biggest naysayer,
and I couldn't stop laughing for five minutes.
It’s embarrassing to say, but, I think at the end of the day,
I think, with whatever snobbiness that's in me,
you put shit in a toilet and you explode it,
I’m gonna laugh for five minutes.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
...a police station.
Relax.
(EXCLAIMS)
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
You used too much explosive! Again.
This is to showcase Leo and Santos.
And Tego and Don Omar, they're so good.
I hate shooting singles on these guys,
because I feel like part of the comedy
and part of the fun is seeing them together.
You know, so I always have about three cameras covering them,
so that they can always share the same space.
Even though they might be in different frames,
you can see right here, he walks right into it.
I had three cameras going because I just feel like you can't---
You don't wanna mess with that.
I feel like editing sometimes kills rhythms,
and editing really is about cheating, you know.
And I didn't wanna cheat these guys.
I just thought they were hilarious. They just had that chemistry.
And I always wanna see them together on screen.
So all their scenes, they're always designed in a way that
you just see them exist in that frame together.
BRIAN: Yeah, we're looking at four cameras.
Yo, that's some high-end shit, too.
Marker optics.
I know a lot of people were gonna have tons of questions
and I think in this movie, in this franchise,
sometimes it's better just to enjoy the film
and stop asking questions and just go into that world.
But one of the big questions people have is,
"How did they get all the money
”to buy all the equipment, all the computers and stuff?"
I actually had the same question.
It's actually not in this sequence
or the other version of the movie.
But in the cash house, I actually had a beat
where Roman steals a bag of money
and that's how they were able to fund their whole operation.
But again, at the end of the day, when I watched it,
I just felt like, it's just too much explaining.
So, at the end of the day, there was a lot of thought put into that.
We actually had a solution to that,
but I ended up taking it out because
it just didn't feel like we needed that.
Now here 's the "Home sweet home" line
that, I think when Chris came up with it,
I was very happy,
because, again, it's an acknowledgment
that they're now kind of tourists
in this kind of idealized world of Fast and Furious.
The "Home sweet home" is that we wink
at the audience and say, "Hey, we get it. "
There 's nowhere in the world where people
with cars would just hang out with models.
It just doesn't exist. But we get that.
Held the record on the Avenida three years running.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
Damn, bro...
You got a lot of balls to bring your problems here, Toretto.
Not to mention a cop.
Yeah, we can keep that on the low.
And here, Luis... This is one of my most exciting days.
I’m working with him, we have tons of extras,
it is exhausting working on these scenes
because just the coordination and moving people and stuff like that.
And then I find out Luis is, you know, if you saw the Nike spots,
back when, when they were doing like,
the Globetrotter dribbling stuff
he's actually the lead guy.
So, I'm a big basketball fan and so to find out that he had crazy dribbling
and basketball skills, that was my happiest day on set,
to accidentally cast the modern-day Globetrotter.
So, that was a lot of fun, just talking to him about hoops and stuff
on the set.
(ENGINE REVVING)
Let's see what they got.
(ROME LAUGHING)
Really?
We had talked about, are we gonna show that race, are we not?
And, again, this is part of the evolution.
In other Fast and Furious movies, you'd see that race,
but our guys are so good, that you don't need to see it,
you know, it's better to be definitive
and I think that's part of the fun.
Here you see the Porsche doing the obstacle course,
and we reverse engineered.
I actually had the cars run the obstacle course
and I was able to see the measurements and stuff
Then we went and found a location
where these cars would be able to do
these crazy, like, narrow stunts.
So, part of the perks of having a big budget
is that you can come up with whatever way of working.
Yeah!
Let's get it! Watch this.
That's exactly why your ass ain't been driving.
I think this sequence here, it felt like it was necessary
just for the chemistry of the cast, of the characters,
but for a lot of these characters, for a lot of these actors,
this was the only time they were gonna be in a car
so for like Gal and all these guys
they wanted this scene to go on forever.
They wanted to drive those cars for weeks, you know, so...
They only got to do it for a couple minutes each.
This is the duplicate vault.
You're kidding me. Yep.
These are the tough days, where you have everybody
and there's stuff that's scripted,
you're trying to find, hopefully, a sense of levity,
you know, a connection between these characters.
...But there's still another problem.
Palm scanner.
And without Reyes' handprint,
Houdini himself couldn't open this bitch.
I think the Santos and Leo arc was the toughest.
I really wanted them to have this kind of bickering back and forth
and this is when I knew it worked.
We were trying different things in other scenes
and I wanted to find that, and soon as we shot this scene,
and Don Omar went after Tego and Tego went back at him,
I knew we had it.
That was, for me, the last piece in the character.
And then, here, this look by Vin, of Gisele and Han.
It was funny because I had talked to Vin a lot
and he was saying, ”Well, she had
this thing with Dom in the fourth one
”and it's gonna be weird that she's with Han, ”
and I said, "No, it's not weird, I think it's great.”
In many senses, these are two of the cooler characters for me,
that doesn't get a lot of screen time.
And I just felt like it was appropriate
and I remember talking to Chris about it,
and he thought it was appropriate too.
So, to get that reaction from Dom, I thought it was important,
to get that connection for all three characters.
Thumb-racking the slide?
That was straight-up Mossad.
I got out of the military...
This is a scene that, until about three days before we shot it,
I was freaking out. I just thought the scene wasn't working,
and I kept pushing Chris, I said,
”We gotta figure out something. ”
We couldn 't figure out anything,
so Chris actually went to talk to Sung.
And they were just talking, and Sung
was talking about how one of his trademarks
is that he's always nibbling and eating stuff
That actually came from Tokyo Drift.
And the reason why he did that in Tokyo Drift
was because in Better Luck Tomorrow,
my credit-card indie movie, which Sung starred in,
he was smoking all the time.
And when we got to do Tokyo Drift, it's the same character.
This inside joke is that Han is from
Better Luck Tomorrow. It has an open-ended ending
and the joke is that he went to Tokyo.
So, we were gonna have him smoke- It wasn't appropriate,
so we decided he was gonna just eat these snacks.
And it was from that conversation that Chris had with Sung,
that Chris was like, "Wow, that's the connection."
And it ended up being a really great moment of the past for Han
and also for Gisele, the character.
So, oh, man, it felt so good on the day to be able to get those lines
because that scene, I didn't think we had it.
We're going to figure this out, I promise you.
And by the way, you cannot get fingerprints from an ass print on a bikini.
I know that, everybody knows that.
So many people have told me after they saw the movie, like,
"I don't think you can get fingerprints..."
I’m like, "Yeah, I kind of know that. "
But, again, it was one of those moments
that, we wanted to give Gisele her moment
in a kind of role reversal. It's kind of empowering for her.
It’s a fun scene but it also makes the guys look stupid,
which, you know, guys, we're not
the most sophisticated beings on Earth,
so, 1 like playing with that.
And to be able to see her in a bathing suit
and to be able to incorporate that,
so it's not just pure exploitation,
that was one of the funner scenes to try to come up with.
And seeing it with the audience, it really did
have the effect that we wanted it to have.
US Diplomatic Security Service issued the warrants.
Agent L. Hobbs.
Hold on one second.
Hey, Dom.
Is that the guy you saw in the favela?
Yeah.
Hobbs is the leader of the elite task force for the DSS.
So he's good.
When the FBI wants to find somebody, that's who they call.
Because he never misses his mark.
This guy is Old Testament.
Blood, bullets, wrath of God. That's his style.
And right now he's hunting us?
Dom, we got to move up our timeline.
ROME: Yeah, but how?
We 're coming up here, which is the showdown
between Dom's group and Hobbs's group.
It was really interesting because on set,
a lot of times, just naturally, the actors will
start taking the energy of their characters.
It was great to be able to, on that day,
to have the two crews together.
And you felt like they didn't like each other.
That was great. That's when you know that things are clicking.
As people, they didn't have anything against,
but on set, Dwayne was off with his team
and Dom was off with his team. And it was great to have that.
It stopped about a block ahead.
Park it. We're going on foot.
Looking at the footage right now,
this is one of the most frustrating things,
because when you shoot these scenes,
it is tough, getting the extras,
and then you have models, and I know they look good on screen,
but models are the worst at taking directions, at pacing.
So, a lot of the time we design shots
and these models have to walk across the camera,
they never hit their marks. It just drives me nuts.
And so, it's exhausting.
How about you, Brian?
No, not a bit.
I remember after we shot this sequence
and I thought, "Oh, great, we 're done. "
Then I get a call two days later that...
Because we were shooting this in Atlanta
and they had to basically fly the footage back to LA to get developed,
I got a memo that someone screwed up at the airport
and they accidentally X-rayed the film.
So, there's this unprocessed negative of the film
that basically went through the X-ray, which is a bad thing.
It basically exposed the film in, like, weird ways,
so when I watched it, it had all these flashes and stuff
and it was just a pain in the ass.
I don't think I was more exhausted
than that day, finding out that news
because we had to go back and reshoot this sequence here
and it sucked, too, because you work so hard
getting the actors and everybody
up to a certain amount of energy
and then, at the end of the day,
knowing that we had to duplicate that,
it just... Oh, man, it was devastating.
But, obviously, I’m working with a great cast,
great crew, everybody worked their ass off
and we were able to pull it off again.
Come on, boss. Another day.
Come on, H, it's a lot of heat.
It’s a big scene, you know. It's a scene that... I think it's equivalent
to, in Heat, you see Pacino and De Niro sharing a scene, you know.
I never thought I’d see The Rock and Vin in the same scene
because I grew up in the '80s and my dream was to see
Stallone and Schwarzenegger together
in one scene and that never happened.
So, I think to be able to have these two, kind of action icons
in one movie, sharing a scene, that's definitely part of the appeal,
and part of the fun, I think for me, and for everybody.
Yep.
Tracker's on.
Got them.
This scene here, Elena, played by Elsa,
she's a pivotal character in this movie
but there are so many characters
that this is really her big, defining scene.
And so, to really have only this amount of real estate,
to be able to build something that has to resonate...
That's why having someone of her caliber was great.
Because, it's not easy and that's the challenge.
It’s funny because I would...
When she first came and I met her and I casted her,
and we talked about her character and her role, and her history,
and her relationship with her husband and all the stuff..
95% of what we talked about, we knew were never going to be on screen.
So, most of the stuff I would talk to her about,
her character and stuff was stuff you were never going to see.
So, it was something for her to process so that, in this scene,
she can use that as subtext, as history.
There's a lot of pressure on scenes like this in movies
because sometimes they just kind of have to be there.
Sometimes it's because you don't have any other place
and this is the only real estate
to really define a relationship,
a character, their history.
And so, it's just that balance of what
you can say, what you're not gonna say,
and trying to make it as true as possible.
And I think sincerity, at the end of the day, wins out in scenes like this.
We both grew up here.
Two years ago he was murdered in the street
right outside our door.
I remember going this day and it was
just emotionally exhausting for everybody.
It was a pretty quick scene but it took us a whole day.
And to be able to have the actors really push each other
to at least get to that sincere state, that took a lot of effort.
(SIGHS)
You didn't kill those men in the train,
did you?
Now, why would you believe anything I would tell you?
We're coming up to this night shot of Christ the Redeemer.
I remember having a lot of conversation about...
Because that's the one image that you always associate with Rio,
the big Christ statue.
I thought maybe it was too touristy
but it wasn't until I went and I was prepping and talking to locals...
It is a very significant, iconic image, even for locals.
They would tell me that a lot of times,
when they would be on their phones
with their friends that they were gonna meet somewhere,
they orient themselves by where they are to Christ.
So, after hearing that I thought,
"Oh, then it's totally appropriate.
”That has to be the center of kind of
"that universe of where our characters are. ”
Yeah!
Here, we have, basically, Han doing this obstacle course
that we never see get performed because
it's part of that A-plot in heist movies.
So, I just can't believe how much time was dedicated
between me and Chris and everybody,
you know, really talking about designing the A-plot that we never see.
Don't hurt yourself.
And here, this is like a simple jumping over the fence,
but our schedule was so tough, I had basically an hour to shoot it-
A lot of times, some of this simple stuff
actually became like, some of the most challenging scenes to do.
It's been a while since I've been behind the wheel of one of these.
First time I've ever been in the front seat.
(CHUCKLES)
We're about to go into our only sole race in the film.
The decision to kind of move away from the street racing scene,
for me, it's part of the evolution of these characters.
And this scene here is basically to say,
"Look, they've grown, they've evolved.
"They still love cars, but racing is still in them. "
This is just to acknowledge that and to have some fun
because you're basically taking
four of the best drivers in a franchise
and you put them in the same car
and, you know, you're gonna have this race.
So, a lot of discussions were had
about what this race was gonna be,
is it going to be a long one, is it gonna be...
You know, what was gonna be done.
And to me, it's more of a character thing.
Obviously, this ends up you finding out why Brian wins
and why Dom lets him win.
And this is part of the fun of the franchise,
that Brian is like the little brother, always going after Dom.
And he's never able to get a straight answer. He always wants to beat Dom.
Yeah!
And I gotta give Spiro, our other second unit director,
a lot of credit for this because this is a sequence that,
we had it scheduled for two weeks,
it went down to a week, went to half a week,
and at the end of the day, he only had
a night and a half to shoot this.
So, we were storyboarding this thing
and we kept adjusting our shots
and he was really worried, he wasn't sure,
and we would get rain and stuff
and it would kill our production days.
But at the end of the day, we only really
had one and a half days to shoot this
and that crew was, again, unbelievable.
I gotta give them all the credit.
For us to be able to make those adjustments
and for them to go out there and get the shots,
to be able to tell the story in a day and a half it's unheard of
These aren't easy shots, as you can see.
Obviously, they were designed and boarded
but executing them was very difficult.
Yeah! Owned you! Owned you!
Coming up here is a very simple scene.
I love it because, again, you see all four characters
from all the Fast and Furious films together
and I wanted to do it as a one-er.
These are the toughest ones to do
because you're not covering it.
You're not cutting in for coverage,
the performances, the rhythm, they all have to be there.
I love these shots and they're the scariest shots
because you can design it, but if the actors don't hit it,
you'll never have the scene.
Fortunately, I think it took us nine takes, and they nailed it.
There 's something very honest about one-ers, for me,
so that you're never trying to...
I think subconsciously, the audience just
knows that we're not, basically, cheating.
We are there with the characters.
We are laughing. If it's funny, we're laughing with them,
we're seeing the reactions to each other.
Vince, what are you doing? Quiet! They've been tracking you.
Right here we have, obviously, the Vince coming back scene with Jordana,
and this was also another challenging day
because we had to shoot that in half a day.
Again, 1 think any scenes with just tons of extras,
it's just naturally draining to, basically, get all the coordination.
So here we're back into the hideout,
and you have basically the potential
showdown between Brian and Vince.
Obviously, this thing goes all the way back to the first film,
and we had talked a lot about Brian and Vince's relationship.
DOM: You hungry?
It’s funny, because when we were shooting,
Paul and Schulze, they would just purposely
kind of just stay away from each other.
And I think it really did help that moment that we earn
and it's a very quick moment but it was good to work and work and work
just so that you can achieve these little
moments that just kind of go by.
A lot of times they're the most gratifying scenes to do.
Yeah, but your mom is the worst cook in the world.
Yo, don't you be talking about my momma.
Yeah, come on, baby. Who's good living?
To you, bro. Cheers, cheers, cheers.
ROME: So, we in Brazil. It's the good life.
Yeah.
So, you got a little more than $10 or $11 million coming.
What you going to do with your money?
Me? Yeah.
And here we have the signature eating dinner scene for these characters,
kind of just talking about who they are,
and we get to slow down for a second
because, literally, after this scene,
you're gonna go wall-to-wall action
for the rest of the movie.
So to be able to kind of set this up,
Chris had written it as a table scene
where they were just sitting around,
drinking and talking, and I just felt like there wasn't enough life.
I didn't like that, so, I wanted to break it up
so that it was a bit more, just, conversational
but at the same time, you see the dynamics,
you see that Gisele, even though she's a part of the group,
she still has her own philosophy, her own code.
Vince going to Dom... So, we shot this later in the schedule
and I wanted it later because I wanted to discover this.
So, as I got to know the actors,
their relationship with each other,
I was able to redesign all this
and that was part of the strategy.
This film, once I had my cut, it didn't really change that much
but, for Vin, it was funny because one of his big moments was this,
it was ad-libbed coming up where she said...
Mia said... Calls this a curse.
This is the only thing that I didn't have in my original cut
and I remember talking to Vin about it
and I thought, "It actually would be good. "
So, it was put in later in the cut
but it was kind of through our discussion that it went back.
It was like, really, the only moment that got added back on.
Can you believe Mia calls this a curse?
She might be right.
You really like doing that stuff, huh?
When your life is on the line that's when you learn about yourself.
And here you have Han and Gisele.
I think from the very beginning, we all loved
the idea of them coming together
and having that arc, but the challenge
was not having a lot of real estate.
So, for Sung and Gal to really commit,
and to work on that off screen,
I really thought that was one of the big gets for all these character arcs.
And here you see Tyrese, this big moment here, this big...
Where he lights up a room with his smile.
That was all Tyrese.
I mean, this, right now, as you're watching,
we were like 4:00 in the morning, shooting all day
and it was probably one of the crazier days on set,
just a lot of uncontrollable forces happening.
So, for him to be able to stay positive,
and to be able to maintain that energy level,
I just remember seeing him after I called, "Cut,"
and I was like, ”Thank you, man. " Like, that is a professional,
to be able to somehow find that
within him, to get that moment.
Yeah, we needed that for that moment.
Toast. Toast.
And then here, we have the toast. You know, the toast has become
another kind of signature moment
for these family scenes in our franchise.
We must have gone through 37, 40 drafts of toasts.
Some were too long, too short, too wordy...
Right here.
...And on the day, we ended up not using any of it.
We just kept it simple.
I know Vin felt the same way
and we just kept trying different things,
talked about all these different things.
And when we got on set, it just felt right to be simple.
And sometimes, those are the easiest solutions,
you know, the best solutions, not the easiest.
I'm all set.
And here's another shot where it's a one-er. I did it on the crane.
I love these things because it just sets
our characters in this world,
and we're not cutting and we're seeing them interacting
and we're seeing the environment.
And so, these things always take
a little time to set up, to coordinate.
When it works, it's all worth it.
Here you have a moment where Vince is saying, ”I got Mia. "
I got eyes on Mia.
This came from, just the multiple talks I had with Schulze and Vin,
and we were really trying to connect back to Nico.
I remember Schulze... We were talking about Vince
and I said, "No, he's not going on the A-plot, he has to stay. "
That moment came, and I remember looking at Vin and with a...
That's it. That's the moment that he can say back to him, ”Later. "
And it was just well earned.
There's Hobbs running into Dom's Charger
that seems to come back from the dead for every installment.
But this time, we really wanted to crush it, because it is symbolic.
I'm right here.
(BOTH GRUNTING)
This fight here, from the very first moment,
I understood the magnitude of this fight.
The hardest thing, actually, wasn't designing the fight,
it was finding the right purpose,
the right moment, to have the fight.
And the right motivations, you know.
And once I felt like, as a director,
I was able to get that, then it was fun.
Every move, every punch, every kick you see, that was designed.
We literally broke everything down and made this as its own film,
as three acts, right now you're going to act two.
And then, once we were done, I brought in
Peter Wenham, the production designer
and he built this whole thing to support the fight.
So, it took a lot... It took months and months of work.
Then I brought in Dwayne and Vin and we broke down every move.
And obviously, it's dear to them, so they had questions
and we talked about everything.
It was really evolving but, obviously,
the big question everybody wants to know
and I’m sure, you know, with all the fans, like, who's gonna win?
How'd you get that to work?
And so, everybody always asked me,
who would win in a fight, Dom or Hobbs?
Vin or Rock?
And to me, it's a very even match.
So, my answer to that question is, really, at the end of the day,
what are they fighting for?
I feel like they're so evenly matched that in the case of this film,
Dom was going to win,
because Hobbs was simply fighting
someone that was on his wanted list.
It’s part of his record.
Even though he's probably statistically a better fighter than Dom,
Dom was going to ultimately take him at the end
because he's fighting for the promise he made his sister
all the way back in the storm drains.
This is something that I think, that at the end of the day,
motivation will trump technique.
You see it in sports all the time.
And I think once I was able to at least find that,
it made everything, for me, work. It felt organic.
It made the high pressure that came with that fight totally viable.
Pretty much from this point on out,
we're gonna be wall-to-vvall action.
This location here, I'm very proud to say, I pushed hard to find.
I wanted the ambush sequence to be unique.
And I think a lot of times, they think of ambush,
there 's some signature ambush scenes
in, like, Jack Ryan movies or whatever,
and they automatically kind of go there.
I didn't want to go there. I wanted to find these hills.
I remember challenging James Lin,
I said, ”You have to find it. I am not going to settle for anything less."
And they kept looking and looking and looking
and finally they found this neighborhood and it was perfect.
We had about three and a half days to shoot this,
which, again, is very little time,
with the amount of effects and the things blowing up,
and there 's Fusco. And I wanted it to be intense.
I wanted all these things to be as real as possible.
So, again, we went in as our own little troop
and I had six to eight cameras going,
and we just went for it.
When these days are designed correctly, you have the most fun time
because you get up in the morning, you show up on set,
and you do not rest until the day's over, until you wrap.
You are never stopping on these scenes.
I think that really helped the intensity for the actors.
It helped us actually make our schedule.
And here, I remember Tanoai,
who's Dwayne's cousin and also his stunt double,
I kept wanting him to get closer to the explosion
and he really pushed it.
And I thought, you know, he is one of the best in the business
because he wants Dwayne to look the best.
And, you know, obviously we don't wanna hurt anybody,
but for him, he was always...
Whether it was a fight or whatever,
he was always willing to go that extra step,
and as a director, I always appreciate that,
because a lot of times you get people who don't even wanna try.
Who show up and just wanna basically do the minimal-
And Tanoai is someone that, I think,
he's appropriate to be with someone like Dwayne
because they come in ready to play.
You know, we were going for a PG-13
and we went back and forth a lot with the MPAA.
And this is not to say the theatrical version is anything less,
because what I’m proud of is that the theatrical version is intense,
and that's all I wanted.
And I understood MPAA and what their mandates are,
and they were actually great at working with us.
I mean, it was not easy. We'd go back and forth.
I had to submit eight times, but they were very fair.
To me, the ultimate goal about working with the MPAA
was to make sure that we don? get neutered
I wanted to make sure that you get treated to, ultimately,
the perfect version of Fast Five.
And so I’m very happy with what ultimately went to the theaters
because you still feel the intensity,
the visceral reactions to these sequences.
(TIRES SCREECHING)
(SPITTING)
VINCE: Hey, Dom.
You've got to meet my son.
Nico.
I will.
Now we have this scene with Vince.
This is probably the last talking scene before our vault heist.
You know, we named him after you.
"Dominic."
I felt like it was important here
because Vince is a big part of this franchise.
You've got my word, Vince.
This is a really weird thing with actors.
I've never met an actor that actually liked getting killed,
but I’m always surprised, you know.
I think, like, when characters die or they have those moments,
aren't those the best moments?
But it's just interesting.
But with Schulze, his thing was kind of like he didn't wanna die,
but if he did, he wanted it to be meaningful. So we would...
You know, again, I probably had more conversation with Schulze
than any of the other actors, probably, besides Vin.
You know, that's how serious he took it.
So we had developed a really great rapport, you know, Schulze and I,
even though Vince is not in the movie that much.
But, man, we talked more than anything else.
ROME: it's a suicide mission.
That's your man over there on the table.
The plan is busted!
This is bullshit, man. Reyes knows we're coming!
TEJ: He's right.
They tripled the detail at the police station.
TEJ: it's going to be a wall of gunfire.
Now, you come to this scene where it's gonna launch us.
This is the moment where Hobbs,
the antagonist of this whole movie,
now joining him.
You know, for movies like this,
or actually for any movie in this case,
you're always trying to achieve this moment,
you're trying to earn this moment, you know.
And I'll tell you, the screenings I've been in,
every time, whether it's with fans or with jaded industry people,
whenever this scene comes up and he says, ”I'll ride with you, Toretto, ”
people would cheer.
And that is probably the most gratifying thing for all of us.
For me, as the filmmaker, for the director
to be able to say, "Hey, I don't care
”what you think of this franchise.
"I don't care what you think of these characters, what you think of.. "
For them to basically cheer at this moment, it meant everything.
It meant that all the little moments where nobody notices,
or they skip through, it meant that we earned it.
And so that made this whole journey worth it,
is trying to earn that moment.
We don't sneak.
The only thing he cares about is his money.
We pull that,
we pull him.
And now we're coming to what is quickly becoming
the signature piece of this film,
which is the vault heist.
(SPEAKING PORTUGUESE)
I called in every cop on our payroll.
I found a great collaborator and a great teammate in Spiro,
the second unit director, who was
in Puerto Rico with us when we shot this.
I think, you know, as a filmmaker working on these films,
you have to be able to juggle all the different crews.
And so, I’m with first unit, with the actors and stuff
I have to have someone out there
who can really be my collaborator.
Someone that can take everything that I want designed,
to be able to get why, the essence of the sequence,
and to be able to go after those shots.
And in case it's not possible,
they have to understand why that shot was designed,
and then be able to make certain calls.
And Spiro was that guy.
A guy who's been in this business this long,
to still have that kind of enthusiasm
of a little boy doing things for the first time,
I mean, that's something you just do not see every day.
Spiro is someone that I can't wait to work again and again...
In pre-production, he'd come in
after a long day of logistical meetings,
and about this, about the consistency
of the shit that's gonna be in the toilet.
After dinner, I would have Spiro come in
and he would carry his little plastic bag with his toy cars.
So I would have my toy cars, and he would have his toy cars
and we would have, like, a Rubik's Cube as the vault
and then we'd start talking.
Because I would come up with ideas.
You know, I would have David Chan, he would shoot it,
I’d get it and then I'd go with a storyboard, Darrin and Toni and the crew,
and I’d tell them what shots I want
and then they would draw that up
and then they would hand it to Alex, the previs team,
and then they would build it.
So it's a very elaborate process.
Then I would have Spiro come in
because he would go out and do tests with the cars,
with the vault, with the real vault,
and he would tell me what was working, what wasn't working,
he'd show me videotape.
And so, just through these conversations
we were able to develop this shorthand.
Don't move!
Stay down.
Oh, and here, it's funny, this sequence right here,
coming out of the police station,
for months I would sit there and say, "I want that vault to tumble, "
and they'd say, "it’s impossible, it can't tumble. "
And I said, "I Want if to tumble. "
They said, "It can't tumble because of its
weight, blah, blah, blah. " This and that.
And I finally said, "Okay, fine, build all these pylons
"and I wanna run through it. Then I'll figure Out the tumble later. "
And with all that prep,
the first take we do it, that vault tumbles perfectly.
I contribute it to karma.
This is my two-year-old son, and a lot of people,
especially for some reason when we went to Asia for press,
they picked up on that that was my son
and there were paparazzi taking pictures of him. It was hilarious.
My thing was, I never wanted him to be in movies.
I’m not one of those parents.
But it was actually a reaction off of
the crying baby in Puerto Rico.
And I know my kid is... He's chill-
I figure I drag a vault in front of him, he's gonna look at it.
So I was so confident.
And on the day I had him on set,
we would have those stunt guys tow the vault, and he wouldn 't look at it.
Take one, he wouldn't look at the vault at all. I'm like, "What's going on?"
(PEOPLE SCREAMING)
Take two, he's not looking at the vault.
It turned out, he was flirting with one of the extras
that was sitting in front of him.
And so we were finally able to get his attention,
and on take three, he did it perfectly.
So it all worked out,
but it was probably the most nerve-wracking moment
to have your kid there and everyone's like, "The director has his kid."
And you're like, "Yeah, yeah. No, no, no.
"The reason why he's there is because he can perform.”
And he wasn't performing, you know- So---
He totally nailed it on take three, so that was great.
All right, there's an alley coming up on your left.
Yeah, I got it.
Coming up, we have the split, you know, with the vault coming.
A lot of this stuff like here, in this shot right here,
we would actually design our own rigs to get the shots
and that's what's so great about Spiro
is that some of the shots that I would think up,
they wouldn't have any rigs for.
And so, he would sit with Jack and I would sit with Gunther,
we'd sit together and talk about what needed to be built.
So actually, a lot of the stuff..
We would build brand new rigs that had never been used before
just to be able to get the right shots.
(GUNSHOTS)
The other reason I love about Spiro
is that when I've seen his previous works,
I love the fact that he really goes after it.
He's not afraid to use short lenses,
and get really close to the action
and that's something you don't see in a lot of films.
And this comes from years of experience.
So, for me to have a veteran, like him, who has that enthusiasm,
who is willing to basically say, "Let's do whatever..."
Like, the example is here, you have this 180 by Brian's car.
And they couldn 't get it, they couldn't get it and I sent him back.
We ended up creating an extra day at the end of the schedule.
And I said, "Spiro, I don't care. You have to get me that.
”You have to get that practically. ”
And you know, they went and they got it.
It’s moments like that, that really help define a sequence.
To have that care to not give up.
Because a lot of times you'll get people, they'll call up and say,
”You know, we couldn't get it. Let's have visual effects do it. "
And then that's when you fall into trouble, because visual effects...
You know, there are a lot of visual effects
in this movie, there's 1500 shots,
but the ultimate compliment is when people say,
"There's not a lot of visual effects in this movie."
And I joke with Mike Wassel and his whole visual effects crew
that this is probably the most thankless job.
Because I think in, like, robot movies or other super-hero movies
when you see robots flying, or people flying,
you just subconsciously know that
that's not real even though it might look real.
But here, their job is to make something that we see every day,
cars moving, or buildings, or anything like that.
And if they do their job correctly,
we're not supposed to notice at all.
So it was an amazing crew that I had on this film
and I think the ultimate compliment is when people say,
”You didn't use a lot of visual effects," you know? So...
(BULLETS HITTING CAR)
We actually had six vaults designed.
From all our research and stuff
we decided to have a vault where you can actually just tow for real,
and you see that.
Like, these shots here, they're just towing them, the two cars.
Then we would have ones with wheels on it just for certain stunts,
and then we would have a semi-truck.
We would actually design vaults for different actions,
and that's how we were able to get all the articulation practically.
You're all clear on the left.
The Trojan horse beat here,
it was a lot of fun to be able to get Roman and Han into the action
and people were always amazed by the amount of destruction
and for us to build a bank and wreck it,
for us to be able to just literally kill over 200 cars,
that's the stuff that, you know, if we shot in Rio,
we were never able to get
because it was just gonna be much more costly shooting there.
And to be able to shoot in Puerto Rico, and double for Rio,
the money that we saved, you know,
gave us the ability to go buy those cars, to be able to build that bank,
so we can wreck all that stuff
So that's a tradeoff and it's totally...
You know, to me, it's totally worth it.
You had to do it. I think you want every penny to be on screen.
This was a challenge.
We were looking for a set piece to end the sequence.
We looked everywhere.
We talked about airstrips, we looked everywhere,
but when we got to the bridge it just felt right.
It had to be the bridge.
But the challenge was that this was a private-owned bridge.
And to basically buy out this bridge for five days was so costly,
but there was no other way in my mind.
Visually, it was awesome and we just had to be there.
So we bought out the bridge.
But at the same time, I remember
we had scouted this military base
and there was a pier...
It was a decommissioned military base in Puerto Rico.
And I thought, "You know what? To save money,
”let's buy out that bridge for five days, pay the big price for that,
”but then for a lot of the other beats, a lot of the other shots,
”let's build a replica of the bridge
"on that pier." Which is what we did.
So a lot of the stuff that you see,
where a car gets crushed into the K-Rail and stuff like that,
those were actually done on the pier
because as much as we can buy out a bridge,
they didn't want us wrecking that bridge.
They didn't want us taking out the K-Rail and stuff like that.
We've got him!
This sequence, I remember looking over it with Spiro.
On this movie, we actually had less days to shoot
than the previous film.
Even though we had probably a bigger budget
we just couldn't afford as many days.
So I remember, our days just kept getting... We kept cutting days
and so, we'd come up with tricks.
Like, Spiro and I would talk, and we'd come up with tricks.
But it was just, the more time we were able to spend together to talk,
and the more time I was able to go over shots with him,
it became more viable, because it meant that he understood more.
The more he understood, the less
guessing work he had to do on the day
and we were able to go in and just
tonally get everything we wanted to get.
Do something, asshole!
This is something that...
The only way I see that happening, is to share this experience.
Kill him, dammit!
This guillotine move, it was something that Spiro kept talking about
and we tried it, and it was spectacular
and I thought it was a great way to break up the monotony.
Coming into this very last beat.
I wanted, again, everything to be practical
so we would have these crazy cranes, rigs,
and so I’m sure if you watch the behind-the-scenes stuff on this film,
you'll be able to see.
I mean, everything you see here we did practically.
That car getting yanked in the air; practically done.
(SCREAMIlNG)
I mean, the amount of craziness...
I remember playing with the toy cars
and showing everybody what I wanted for the final beat.
It was so quiet in that room, showing them.
And then going from there to actually executing it,
I think that's part of the fun of doing movies like Fast and the Furious.
To be able to push physics,
but then to figure out how to do it practically, you know.
For me, just to kind of try to wipe
the blank looks on everybody's faces,
that's part of the fun.
I thought I told you to go on.
Yeah, I had to make a call.
Coming up here, you have Hobbs showing up with Elena
and I’m a big fan of heist movies.
You know, I love, like, a good, old, British,
small-crime, thriller heist movie.
Those are the most fun for me.
And I always love the end
when they have the showdown between the characters
and there's this code being exchanged.
As you can see here, on Dwayne's side it's sunny
and on Vin and Paul's side, it's not.
It’s because it was literally sunny when we were shooting that day
and then it would start raining.
Sunny and raining.
And so it was such a challenge for us
when we were color timing this scene,
because none of the colors really matched.
So to be able to have it be cohesive, that was, you know...
Sometimes in films, you can cut it, everything works well
and then it comes down to coloring
or it comes down to sound or whatever.
But I wanna definitely give a lot of credit
to Peter Brown and his whole crew
for the sound work,
and then also Brian Tyler for his score.
I mean, I think for a composer,
this is probably the most frustrating action movie to do
because a lot of the frequencies of the music
will clash with the sound design
and so Peter Brown and Brian Tyler had to really work together
and we had to decide at what point
the music was gonna carry the sequence,
at what point we were gonna go more practical.
And all three of us are coming up together
and we've gotten better and better
and I can't wait for what we're going to be doing in the future,
because I felt like we got thrown into situations
where the challenge of feeling the weight of the vault,
the power of the cars, and to hear the music all at once,
you just don't get the same challenges doing other action movies
because you have to sell the engine sounds and stuff like that,
but then you're also trying to tell a story with the music,
so for it to end up where it did, I'm very proud of the guys
and it took a lot of hard work from both sides and all the crews
so it was great work.
You guys just carved out a 10 second window.
Make it count!
(LAUGHING)
I'd mentioned earlier, but I have become very
accustomed to having multiple second units.
In the case of post-production,
I had three editors: Chris, Kelly and Fred
and they're all top of their games
and they're great team players.
And I hate going to the editing room and sitting around.
I like to rotate around.
For this film to kind of end up being what it is,
and to be able to be cohesive stylistically, rhythmically,
it's all due to very talented people
who work very hard to work together.
That's something that, as I get to work more in this industry,
as I get to meet people that have the same mentality as me,
I can? wait to keep moving forward
because I feel like our family and our team is just getting stronger.
And Fast Five is literally just a culmination
of some people that I worked with in my little indie movies
all the way up to the other Fast movies and stuff like that.
So personally, it's a bookmark, you know.
I feel like post Fast Five,
logistically, creatively, I think as a filmmaker,
I think this has put all of us in a position
to hopefully get better and succeed.
"For Rosa and Nico. See you soon, - Uncle Dom”
This is tagged on at the end here, and I love scenes like this.
I love seeing, you know, some of the set-ups we have,
in the dinner scenes and with the characters,
to see what they do with that money.
You know, some of them, money doesn't
mean anything, like to Tego, to Leo.
And to other people, to be able to
buy their freedom, material freedom,
or spiritual freedom.
You know, it's just fun. I had so much fun shooting these scenes,
but logistically, again, they're very hard
because there 's not a lot of time
in our schedule to be able to do this.
Again, with Tego and Don Oman
I don't shoot singles. I love when they share frames
because there's just something about their energy
and their relationship with one another that just makes it work.
You know, I gotta give Dennis McCarthy a lot of credit
because there literally is only
four of these cars in the world,
and he went and convinced the owner
of two of them to be a part of this movie.
And one of the funniest moments
is that you see Tyrese and his girl,
she showed up on set and then we shot this early in the morning,
and she wanted orange juice. So the crew got her orange juice.
She's sitting in this car that's worth $2.3 million,
and she's drinking orange juice.
And I can just see the handlers of the cars, they are freaking out
because just in case she spills orange juice or whatever,
someone was gonna get in trouble.
So luckily there was no orange juice incident,
everything was great.
Huh. That's a nice lady you got there, too.
This scene reminds me of one night where I didn't sleep.
I felt like Tyrese needed to have the last line in this scene
and so I would text Tyrese, and I would work on it.
I was writing it, and writing it, and I didn't sleep at all.
And it's funny, when we got to the day we had the line,
and we thought it was the perfect line,
and then Ludacris showed up and we did the scene
and Ludacris was so good that I looked at Tyrese and we both said,
"We don't need that line. "
So one night of no sleep for that scene.
Get dressed, man, we got things to do!
And here we have the Han and Gisele,
I mean, two of probably the coolest characters in the franchise, together,
and here, again, it's our acknowledgment that we get it.
I thought you wanted to go to Tokyo.
Tokyo Drift technically is number three,
but it was never called Fast and the Furious 3.
It was always the post-modern take of Fast and Furious
and that it ultimately exists after Five, and we get that
and I think that line with Han says it to the audience.
And I actually love all the Internet talking back and forth
about where Tokyo Drift belongs and all this stuff
And I think the more you can engage people and have a discourse,
any time you have that, I think, is always good.
And here you have Dom coming up with Elena
in the brand new Challenger,
and then you obviously have the brand new Skyline,
which has now become the signature cars
for Dom and Brian in the franchise.
And to be able to see Mia now, pregnant, probably third trimester,
it's nice because it's showing everybody it's been more than 10 years
since the first Fast and Furious
and we haven't tried just to do the same thing over and over.
I mean, these characters literally have grown and evolved
and this family's about to expand.
This is the happiest I've ever seen my sister.
It's because we're free.
The challenge in any movie is always finding the ending.
How are you gonna button the ending? And I love this ending.
I love the fact that, at the end of the day,
$11 million, heist, freedom and all that stuff
these guys are still the same guys at the core
that we met 10 years ago, you know.
Brian still just wants to know that he knows he's better than Dom
and he wants to go for it.
And Dom being the older brother, keeps playing with him.
This is something that I think universally we can all relate to
and once we were able to discover that... I love it.
These credit sequences are becoming more and more complicated
and it's become its own film.
So to be able to basically design something
that is basically the race between Dom and Brian
through all the locations of all the Fast and Furious films,
that, again, took a lot of development.
And to be able to have this... And to be able to see the characters,
to see them through the years, just for me, personally, it means a lot.
It means that we have a continuing
and a deep relationship with people
that are willing to spend two hours
of their life with us at a time.
It’s not something we take lightly.
Everybody that's watching this, probably has seen the film
so I’m gonna talk a little about the tag that's coming up.
For me, my approach to doing Fast and Furious movies,
has always been one at a time, you know.
But obviously I think talking to Vin and to Chris and stuff
we usually talk ahead.
When we were talking about part four,
we had always talked about it as a trilogy.
So obviously we planted a lot of seeds
into the scripts for future installments.
But I thought 4 was it for me.
And it was because of the acknowledgment from fans that they want more
that got me excited
and now at the end of Five I feel like we had to earn it for Six.
And this tag, to me, was probably the boldest move
of us acknowledging that we have planned ahead.
And it's something that. -- I don't know if I’m gonna do part six, or not.
I wanna make them a certain way
and every time we get to do another one, I wanna try to raise the bar
and take it to the next level.
And I feel like I had so much fun,
it was such a challenge to do part five,
we wanna take it up another level-
You know, I want us to raise the bar again.
And I think for me personally, anything less or if the agenda 's different,
I shouldn't be a part of it, you know?
But obviously as you can see from the tag,
it's leaving for something exciting.
You're seeing Letty, you're seeing Eva, you're seeing everybody.
I mean, this is family coming into full circle.
I feel like, if this is it for me,
I've left this franchise in a great place.
And it's been very good to me.
I feel like I've been able to grow a lot as a filmmaker,
and to understand the business of filmmaking.
And also to be able to meet amazing people,
and to continuously build my crew, which has become my family.
And so whether we continue on with Fast Six, Fast Seven, or other films,
it's been everything to me.
And to be able to connect with the fans around the world
that is also something that I don't take lightly.
I love the fact that I can be with a group of people
that will work our ass off to try to give you everything we got-
So thank you for sharing this commentary track.
Hopefully, if I don? talk to you guys on the next one,
it will be on another film. Thank you.