Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle is the stunt coordinator for both FX’s Shōgun and CBS’s Tracker. Shōgun gave him many challenges, including the first time using a life-size ship on a gimbal for a scene, while Tracker allowed his experiences to help shape a more realistic chase sequence. Then on top of all that there is his own film he directed, wrote, and produced.
Awards Daily: What kind of historical research did you do to create the stunts for Shōgun?
Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle: it started way back when I worked on The Last Samurai and read many, many books on Japanese history of the Edo period back in the 1600s. Then I did the same thing with this. The scripts were so accurate and so well done that once the historians and translators came on board, it just became a big collaboration of information. It was a huge learning experience: just when you think you know something you find out you really didn’t know that much.
Awards Daily: One part that really jumped out at me in the first episode is the first beheading in the village. It gives us a sense of the brutality of this world and the time period. What kind of detail did you do to create that effect?
Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle: Of course we had a lot of help from visual effects because we really didn’t want to cut anyone’s head off. Dummies never quite work so we would do the cut and miss our performer and then he would slump over like he had died and then visual effects would take over and recreate the head and show it falling off. It was a collaboration of timing and visual effects and how to shoot that properly. It looks brutal and horrific but luckily we didn’t kill anyone.
Awards Daily: I read that you used a life-size ship on a computerized gimbal for the storm in episode one. Can you talk about that process?
Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle: Oh my God, that was such a cool experience and really difficult because I was on the ship 40 feet in the air directing everybody and our computer operator was down 40 feet below in a tent. We had wind machines and water tanks, and it was just so noisy, and he had a steering wheel to rotate the ship this way or that way. It took a while for me to choreograph the movement of the ship to work for the stunt that we were trying to do when our captain was going overboard and Blackthorne was saving him. That was a really interesting dynamic, trying to choreograph something that huge, getting the timing right with how quickly it moves or doesn’t move. The special effects had to be right there on point with their water tanks and dump tanks and rain towers. Then I had to have my rigors on the ship as well. They had to rig from the mast to control our captain going overboard so he didn’t fall 40 feet to the deck and kill himself for real. It was huge and really amazing; I had never worked on something like that before so it was a great learning experience for me, too.
Awards Daily: Within the show we get a lot of scenes of fighting in homes at night where the physical structure of the house plays a very big part in the choreography of how the fighting is done. Can you talk about the challenges in creating those?
Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle: You’re probably talking about the tea house fight where the director wanted to do it mostly in one shot. So we had to design a crane shot that would travel the length of the house and have the fight taking out shoji screens and doors so you could see into the house as some of the other performers were fighting and revealing our two main characters running through the house chasing each other, until it culminates in the fight outside. So when I was doing the previews I didn’t have a crane to use but I had to try to make the same movement with my iPhone and travel along the length of the building. We nailed it though, and sliced it together for the director, and he loved it! So we went with it and it’s a complete shot from the time they start. There are a couple of edits in the first part but then it’s all the way through to the pond. That was very challenging to be sure.
Awards Daily: There are many intense scenes in the show. You have the rescue sequence with the rope getting down the cliffs. You also have the chain cannonball firing. What was the biggest challenge for you or the most interesting?
Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle: Well the two you just mentioned were the two main ones because I was directing the second unit for those. We did five different locations for the rescue sequence. We started where I am now on Vancouver Island in Ucluelet. They wanted a shot of our stunt man really in the ocean so I had to have my riggers build two towers and rig a safety line between two islands so we could have him in the water when the waves come crashing in when we have Kashigi in the water.
So we had him live in the ocean with huge swells washing him away. I had to have a safety line on him so we could pull him out of the water at any moment so he didn’t get smashed across the rocks or washed out to sea and drowned. That was day one of shooting Shōgun. I was doing my day one of the second unit out there at the same time. So that was just one small piece of looking out into the ocean. We had a set built of the cliff that we were propelling and falling off of after putting my stuntman into some pads. Then we built another cliff that we put into the water tank and built a padded rock surface that he fell on from about 10 to 15 feet. Then we had the wave tank where he pulls out the Spanish pilot that he was saving, and then slips and falls in and gets trapped in the cove where he cannot get out because the rocks are too slippery and he thinks he’s going to drown. What was really tricky as a second unit director was trying to match my stuff with the director’s portions. It took a lot of collaboration, storyboardings, meetings, and scouting to make that work. It was pretty intense.
Then the chain cannonball scene that you talked about in Episode 4 got me really excited when I first read that. I went to Justin Marks, our showrunner, and I asked, “What are you looking for here?” I showed him a look of Rambo 5 when he cut a bunch of guys down with a 50-caliber machine gun that cut them in two. So then I asked, “Is this what you were looking for?” He responded, “Hell, yes!” So I hired a bunch of guys, and I put them on ratchets. We had them in crotch wraps and shoulder wraps, and I jerked them every which way and made them fly and spin and flip. When the chain shot hit them Michael Cliett, our visual effects supervisor, would have orange ribbons on the actors like if one was on an arm and we knew that we’re going to yank them from that shoulder and visual effects is going to make his arm fly off. Then I would tie a ribbon around one guy’s legs and yank them at 600 PSI and flip him around onto his head, then they would blow his leg off with visual effects. We did torsos, we did arms and legs, and it was really muddy and rainy and slippery and the guys were falling in mud and blood. Because I also had some guys running from the second chain shot while they were being ratcheted, then I’d yank them while they were running. Just to add a little more flavor to it, we put three horses that were rearing up, bucking, and falling over. It was really intense when the horses were slipping, and it was tough to have them have the ability to fall where they needed to and not crush my other guys. It was a pretty intense second unit that they handed over to me. After rehearsing for 5 days, I was able to get a shot in one day.
Awards Daily: You also have another TV show this year, Tracker. What kind of different skills go into a show like that versus Shōgun?
Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle: Well, obviously we’re in modern day so we are dealing with vehicles and guns. They also wanted a really reality-based project, so I tend to bring that to my skill set, thinking everything is brutal but don’t get carried away, to keep it realistic so the fight scenes don’t go on forever. I think the most interesting and challenging was the pilot because they set me up with the second unit again and having to create this chase where this truck is going down through a mountain and the hero is on foot. But because of the switchback, he’s able to catch up with the truck and eventually jump into the back of it.
That was it as far as the script went, but then it goes over a cliff and gets hung up, and then there’s just a fall out of the back of the truck as it falls 100 feet into the water. But the tailgate wasn’t down so I was talking to the director, “How do you want to get this tailgate down?” And the director said, “Good thinking, I never thought of that. What do you think?” I said, “Well, when he jumps into the back of the truck with the truck moving there’s going to be so much inertia he’s going to get slammed into the back of that tailgate, so why don’t we have it pop open and our hero falls out the back and he’s hanging on with one hand and dragging behind the truck?” So they gave me a drone, helicopters, and some cranes, and all the tools I needed to shoot it and get all the shots I needed of him and the truck sliding around corners and then he managed to climb back in. Of course, we had our guy doing a nice 180 at the edge of the cliff, then he took his foot off the brake and over the cliff he went. That was a challenging sequence but a lot of fun, and it really turned out great.
Awards Daily: You also have a film coming out, Protector of the Land, that you wrote, produced, and directed. What can you tell us about that project?
Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle: Well, you want to know challenging, that’s as challenging as it gets. But it blows my mind because I dream at night a lot, and then I’ll get up and write things down, and the story for this came from a dream I had. I started doing research about drug cartels taking over the drug trade in Alaska. They had been caught by the DEA strapping drugs to women and flying them into Alaska. So the cartel had to think of a new way to get the drugs there. I took the story from there and thought, how would I get the drugs there if that was my job? So I constructed a story where they drop the drugs into a lake in the Yukon and then they skydive in and drag the drugs to shore. Then they put them in backpacks and they’re going to mule them through the wilderness to Alaska. Because the border between Yukon and Alaska cannot be patrolled all the way through that crazy wilderness.
So the mules go through indigenous land and they end up killing an indigenous woman. The community retaliates, calling upon their elders who become shapeshifters and take on the drug cartel. It went from a dream to a script that took me about two years to write, to finding the money and then getting into production. We had some hiccups along the way, getting some money and losing some money, getting it back combined with tax credits, and then we ended up filming it in fourteen days. It was a 110-page script, and a lot of work to cram it into fourteen days. But fortunately, I found the perfect location where I could shoot everything and was just able to move around this 100-acre property. So it was a big challenge, but luckily with my 35 years of experience, I had garnered enough knowledge in every aspect of filmmaking to make something like that work.
Awards Daily: Final thoughts?
Lauro David Chartrand-DelValle: I hope everyone is enjoying Tracker and Shōgun. I know a lot of people are raving about both shows, and I’m really proud to be part of both of them and be able to bring some good action to the screen.
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