Doug Liman Blog: In Covert Affairs, “Emotionally Resonant” and “Action-Packed” Are Not Mutually Exclusive

Share on Facebook posted 08-25-10 by Doug Liman

There’s a capricious nature to our business that never ceases to amaze me. I can pin my career on my chance meeting of Jon Favreau at a party. A few weeks ago I found creative inspiration for Covert Affairs, from a casual conversation I had with my friend Paul. I was in LA meeting with the writers about the finale and was talking with Paul about how Annie (Piper) was going to be 40 stories up on an sky-scraper under construction and deciding between the two men she loves and who to trust. Paul casually said, “Shouldn’t she have to make a leap of faith?” That little off-the-cuff comment became the guiding principle of the entire finale sequence and Annie does in fact take a leap of faith.

Since then I’ve been to Toronto to work with Alan Kroeker, who is directing the Covert Affairs season finale episode. We have an amazing Line Producer, Sean Ryerson, who has been performing miracles all season, but the greatest miracle he’s performed is that he’s been stashing money all season from every episode so that we could do a really amazing season finale episode. For the finale we’ve had a crew filming in Sri Lanka for about three weeks and we even got permission to fly Eion Bailey who plays Ben Mercer, to Sri Lanka to shoot. Normally the way we’ve been doing the show, we send a crew to these foreign countries but the stars stay in Toronto, both for insurance reasons and schedule demands. Flying the character Ben Mercer ups the level of realism. Since Bourne Identity it’s been important to me to give the audience the experience of traveling to these exotic locations and not fake it, but the exciting challenge is how to use visual effects to integrate the two shoots — Toronto and the exotic location — into one coherent episode. 10 years ago, we’d have to shoot 2nd unit in the foreign country and your actors would always be inside on a set. You’d see a double of Piper cross the street in Paris and Piper herself would walk into a building that would actually be in Toronto. Now, we have a great visual effects team whose members travel as part of our foreign shooting unit, and we’ve built a real institutional knowledge on our unique style of shooting so we can do exterior scenes in these foreign countries with our actors, who are actually in Toronto.

The season finale involves a massive motorcycle chase through the streets of Columbo and a finale fight sequence, 40 stories above the city, on an under-construction skyscraper. This all involves coordinating an action shoot in Sri Lanka with an action shoot in Toronto using stunt doubles in both cities and actors in Toronto (that obviously we don’t have in Sri Lanka.) When all is said and done, we ourselves won’t be able to remember what was shot in Toronto and what was shot in Sri Lanka with many of the shots will be digitally composited to include elements from both environments.

Whenever I’m working with a Covert Affairs director, I try and impart that the action can be about character and about story — it does not have to be gratuitous. So when I showed up last Sunday in Toronto for the finale fight sequence, we were reviewing the two simultaneous fights that are going on – like the finale of a fireworks show — and one of the things that became clear to me is that if we’re going to be seeing three different characters, who we’ve been following all season, engage in fighting simultaneously, that’s a chance to learn something about their personalities or payoff something about their personalities. Two people aren’t going to fight the exact same way. When I got there, two of the fights were very similar, so we sat down and had a conversation about how each character fights and how we could use their personality to inform the fight. I feel as if most people don’t take action that seriously, action is action, a fight’s a fight, but I’m really proud that to the bitter end of the season, we’ve never lost the focus that every fight informs something about our characters and as a result, moves the story forward. We all take a leap of faith when committing to a project and ultimately, I think this finale sequence will end up being one of the most exciting piece of film that I’ll be involved with shooting. It’s extremely emotionally resonant.