Of the trick motorcycle driving, masterful truck steering, skilled fighting and crazy pyrotechnics, the most inventive stunts in Mad Max: Fury Road were probably the ones with “pole-cats.” That’s what action unit director Guy Norris called his stuntmen who climbed and perched atop giant metal poles in sequences that were– surprisingly– inspired by Cirque du Soleil and Babe.
Norris, who worked with Fury Road director George Miller on Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior over thirty years ago, also teamed up with Miller on the family-friendly pig movie. It was a scene in the latter film, says Norris, that got the filmmakers thinking about incorporating metal poles into the action epic Fury Road.
“(In ‘Babe’) there was a street performer that was up a stationary pole,” Norris said. “It was a back lot sequence. I’m not sure it ended up in the movie.”
The scene, which we assume it ended up on the cutting room floor (because we couldn’t find it), inspired Norris and Miller to look into what it would be like to have that street performer’s pole swing. And race 50mph across the desert.
So Norris did some research.
He went to Cirque du Soleil shows around the world and studied the Chinese pole routines. He then had a Cirque performer train Fury Road stuntmen, and then “overtrain” them to make sure the action was “as safe as it can possibly be” without using green screens.
Norris’ team also had to develop the right pole, and landed on one with a high fulcrum that “was like the old fashion water duck statue at people’s desks,” and was balanced by weight at the top and very bottom. Stuntmen pushed and pulled the bottom part of the pole at specific angles with assistance from laser beams, while other performers climbed the poles.
Then, it was a matter of taking the Chinese pole techniques on the road, so to speak. The pole action– complete with fights, climbs, and drivers who dismounted their vehicles to get on the poles– was done was done in one choreographed five-minute-or-so take that was “like one giant live event that allowed George to put the cameras where he wanted.”
{ SOURCE: USA Today | http://goo.gl/ZZEq5D }
