The first season of Daredevil debuted on Netflix this weekend, kicking off Part 1 in Netflix’s ambitious four-part Marvel experiment. One of the most memorable moments of the season took place at the end of Episode 2, when — and I’ll try to do this in a way that dances around potential spoilers because the show is pretty good and worth watching for yourself — Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) dons his Daredevil get-up and beats the hell out of a buncha dudes in a hallway.
One of the things that made it so cool, in addition to the part where a blind ninja lawyer takes down half of the mob with his goddamn bare hands, is the fact that the whole scene was done in one extended three-minute shot. It’s not exactly that insane six-minute tracking shot from the first season of True Detective, but it’s still pretty impressive from a technical standpoint, and really fun to watch.
Philip J. Silvera, the stunt coordinator, spoke with Observer about the scene.
I think this was what started defining the show for me, and the weight that was being played into it. Phil Abraham was directing, and it was always scripted that this scene was going to be a one-shot. For me in my head, with the time, we had, I said let’s do wipes and we’ll be able save things. But Phil challenged us to do a pure one-shot, which really just brought a grounded real feeling to the whole thing. We were able to slow down the fight, and just have this raw, animalistic feeling happening.
Yes, but how? How?
No cuts. We did do a few Texas Switches between our actor and our stunt double, but it was purely a one shot fight. There were no cuts in that fight. Every performer, the actors and the stunt doubles, were in there performing that fight full on. I’d say there was a minimum of 105 beats, and they killed it.
Yup, agreed. Definitely killed it.
