An undeniable Christmas classic, Love Really is crammed with a few of the most memorable and heartwarming scenes in rom-com historical past.
Younger Sam (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) racing through the airport to bid his crush Joanna (Olivia Olson) farewell as she jets off to America? Tear-jerking.
Nevertheless, the airport scene was initially wildly completely different, with 40 stunt performers engaged on an elaborate sequence that noticed Sam swinging his method throughout a specially-built Heathrow terminal in a efficiency worthy of the Olympics.
Stunt coordinator Lee Sheward defined to Metro.co.uk: ‘I feel in whole there have been about 40 stunt males engaged on Love Really and folks take a look at it and go “40 stuntmen on Love Really?”
‘I used to be on it for one thing like 9 weeks which is kind of a prolonged time for a stunt coordinator to be on any manufacturing, not to mention a rom-com [which] isn’t stunty in any respect.
‘Within the movie, there’s somewhat boy [Thomas]. His dad, Liam Neeson, and he are speaking and there’s a throwaway line which is, “I’m off to gymnasium membership, dad,” and within the boy’s bed room on the wall, there’s gymnastics photos.’
Sam is seen swinging throughout the railings (Image: YouTube)
Thomas had two unimaginable stunt doubles (Image: YouTube)
Referencing the airport scene, Lee recalled: ‘We shot at Heathrow terminal 4 for a night, an evening shoot, and three or 4 stuntmen [as security guards] have been working round chasing [Thomas].
‘However the manufacturing really constructed a complete airport terminal in Shepperton Studios which I designed with Jim Clay, the manufacturing designer, to place in isometric bars into the roof construction.
‘We had [the stunt performers] leaping, vaulting, tumbling, going over seats. We had little carts, the bags trolleys, we had them going by.
‘We timed this routine, shot it in items over a few days, however with a whole lot of rehearsal, the place I had two gymnastic doubles for [Thomas] and they might tumble and we’d time it so {that a} cart would simply miss them or folks would chuck newspapers they usually’d vault over their heads, or somersault, they’d run up the escalator which was constructed after which leap off the roof and do that isometric bar routine at 25 toes within the air to flee the safety guards.’
Lee Sheward stunt coordinated the movie (Image: Twitter/LeeSheward)
Nevertheless, regardless of the work that went into taking pictures the scene and constructing a whole airport terminal, director Richard Curtis felt it wasn’t fairly proper.
‘Though he did apologise to me after I noticed him subsequent, Richard Curtis dropped it from the ultimate reduce as a result of he mentioned it didn’t actually really feel like that kind of film,’ Lee defined. ‘So all of the expense, price of constructing and taking pictures all of it isn’t within the movie!’
Fortunately, the deleted scene continues to be out there to look at on-line, and Lee and the workforce’s work didn’t go to waste.
In the meantime, the stuntman, who’s additionally labored on movies together with Sizzling Fuzz, Mission: Unimaginable, and The Fifth Component, was nonetheless exhausting at work on different scenes of the film, for instance ensuring Aurelia actress Lúcia Moniz may safely leap into the lake within the scene with Colin Firth.
‘The opposite stuff, we went to the south of France and did somewhat automotive [stunt],’ Lee recalled. ‘One of many actresses needed to dive right into a pond […] and I had to verify she didn’t hit the underside.
‘[It was] mainly taking care of the actors, the little issues like that,’ he added, declaring that whereas large Mission Unimaginable-style stunts are extra excessive profile, the smaller ones are nonetheless vitally necessary.
‘It’s all nonetheless a part of what we do!’
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