It’s not often the YouTube algorithm surprises me but a few months ago, it did by showcasing a fan film called Logan The Wolf on my homepage. Perhaps it was the banner image or because I’m a massive fan of Wolverine, but I clicked it. I was not only wildly surprised but massively entertained and impressed. So I reached out to the film’s director, Godefroy Ryckewaert to get some insight on this film’s creation. He’s a busy man but he carved out some time for us and for you to get some insight behind the project. Enjoy!

ScreenHub Entertainment: Once again, congratulations on the release of Logan The Wolf. It kicked so much ass. As a fan of films like The Raid, I felt satisfied. I wanted to know, what inspired the crossover between Viking and X-Men? It’s such a radical departure for Logan, but one I would love to see more of.

Godefroy Ryckewaert: I always wanted to make an action piece with a (fantasy) Vikings. And during my work on The Witcher prequel, “Blood Origin”, one of my friends, Maxime Ecoiffier who actually plays Logan, sent me a picture of him photoshopped as Wolverine. It clicked at that moment and I thought that putting Wolverine in a Viking era would be really cool and would totally suit the character’s violence.

ScreenHub Entertainment: What stood out to me the most was the action choreography and cinematography. Many superhero films tend to use shaky cam, CGI, or quick cuts but you had these amazing long cuts and didn’t shy away from the violence either. What was it like making such visceral action scenes with so many stunt performances, especially since “Wolverine claws” isn’t something that’s studied too often in fight choreography, unlike say, swords or axes.

Godefroy Ryckewaert: It was a bit challenging to choreograph with claws because they are actually not so many movements you can do without looking too choreographed, especially in the context of the film. If Logan was a ninja, it would be okay to have fancier and more intricate moves, but not when he’s a brutal Viking.
I also wanted the choreography to have an authentic approach to sword fight. That’s why I had the WarLegends choreograph and perform in it as the enemies. They are stuntmen specialized in fencing and all kinds of sword fights. They read old essays and articles about how it was done back then and try to adapt it to the screen. I just gave them my ideas for the big kills and they created around that.
In that sense, it was easier and more satisfying to shoot the fight as all the fighters were stuntmen, even the main actor Maxime who plays Logan.

In the film, we also threw a lot of our frustration out. In big production projects, when I work as a fight choreographer, it’s quite common that the choreography will be shortened and the violence toned down because they want a larger audience to be able to watch it. And a larger audience means more money.
So in that short film, we just did what we wanted, with the means we had. We were creatively free to do whatever we wanted as long as it wasn’t too ambitious… even though it was too ambitious. haha.

SH: Fan films, by their nature, are passion projects and people do them for the fun of it, not for profit. How did you balance preparing this short, bearing in mind choreography and VFX/previz, while also keeping up with your career? Because this looks like it took a lot of work and a lot of love went into it.

GR: It took us a few months to prep it. I had a lot of free time during one of my work and I used that to prep the film. While I was working, the WarLegends were remotely working on the fights back in France. I had the whole film prevized as well (a previz is a previsualization of the scene that is done without make-up, costume or any sort of dressing like you would have on the real set but that still has the camera angles and action planned). So I basically did the film twice.

The guy who plays the main hunter is also one of my colleagues I’ve worked with during the years as a fight choreographer. Even now I’m working with him on a Jason Statham film. He’s very good with VFX so he was the VFX supervisor on that project and did 98% of them. Knowing my style of action and shooting, he knew how to prep for the film. Having the previz also helped that. You know what’s coming so it’s easy to do tests and make changes on set so that it works best.

And then when we finished the job we were on, we shot the film in 5 days and then got into post-production, which took us 2 years because we were so busy with our career as well.

SH: Violence aside, what do you think is holding mainstream superhero films back from doing longer takes with wider shots?

GR: It can be a mix of a few things. It can be that there is not enough time, so they just shoot all they can as fast as possible but then the quality isn’t there. It can also be that the director and DoP don’t know how to shoot action and they’ll do it like they learned, which is getting coverage by filming as many angles as possible and seeing what happens in the edit. So they just shoot masters of all of it and will figure it out in post-production. It never really works because all those angles can not work for the entire fight. The camera should be a part of the choreography. The action should work for the camera and the camera should work for the action. It’s complementary.

Also in movies usually actors don’t know how to fight so you have to hide that fact by doing quick cuts in the edit and shaking the camera on set. It’s kind of getting better now but usually, the actors still don’t get enough training (or don’t want to train). With the rise of “8711” productions (John Wick, Extraction, etc…) the standard is higher now and action is given to people who actually know what they are doing.

Brad Allan, who was one of the best action directors, had productions face replace actors. So the stunt double does the action and they just put the actor’s face on him. That way, you don’t worry about having an actor that can’t move as perfectly as needed.

So I think it’s a mix of all of that. Actors not not able to move well and directors not having a clue of how to shoot action can lead to a really bad result.

SH: What can you tell me about the shoot itself? You and your team seemingly spared no expense on this project, with great costumes, VFX and makeup all around, did you face any challenges and how did you end up with such a short with such high-looking production values?

GR: The film was self-financed and people working on it were volunteers. Maxime and I put the money in, we surrounded ourselves with talented and trustworthy people and we went for it. Over the years I met great people that have great skills and are so nice to work with.

It was the first time that I made such a challenging project in terms of its artistic vision and its logistics. Make-up, hair and costume had to be looking as good as possible. More than 10 HMU artists work on that every day. We had a lot of VFX to do and prep that involved both SFX and VFX. It was shot during winter in a forest far from Paris so everyone had to be accommodated. We used a DSLR camera and we didn’t have any light equipment or big camera rigs (just a small steady-cam but most of it was shot handheld). We tried to add smoke but the smoke machines we had were not good enough so we ended up not using them. But we were lucky enough to have clouds during most of the shoot, which is better for color grading and getting diffused light. All of it was a challenge that I couldn’t have overcome without such a great team.

You could see everyone was so happy to work on something different that is usually produced in France (we don’t do much action or fantasy films). I wish we could have gone even further into the details of all that but with the resources we had, I’m still impressed by the work the team achieved and I’ll never be grateful enough for that.It was a great adventure with great people and I’m very proud of what we all did.

Thanks for your time Godefroy! We hope you enjoyed this Q&A!