Transcription
These SWAT guys cabled to each other, hopping and building one after the other. It was a very, very difficult stunt logistically for Poland's guys and Christmas's guys to figure out.
But I felt that it was very important with our final action set piece that we finished with something real. Because we knew we were going to do most of it on the set and have it be quite claustrophobic, I felt it was very important to have some larger scale reality to finish the scene.
We decided that we would go for this practically. The McClurg Building in Chicago was under construction. We went to the building zone as our location. Department met with them. We explained what we wanted to do. And you can imagine going into a construction site where safety is everything, and your initial pitch is, "We want to throw five people off the top of your building and attach them with a string, and they'll just dangle there at night, and have two helicopters really close to the building."
In the movie, it's a moment, but I think we rehearsed it for three weeks. Obviously, rehearsed with weight bags before we put men on it. Had to build a special ramp so they could all slide out. Each man had an individual rigger looking after each individual guy. Three, two, one, action! The guy has to launch himself off a 420-foot-high building, and all the others go behind him, pulled out of the building. It all looks like they're on one rig, but they're all on separate safety rigs.
Where the visual effects became involved was that the building ended up having to be covered in mattresses to protect the stuntmen. So, in post-production, with Chris, we were actually able to remove all of the stunt pads that were protecting the stunt sides of the building.
The other great thing about it is, on that rope, there were Chicago stuntmen, there were LA stuntmen, and there were British stuntmen. They're all up there together, all just helping each other out and working as a team. Step away from the edge. Hopefully, when you see that scene, it'll be as dramatic as it looked on the night.