The SFX supervisor for Killers of the Flower Moon shared how the movie benefitted from budget constraints.
When Martin Scorsese’s newest film landed,critics had strong reactions to it.
Across three weekends, the movie only grossed $120 million globally against a $200 million budget.
Even with a lackluster performance, theres plenty to appreciate about whatKillers of the Flower Moonaccomplished.
One of the most bombastic moments in the film is when a house explodes, killing Mollie Burkharts sister.
You do see the explosion, and the house explodes.
I brought up the money factor.
Do you really need to spend that much money for a heartbeat of a second in a film?…
Because you’re talking $275,000, something like that, to build a house and blow it up.
But we did all the fires.
And I felt that looked great.
I didn’t think that blowing a house up would have made that much more of a difference.
Other than yes, of course, it would have been fun.
For some,Killers of the Flower Moonisn’t a movie that requires much SFX work.
So what was McLaughlins job like?
Because all the script said was the Indians were dancing around the oil coming out of the ground.
Well, oil just doesn’t do that in reality."
So my battle most of the time, and my position is, there’s reality on this side.
And then there’s what the director wants to actually show the audience and use to tell his story.
So you have to find that happy medium, sometimes between the two of them.
You do that, what I just described, with every aspect of the film.
So you confirm that you’re on the same page with the director.
The SFX supervisor revealed that they did actuallyshoot the oil up through the dirt:
The oil dirt.
We actually did shoot the oil up through the dirt.
That didn’t make it, which was pretty cool.
Pretty, pretty awesome to watch… Everything else that we did for the film made it.
But in ‘Killers,’ everything that we did in front of camera made it.
Funnily enough, that same sequence is also one of McLaughlins favorite moments on set.
They’re not their characters.
They’re just real people.
You know, they’re Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
No problem here.'
They’re not people you’d like to sit down and have conversations with.
That was one of his biggest stances on the film.
We are doing everything to a tee.
We are doing it where this all happened, where this took place.
We shot in the towns that had happened in.
That’s why we did it in Oklahoma.
He wanted to do it as real as he could possibly make it.
That all came from him.
That didn’t have anything to do with me.
I just had to go to the location and go, ‘Okay, how am I doing this?’
I’ve been in the business a while.
I’ve come across a lot of stuff.
I would have to say… the logistics would have to be the most challenging aspect of this film.
There’s all kinds of other stuff that are there strictly for the movie industry.
Elaborating, he explained how isolated the town they shot in was.
The closest town was Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is 45 minutes away.
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There’s not a lot of films that go through that area.
So the logistics of it.
So, logistically, I would say that was a pain in the butt.
And most of the sets were about an hour away from each other.
So, trying to balance from set to set to set to set to set.
You could only do two in a day.
You spend a couple of hours there.
And by that time, it’s five o’clock at night, and it’s time to go home.
Killers of the Flower Moonis now playing in theaters worldwide.
