Underworld: Blood Wars Set Visit Part 2: Production Designer Ondrej Nekvasil
Heather Buckley
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The vampires vs. werewolves mayhem continues in Underworld: Blood Wars, and so does our report from the film’s set in the Czech Republic. Today covers our in-person exploration of two of the environments in which the ancient war between the monster clans continues.
We were accompanied through the pair of impressive sets by Ondrej Nekvasil, the Czech production designer best known in the U.S. for his work on the movies Snowpiercer and The Illusionist and the television miniseries “Children of Dune.”
The first set belonged to the vampires, their training area complete with a cage. The architecture was both ornate Gothic (the archways) and modern with metal fixtures for weapons in a monochromatic palette. There were areas that contained cushioned tackle gear with chrome werewolf heads to help train vampires for hand-to-paw combat.
In a war between two species and cultures of monsters, contrast is a key tool in the art of visual world-building. Notes Nekvasil, “Vampires are more like noblemen… They are kind of posh in the way that they are dressing, how they are acting, and what they are doing, so it’s like everything that they do is kind of designed: They always have a proper dress. They always wear a proper uniform. They are formal in how they talk to each other. So for us, and we discussed this, vampires are the guys with the style, and let’s say that these guys are kind of noblemen.”
As for the lycans, Nekvasil says, “[They] are more like a gang… so these guys are like gangsters; they don’t care about clothing, about the space where they have storage, and they don’t care about the designs. They are using guns, which they use for everyday, and they care that they are shooting a lot – that’s all. They don’t care about the designs. These guys have a gun, proper holster, properly designed guns, and everything’s done for them…Vampires are more like people who are really thinking about the style of their life. Even the fighting has a style.”
Some of that vampiric style can be quite eclectic and cosmopolitan, as shown in the training facility we were taken through, in which a classical Asian-style martial arts dojo was combined with both European medievalism and the fantastical elements that are the series’ core (for example, the training cage was vertically-oriented to accommodate for the vampires’ ability to fly).
“Because vampires in the story are kind of spread out around the world, so they are working in different types of techniques – for example, take something like the training machines, which are very close to the kung fu training machines. So it’s that kind of mixture between that type of classical kickboxer training machine, which is actually a training figure with a lycan’s face, but it’s a classical kick-box machine in its shape. So this is like a traditional kung-fu training machine, which is also updated and has to do with the old characters using very simple blades almost like a samurai-type. So that kind of mixture is in the movie because we said, ‘Vampires are spread out around the world, and they can use whatever they like.’ But what I said, the whole concept is the vampires in this project are very stylish: Everything that they do, everything [about] how they act, everything [about] how they dress, is very stylish and also how they train – everything is designed for that. Lycans are more rough, like a gangster style. Like a smuggler’s…”
“Some of these locations… there’s no color in this set, so it’s out of that, that we tried to do some colorless sets for the vampires. And there’s more color and more different shapes for the lycans. In the story we don’t see too much of the lycans’ space, but we will see in general it’s a kind of old train station, with old boxcars, and old tracks and motorcycles. It’s really like a gangster’s [lair], smuggling guns and everything that is possible to smuggle – and that’s the way that we’re thinking about the lycans. So that’s complicated in how they are dressing and how they are acting and fighting as well.”
This contrast between the two creature cultures even informs the film’s lighting design: “For the lycans we are using a warmer temperature [of light]. The vampires are more white and more cold than the lycans. The lycans’ [set has] very simple tungsten lights, and this [the vampires’ dwelling set] is more fluorescent and LED, that type of lighting.”
This is Nekvasil’s first outing in visualizing within the Underworld universe, and he strove to make its look fit the series, while remaining distinctive from previous installments: “Actually, it’s Underworld Number 5, so we have to still work with the style of the previous [films], but on the other hand, we are showing new tunnels, new places, so in this way maybe we had a lot of freedom which we created with Anna Foerster, our director, but that actually we were keeping to the style of the costumes, the style of the sets, in a way of the general look of Underworld, but this one we created specific new sets… We decided how this episode was different – this episode is back in Europe, so we said that we would like to have a European feeling to it, so we – actually because some of these [earlier films] were shot in like Vancouver – every one has a different style, and it was slightly driven by the fact of where they’d shoot it and what they want to show, so something that is completely modern work and modern concrete buildings with very spare spaces. We said we’d like to go back to a little bit of the old European style and more ornate and more… the architecture has more details and the set has more details.”
The vampires’ abode in some ways harkens back to classic genre traditions, but with some more contemporary flourishes: “The whole castle is done in the New Gothic style and there is the basement of the space, which is like a training center for young vampires fighting with the lycans, so actually we used the architecture of the old and New Gothic style of the castle and we add new stuff in it, which is like this is the principle we are using all the time in this movie, so we are actually shooting in period locations, but we are always dressing slightly modern. So we have a contemporary story in old-fashioned locations.”
American audiences will their chance get to visit these fascinating environments when Underworld: Blood Wars debuts in U.S. theaters January 6, 2017.
Alongside series star Kate Beckinsale, Theo James (the Divergent series) returns as Selene’s ally David, reprising the role he played in Underworld: Awakening. British actors Tobias Menzies (“Outlander,” “Rome”) and Lara Pulver (“Sherlock”) take on the respective roles of a formidable new Lycan leader and a fiercely ambitious Vampire, and Charles Dance (“Game of Thrones”) again plays Vampire elder Thomas.
Rounding out the film’s cast are James Faulkner (“Game of Thrones”), Peter Andersson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), newcomer Clementine Nicholson, Bradley James (A&E’s “Damien”), and Daisy Head (Fallen).
Anna Foerster directs. The screenplay for Underworld: Blood Wars was penned by Cory Goodman (The Last Witch Hunter, Priest) and based on characters originally created by Kevin Grevioux, Len Wiseman, and Danny McBride.
Synopsis:
Vampire death dealer Selene (Beckinsale) fends off brutal attacks from both the Lycan clan and the Vampire faction that betrayed her. With her only allies, David (James) and his father, Thomas (Dance), she must stop the eternal war between Lycans and Vampires, even if it means she has to make the ultimate sacrifice.
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