Articles

April 23 2010

Awhile back B-D reporter Chris Eggertsen had the chance to visit the set of Kyle Rankin's Nuclear Family, a post-apocalyptic thriller set in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster. While there Chris not only had the opportunity to speak with Rankin and stars Corin Nemec and Ray Wise, he also took on the background role of one of the "Berserkers", a group of murderous scoundrels terrorizing the lead character and his family. Read on for the full set report.

We're not giving the actors any marks, they don't have to like hit tape, and say their lines correctly. It's just like we run the whole scene and they get a chance to just move around and be in the space and get into the moment. And Mike [Mayers] and whoever's running the other camera, they're more like snipers...kind of ‘catch-as-catch-can'. I think it's a really neat way to work. - Director Kyle Rankin

In between vigorously pumping my fists at the edge of a crude fighting ring, yelling things like, “yeah, fuck him up!” as two guys battled to the death in front of me, and mock-punching a dude in a dog pile of flailing aggression, I was starting to feel incredibly butch for the first time in quite awhile. It was all acting, of course, this time (lest we forget my role as Mick the Small-Town Crime Scene Photographer in Jack Perez’s Some Guy Who Kills People) on the set of Nuclear Family, a post-apocalyptic thriller helmed by Infestation director Kyle Rankin. I was playing one of a band of marauding survivors known as the “Berserkers”, an all-male group of murderous scoundrels who go on to terrorize the central family in the story. Earlier, we’d been “dirtied” up by wardrobe and makeup, with facial “scars” expertly applied by special effects makeup artist Mike Measimer.

“I kinda grew up loving ‘Road Warrior’, and ‘Mad Max’, and those post-apocalyptic stories with the lone hero, you know maybe with a mongrel dog with him”, Rankin told me later on. “But I thought there’d be even more pressure on a guy if he had a wife and a daughter with him.”

Director Kyle Rankin's Vlogs #3, #4 & #5

Therein lies the main premise of Nuclear Family, an experimental production Rankin put together on a shoestring budget with a skeleton crew and actors willing to work for very little money. If you’re wondering what I mean by “experimental production”, it’s a term I coined (?) after becoming privy to the open-ended nature of the project. See, even the director isn’t sure what it’s going to end up as. “It’s kind of three things”, said Rankin. “It could be a web series…[or] a TV series…or we might just keep going and end up with a feature. So I don’t really know what we’re doing.” It’s a statement that might strike fear into the heart of any investor, but on set it’s apparent why someone would take a risk on a guy like Rankin. Where many directors I’ve encountered have been prone to unsettling bouts of neurosis and barked orders at their cast and crew, Rankin is a Zen-like sea of calm while orchestrating the intensely physical, frenzied scene in the Berserkers’ camp. In other words, the guy’s a pro. The low-budget production was filming this day in the wilds of Los Angeles’ Topanga Canyon, on a 12-acre plot of land owned by director of photography Michael Mayers (an in-demand television D.P. who also shot Troma’s nuclear-themed Class of Nuke ‘Em High back in the ‘80s).

Today the scene is this: John (Corin Nemec), along with his wife Lynn (who he was in the process of divorcing when the nuclear disaster happened), their young daughter and another man known as The African (Kinsey Packard, Pauline Cohn, and Michael Phillip Edwards, respectively) are captured by the Berserkers in the midst of searching for a lost family member (John and Lynne’s son) and brought back to their camp. After a brutal fight between two of the backwoods rogues, John (played by Corin Nemec of Parker Lewis Can’t Lose and Stargate SG-1 fame) is thrown into the ring to do battle, first with a dwarf Berserker (yep) and then a much larger muscled character who ends up knocking him around pretty badly (props to Nemec the actor for literally taking a beating in the scene – he doubtless went home with a good amount of cuts and bruises).

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