Geekscape Interviews: ‘Momentum’ Director Stephen Campanelli on Clint Eastwood and Bad Guys You Love

Momentum, releasing this weekend and starring Olga Kurylenko (Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), James Purefoy (Rome), and Morgan Freeman (Like Everything Ever), is Campanelli’s directorial debut, but I wouldn’t call him a rookie. The Montreal native worked with Clint Eastwood for twenty years, starting with The Bridges of Madison County until American Sniper. You don’t work with someone like Eastwood for twenty years without picking up a thing or two.

“I mean learned everything from him, pretty much,” Campanelli explained. “He’s such an amazing director and he’s such a powerful story teller and that’s what I learned.”

Momentum entered production halfway through Eastwood’s American Sniper. “When I was leaving, he gave me words of advice. He said, ‘Just make sure you have a great script and you’ve got a great cast and you’ve got a great crew. That’s 90% of your job this time. Once you’ve got that…’ Then he paused. ‘Oh yeah, don’t forget you have to get a great caterer, because the crew needs to eat.’ Yeah.” I hear Campanelli laugh.

“People gotta eat!” I tell him.

“People have to eat and if it’s crap they’ll complain and if it’s good they’ll be on your side. So that was part of it. He’s got a great sense of humor, but what I learned the gentle nature of working with the cast. He empowers them, which a lot of directors don’t do. A lot of directors I find intimidate their cast and then the cast get a little on edge. He likes to create a very natural for the cast.”

Momentum, shot in South Africa for a modest $20 million, stars Olga Kurylenko as Alexis Farraday, a hotshot heist specialist caught in a game of cat and mouse with a ruthless assassin (James Purefoy) and his team of guns working for one of the most powerful men in the United States. Seeking revenge against the assassin for the death of her friends, Alexis sets out to uncover the truth and make it out alive.

I interviewed Momentum‘s director about his first time sitting behind the camera as a director armed with his visual instinct to create what I think is one of the most arresting indie action movies of the year.

Geekscape: What made you choose an action movie for your directorial debut? Because actions movies are very complicated to craft. So what made you take it on, on your first go?

Campanelli: Yeah, in hindsight, it maybe wasn’t the wisest decision but I always jump in feet first. I never shy away from the battle or a challenge. So when I read the script, obviously I went, “Wow, there’s a lot of action. There’s a lot of stuff that happens here.” I am a big fan of the genre, so I was like, “Wow, I’ve watched so many of these over the years, now I get to do one.”

So I am very, very blessed and I thought, “Well I might as well jump in and I got to work with one of my best friends.” He’s a photographer, Glenn McPherson. He’s done a bunch of big budget action movies and I thought, ” Wow, this guy will help me a lot too.”

Being on set for 25 years and doing a mixture of all these Clint Eastwood movies, action movies and all sorts of genres, I was kind of prepared for it, because I kind of knew where to put the camera and I think a lot of directors don’t come from a camera back ground or a very visual background. So I would rehearse with the stunt coordinators. I would say, “So what’s going to happen here?” Then they would tell me and I would say,”Okay great.”

I just instantly knew where to put the camera, so it wasn’t like… I’ve been on sets with newer directors, that have no clue where to put the camera and either I would suggest or the director’s photographer will. I was kind of doing it on my own, “Lets put one here, another here, here.” We used go-pros and stuff, because it was action. The more coverage you got the better and the more dynamic it will be. I got very lucky with an incredible editor, Dubbie White, really made this film another dimension. He was so incredible. I just thought, “I’m going to jump in and do it.” I did.

You said your camera background allowed you to know, way ahead of time, where to put the camera. How else did your cinematography background influence you?

Campanelli: So as I read scripts in general, I’m always picturing the theme itself and I kind of picture where the camera is going. So I was very well prepared in production and all the texts counts and meetings with the crew. I told them exactly where I was going to put the camera. Even though, it was invisible space, so there was nothing there. I was like,” So I’m going to put this here. This is going to here. The guy is going to stand here.” So I was very good at that and I would say as a camera operator, but more so as a director, because no one is going to ever read the script, that I read and the cast read and all of that.

So my job as a director, especially, is to take those words off the page and put them on the screen. So the audience, that’s never going to read the script understands what we all went thought reading it, like the emotions and the visual nature of it. So as a camera operator, that kind of prepared me, because I do that all the time, is I take a camera and point it in the direction of a story and let it come to provision.

But obviously as a camera operator, I don’t get a lot the decisions of the performance and things like that. That’s the director’s job. I definitely enjoyed the extra aspect of working with the cast, getting the nuance of performances and just being able to tell the story in a more direct way, from being a camera operator, but that definitely helped me out. Also coming from the crew, I know what the crew goes through in making a movie. It’s not easy, it’s hard. So I definitely wanted to empower my crew and to really say, “Hey, were all part of this movie. Let’s make this together.” And we did. I was very fortunate of a great crew.

You mentioned Clint Eastwood likes to craft a particular atmosphere on set in order to achieve the best performances out of his actors. Do you do that as well?

Campanelli: I’ve done that as a camera operator too. I create like a nice cocoon for the actors of protection, of giving them judgement on their performance sometimes or just that I got the shot, so I know what I’m doing technically. So don’t feel afraid of screwing up a take, because I’ll get it, but if you give me a good performance I’ll make sure we have it and it’s not ruined. I think some camera people sometimes, “Oh I didn’t get that one.” And it was their performance of a lifetime. I’ve learned that from set too, because we shoot all the rehearsals, mostly on the first takes. So we have to be really prepared, so does the cast. So we all rise to the occasion and the challenge. So far it has been working out great. I’m trying to follow in his footsteps.

Speaking of performances, you have a very interesting cast. Olga really stood out to me, as there are not enough action heroines in Hollywood. What can you tell about the creation of her character and what can you tell me about Olga’s performance?

Campanelli: Yeah, she did. It was amazing. Like you said earlier, I am a big fan of female heroine movies. I just love them. I think there needs to be more of them. I think they are so entertaining to watch and it’s like putting an ordinary person, into an extraordinary circumstance. I just love that kind of situation, because the audience puts themselves in that situation too. They’re like, “What would I do if that happened to me?” I just really, really love that.

Olga, I worked with her on a movie called Phantom Psychopath, a few years back. I was very charmed by her, obviously by her beauty, but also because she’s just a nice, gentle, warm person. I thought I’d really like to work with her someday, so I put her in my mental bank and thought, “Well if I get a movie…”

When I read the script it was funny, because she just came to life in it and I thought, “Oh my God, this would be perfect for her.” So luckily we got it to her and she liked it. She’s done a lot of diverse roles, but this was her first lead action-thriller and she couldn’t of been better. She was so I banged her up and bruised her and cut her and she was amazing. She was like, ” Look Steve what you did, I got a big bruise because of you.” And I’m like, “Well it was worth it, because you did a great job.” She did a lot of her own stunts. Obviously the super dangerous ones, she didn’t do, but she did do like 80 percent or 90 percent of her own stuff, because she wanted to and I wanted her to also. She was such a trooper. It was cold sometimes and she never complained. She was such a treat to work with and I would work with her on anything again.

I’d say with James Purefoy, too. He played such a great evil guy, but yet he’s just so charming. I saw him in The Following and said, ” That’s it, he’s my bad guy. We got to have him.” Luckily he agreed and we got him.

What can you tell me about working with Morgan Freeman?

Campanelli: I’ve done three movies with him as a camera operator and we’ve gotten along very well. We’ve became like friends and he said to me, “When you get a movie and you get to direct it. If you have a role for me, I’d love to do it.” I said, ” Okay great.” Then this came out and I read the part of the senator’s role and I went, “Oh my god, Morgan would be perfect for this.” Luckily he agreed to do it, so I was very blessed. I was like, “Wow, my first movie and I got three of these top notch actors. I’m really, really lucky.”

Was he intimidating at all, to coach on set or was he very approachable?

Campanelli: Morgan is very funny. He is very intimidating on set, but he is a practical joker. He loves to joke with you, so he will intimidate you, but in a funny way. In the first movie, I was so intimidated by him and I thought he didn’t like me, but he was doing the opposite. He was really liking me, because he was intimidating me so much. He enjoyed doing it. So knowing him all these years, I felt very comfortable around him around him. You could tell the crew was like, “Oh my God, that’s Morgan Freeman.”

He commands so much respect and he’s such a very talented actor. We were great. We were very comfortable around each other. I had some notes for him, he had a couple for me and we just collaborate great on everything. He was so incredible at his lines, he remembered everything instantly. He very rarely needs another take, unless we have a technical problem or he cracks a joke in the middle of something. It was a real treat to work with all three on this cast. Like I said earlier I am really lucky to have such a great cast for my first movie.

James Purefoy as the villain, I agree he’s so charming, but he’s also, like, I just want to destroy him. He is so awful. He beats up a kid! What influenced that character? Was there anything from other books or movies that went into that character? Or was that just a perfect storm of you and James Purefoy putting your heads together?

Campanelli: Right, right. That’s a good question. It probably is an amalgamation of a lot of other bad guys. James put a lot into the character, in terms of being so prepared and have some really nice notes about his character. I trusted the simplicity in that. When I first met him, we talked about his character and I said, “You know you are very evil, but I still want to make you charming. That the audience can kind of secretly, in their subconscious, cheering for you.”

We hate him, but kind of want to be him sometimes too.

Campanelli: In real life he’s like that too. He’s so charming and he’s such a great guy personally, that it transfers to his characters. He was so great in Rome as Marc Anthony and everything he’s done is brilliant. So we collaborated the whole scene, like that interrogation scene, till the end. He and I collaborated for weeks on that, just trying to get the dialogue just right, just perfect for that scene. When we finished, we were both exhausted from working, but we’d get together and talk about it, try to make it great. I’m very, very proud of that scene. So it was just a really good mutual effort on our part.

One of the things that really sold me about Momentum, it happens right from that start when you have the robbers in the black suits and LED lights. They look like really evil Power Rangers.  How did those costumes come about? Who came up with that idea and why did you go there as opposed to just your traditional ski masks and what not?

Campanelli: You almost answered it. I didn’t want to do anything traditional. I didn’t want to ski masks. Of course you’ve seen the Point Break robbers, you’ve seen all these things. I just wanted something different.

I’m not a very good artist, but I was sketching what I wanted and I described to the costume designer and props people, what I wanted. With weeks of just sketches, things kind of came to that final costume. I said, “I want a little bit of steampunk, with the glasses kind of thing.” I wanted texture, so we found this neoprene, not a normal neoprene, we found something with texture. We found this other neoprene that had all these microscopic holes in it. The light will catch that hole. So I’m a very visual person, being from the camera department, so everything in that costume was for a visual reason. That’s why, I wanted to signify the different colors so we know who is who. We had the red, the green, the blue and the purple. So I wanted to make sure the audience to kind of knew who was seeing what, because all of their voices were very similar, with the voice box. That was the whole reason to hide Olga’s character, obviously.

That was in the script originally, with the voice boxes. I thought, “Let’s take it to the next level and make these guys creepy and scary. Let’s open the movie with a bang.” That was my whole thing. I really wanted the first five minutes to grab peoples attention and go for the ride for the whole 90 minutes.

You did. Like I said, I’m a total nerd and I thought, “These guys are like evil Power Rangers. This is awesome!”

Campanelli: That’s great, I’m glad you got that.

I understand that you want to turn Momentum this into a franchise. Hell, the word Momentum means to keep going.

Campanelli: To keep on going exactly.

Where do you see the story going from here? [Warning: Spoilers!]

Campanelli: I don’t want to give away to much, but I definitely have some ideas for these people and Olga is so excited. She’s really hoping this movie does well, because she really wants to do a sequel too. She loved the character. It was a very sad day when we called a final wrap. It was a very tough movie physically. It was really hard to make, because we had a really short time to do all this action I wanted to do. I didn’t want to do anything cheaply. I really wanted to make things big. It was a small South African movie that I wanted to turn into a big Hollywood movie.

I think I achieved it, but the last thing we see is obviously is going off on the plane. Then I had an idea that she’s so great with getting away with things, that in the sequel, obviously it’s really easy to track a plane. Morgan Freeman’s character, the senator, can easy track the plane wherever it lands. They arrest her.

So I have an idea, where they would be flying, obviously, and she has that computer hacker guy sitting next to her. He hacks the plane, when another plane is crossing their airspace and basically now they are following the wrong plane. Then now they don’t know where Olga landed. That’s how the story would start. She’s in a different country right now. They raid the wrong plane. They go on board, they try and find her. She’s not there and that’s how that would start. Then after that I have some other ideas, but I don’t want to give to much away.

I’m hoping it does well. People should go see the movie to see where it goes next. Then we could increase Morgan’s character a lot more and really bring him into the fold. So I think it would be an exciting ride for all of us.

Momentum is out now in theaters, On Demand, and iTunes.