The Big Picture

Showrunner David Wiener takes over for Season 2 of Paramount+’s popular adaptation series, Halo, which has received immediate greenlight for Season 2 and is filming in Budapest.
Lead actor Pablo Schreiber, who plays Master Chief, was invested in the development of Season 2, from physical training to understanding the technical aspects of fight sequences.
The second season of Halo showcases improved VFX for the Covenant and utilizes the unseen threat to create tension. Filming action sequences in Season 2 was more efficient compared to Season 1.

The buzz around Paramount+’s popular adaptation series, Halo, has largely centered on the fact that the show switched creative hands, with showrunner David Wiener taking over for Season 2. The second season was nearly immediately greenlit, and once the ball got rolling with filming in Budapest, it was clear to the cast, and especially lead Pablo Schreiber, who plays Master Chief, that this reset would Reach new heights.

In an interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Schreiber’s investment in the show is clear. Like the Spartan leader he plays onscreen, the actor was a rallying force in the development of Season 2, from training physically for his part to understanding the technical side of oners and the creatives’ direction for the narrative arc. During their conversation, they discuss the new look of the Covenant, what it takes to stitch the perfect fight sequences, his hopes for Season 3, and the efficiency of filming on Season 2.

You can check out all of this and more in the video above, or you can read the interview in the transcript below.

Halo Aliens threaten human existence in an epic 26th-century showdown.Release Date March 24, 2022 Creator Steven Kane, Kyle Killen Main Genre Sci-Fi Seasons 2

Read Our ‘Halo’ Season 2 Review

COLLIDER: I’ve seen episodes of Season 2 and I will say congrats. The first two episodes, I will give you a big thumbs up.

PABLO SCHREIBER: Excellent, excellent. We worked hard on some of the tonal shifts. I hope that’s obvious.

The thing that I really took away from it is the Covenant just looks so much more badass this season in terms of you’re scared of them in a way you were not scared of in the first season.

SCHREIBER: Yeah, I think the VFX are much improved for one, and then how they’re handled and shot, I think, is better, too, where they’re always at some distance. They’re in the fog, they’re just out there, the thing you can’t quite see. So that thing of the unseen threat, I think, is used quite well in this season.

Image via Paramount+

Yeah, you can’t go wrong with fog and flashlights.

SCHREIBER: [Laughs] That’s true.

Pablo Schreiber Breaks Down the Oners in ‘Halo’ Season 2, Episode 4

Image via Paramount

One of the things that I learned on set, and Kiki and David confirmed with me just a few minutes ago, is Episode 4 is basically like a oner, but not all the way a oner. When you heard that you were going to be doing something like this, how excited were you, or were you like, “How are we doing this on a TV show?”

SCHREIBER: Yeah, it was probably more of the second one. [Laughs] Well, it’s a combination of both. I was very excited that we were attempting it but I was confused as to how the logistics would pan out. And, not being a director or a cameraman, I don’t have the direct knowledge of how that actually works, how the cuts work, how the stitches work, so it was a really great learning opportunity for me, actually. The director, Craig Zisk, was very confident in his approach and he put a lot of my worries to rest pretty early on by showing me some of the stitched-together footage. So, we did this one really amazing sequence where I think there’s probably three or four long oner shots that are used at different times in the episode.

There’s a great sequence where there’s a fight with an unknown foe, and it’s done in this oner. To do a fight, which is a close-quarters combat fight with a member of the Covenant who’s obviously not gonna be there fighting with me, it’s gonna be stunt people, we had to really use these stitches, the technology of stitching the shots together well. I was so impressed by how they were able to put the stitches together immediately. So, we had one day of shooting where we did basically the whole sequence of this fight, and they were able to show me the whole fight basically by the end of the night. And that kind of set the tone for me where I could see where it was heading and what they were intending, and a lot of my worries were eased.

Prepping To Be a Spartan for ‘Halo’ Takes Months of Training

Image via Paramount

With a TV production schedule, how early on did you start training for that episode? If you don’t mind pulling back the curtain on what you had to do to prepare for that.

SCHREIBER: Well, preparation begins months ahead, but it’s more general physical preparation. I work with my trainer, Eddie Raburn, who’s kind of invaluable to me. At my age, keeping myself where I need to be for this season, we put a few months of prep into putting on a bunch of muscle because I’m a naturally more thin build. And then also kind of keeping it loose and limber and doing enough mobility stuff where I’m able to do these kinds of fast, close-quarter combat fights and not look slow and plodding with the amount of muscle that I put on. So, that work begins months ahead.

Then we get there a few weeks ahead from beginning to shoot, and I start working with the stunt team. I get in there and I start doing general combat training — some boxing, some rolling on the mats with jiu-jitsu, and we start to learn some basic choreography. But the actual choreography for the fights doesn’t come to me until about a week or two before we shoot. Then it’s just really hammering it down, being in there every day, memorizing the choreography. That sequence I was talking about with the close-quarters combat fight, we would shoot versions with the stunt double who I was fighting, and then they’d pull him out and we do the same little short sequence with me fighting the air. Those were the takes that we ended up using, was me fighting air, so then the visual effects go over that shot. So it was a really technical process, but in order to be successful at having those shots where I’m fighting the air look good and be ready for the VFX to be entered into, I have to know that fight like the back of my hand, and it’s hard when you only have like a week or two. On a movie schedule, they get months for prepping for these kinds of things, and we do them quite quickly.

That’s the reason why I can’t wait to see Episode 4. It’s very ambitious filmmaking.

SCHREIBER: Yeah, it really is. And I can assure you, if you like [Episodes] 1 and 2 and felt the new direction, that you’ll love 4. [Episode] 4, it’s really a great episode, and it’ll take an episode or two to kind of recover from that. [Laughs]

Related ‘Halo’ Season 2 Episode 4 Is Wall-to-Wall Action According to Director Director Otto Bathurst says “we learned from Season 1, certainly from the fans’ perspective, it was the action sequences that they really loved.”

Now that you’ve made the first two seasons, I know you learned a lot making the first season, but what did you actually learn making the second season that, if you are fortunate enough to make the third, you’re gonna take with you?

SCHREIBER: The material is key. Starting with a really good script is the most important thing, so I’ll continue to press for that and to advocate for that. There are a number of lessons, story-wise, that I took away that I won’t go into because if we are fortunate enough to make future ones, that will be a conversation between me and the people that make those kinds of decisions, and I wouldn’t want to involve you guys in that.

Has Paramount or anybody involved at the studio level asked you to save any dates in 2024?

SCHREIBER: No, no, but I am under contract until at least April, so we’ll see what they decide before that.

One of the things, though, is you are away — and you’ve talked about it, it’s a year of your life filming — in, I believe, Budapest. Have you asked them at all, “Hey, if we do get to do a Season 3 and 4, is Vancouver an option?” Or is Budapest always the place?

SCHREIBER: [Laughs] I try to stay out of those larger-scale decisions as much as possible because I just don’t know, budget-wise, what it takes to shoot in one place and what it takes to shoot in another, and I wouldn’t even want to. It would just short circuit my brain to have to think about those kinds of logistics. Leave it to somebody else. For me, I made a commitment to this show early on when I accepted it, and I do everything at 100%, so until they tell me we’re not making anymore, I’m ready to go wherever they want, and do whatever is needed to make the best show possible.

I like that attitude a lot. It does feel like after watching the first two episodes, the state of the galaxy in the world of Halo is undone by the Covenant.

SCHREIBER: Things are dire for humanity. Humanity is on the ropes, yeah. The stakes are higher, the threat is more real, the enemy, as they say, is at the gate. So, through the first two episodes there’s a very real chance of risk, and it only escalates in [Episode] 3, and by [Episode] 4, the threat is here and it has to be dealt with.

Filming Action Sequences for ‘Halo’ Season 2 Was Much More Efficient

Image via Paramount

When you think about the sequences and scenes you’ve done in the first two seasons, which one do you think ended up being the back-breaker, the one that you’re like, “How are we doing this?”

SCHREIBER: It’s hard because that question covers so much logistics stuff. So, I would say in the first season, both the Madrigal battle that opens the season and the battle in Episode 5 where the Covenant attacks, finally, and comes to get the artifact. Both of those were these massive sequences that encompassed about a month each, and took us a long time and were these huge things to achieve.

We worked a lot more efficiently in the second season. So, while I think the action feels bigger, it feels more immediate, it feels more intense, it’s because of the point of view that it’s shot from. It’s much more subjective. It’s putting you into the battle with the characters. But in terms of shooting, we were far, far, far, far more efficient. We took a lot less time to shoot action, and shot it quickly, efficiently and to, I think, more spectacular effect. In terms of back-breakers, the two sequences in the first season felt more like back-breakers than anything we did in the second season. The second season, these oners we talked about in [Episode] 4, they felt like a big thing to bite off, but immediately once I saw how we were doing it, it was clear to me they were going to be really effective, and as I said, efficiency sort of won the day.

Halo Season 2 is available to stream on Paramount+. Subsequent episodes premiere every Thursday.

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