O’Shea Jackson Jr. in Den of Thieves 2: Pantera

The original Den of Thieves was all about the thin line separating insular tribes of cops and robbers in Los Angeles. In the breezier Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, Gerard Butler’s detective crosses that line to join forces with former nemesis O’Shea Jackson Jr. to rob the World Diamond Center in Nice.
The heist franchise represents a line crossing for cinematographer Terry Stacey as well. The British DP began his features career lensing early aught indies (including American Splendor and films with Larry Fessenden, Allison Anders, Brad Anderson and Lisa Cholodenko) before working on a slew of studio romances and comedies. Yet given the opportunity in the Den films, Stacey—a DP also with a pair of Nicholas Sparks adaptations under his belt—proves equally adept at Heat-esque shootouts, Ronin-like car chases and sleek Ocean’s 11-ish larceny.
With Den of Thieves 2: Pantera now out in theaters, Stacey spoke to Filmmaker about shifting into the world of high-octane action films.
Filmmaker: You have been shooting features since the late 1990s, but the first Den of Thieves was such a departure from anything you’d done before. How did you get hooked up with director Christian Gudegast on that film?
Stacey: I’d worked with the line producer Scott Lumpkin on a very different film called Safe Haven and had a good relationship with him. I’d actually worked with producer Tucker Tooley on quite a few other movies as well. They introduced me to Christian and I really loved the script. I was ready to do something with a little more action, something a little darker than what I’d been doing. I had done a lot more stuff like that in television with things like Dexter, but this kind of heist thriller was something I was really excited to do. I really hit it off with Christian and we decided to give it a go.
Filmmaker: Did the kind of things you were getting called for change after the first Den? You shot Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard after that.
Stacey: Kind of. After the first Den I did a great little thriller called The Angel that we shot in Bulgaria, about an Israeli Egyptian spy working with Mossad. Then I ended up doing The Witcher, which has a lot of visual effects. That was a lot of fun, with big sets and a big budget. I did Dead City, which is a spin-off of The Walking Dead that’s kind of a take on Escape from New York.

Filmmaker: The tone and the look of the sequel are a departure from the first Den of Thieves. The palette of the first film was very industrial, a lot of greens and yellows—even the sun in the day exteriors pushed toward the latter. This one feels warmer now that your setting is the South of France. 
Stacey: We wanted that sense that they’re in a different world and fish out of water. We wanted to really sell that European Mediterranean vibe. We ended up shooting in the Canary Islands for the tax incentive, but there’s a lot of places that actually looked very similar to Nice. So, we went with a lot more of a European color, where we push the warmth to really sell that Côte d’Azur vibe.
Filmmaker: Outside of some establishing shots, did you shoot everything on Tenerife in the Canary Islands?
Stacey: There were just a few drone shots really that were in Nice, but everything else was on the island.
Filmmaker: Do they have proper stages there or are you building sets in old warehouses?
Stacey: Even on the first Den we never really shot on a stage. For both movies, it was old converted warehouses or practical locations. On this one, there were things that were slowed down in the beginning of prep because of COVID, and then because an actor was injured. So, Christian and I actually had a lot of time on our own where we would scout and find locations like the Panther garage [that serves as the thieves’ homebase]. That warehouse ended up being not only the main location for the garage, but we also built sets in that space for the vault and the police offices.
Filmmaker: What did you shoot Den 2 with?

Stacey: The Sony Venice 2, which is amazing. It has a [dual] native ISO of 800 and 3,200. You can push that quite easily to 6,000 without getting too much grain. We ended up doing a lot of the night stuff at 3,200. We used the Zeiss Supreme Prime lenses, which are really fast and match really well. They’re also good for close focus. Christian likes very much to be close to actors, so a lot of times it’d be a 35mm or a 29mm right up in the actor’s face. That was a big thing ,because a lot of shots were handheld or in a car with very little space, so we wanted a camera that was small enough and lenses that were close focus. The thing about the Venice 2 is that it has a mode called Rialto where it actually comes apart. So, the brain of the camera is connected with umbilical cords, but the box itself can be free and the operator is holding it almost like a little still camera size. It was great for our car scenes. Christian didn’t want to do greenscreen for our car work and we didn’t really have the option of doing LED screens. We wanted it to feel real, so we shot all that stuff on actual roads—a lot of times with available light or small lights. We would take the windshield off the front of the car and have the operator literally sitting on the dash with this Rialto mode camera and a plexi box around him for sound. Then we would move the camera to the back seat, passenger seat and driver’s side. 
Filmmaker: When you’re doing those types of shots, are you using a Pod car, where the stunt driver is set up on the roof? 
Stacey: We did a mix of things. A lot of the work when the actors [appear to be] driving was a Pod car with the stuntmen driving on the roof. Then we could really be in the car with them as they did these crazy stunts—180s, spins and going in reverse. You can even shoot car-to-car with a Pod as long as you’re not seeing the roof of the car. 
Filmmaker: Both Den films are 2.39. So, it’s just cropped spherical lenses?
Stacey: Exactly. We did look at and tested anamorphic, and we both loved it, but it’s very limiting. Only certain anamorphic lenses have that sort of close focus. A lot of times you have to be three feet away, and on top of that we knew we had a lot of action scenes where we might need four or five cameras. Sourcing that when everything came from Madrid and we were shooting on an island, it’s kind of hard, whereas the Zeiss Supremes are much easier to find. 
Filmmaker: The Venice 2 can shoot up to 8K. What resolution did you shoot at? 
Stacey: Pretty much at 6K, which worked for everything in the crop. I know for a lot of people it seems like the number of Ks is the big thing, but 6K was plenty. There were quite a few visual effects shots we needed, things like background extensions. One scene that we needed a lot of help with is when they cross over the roofs on the pole vaults. We lost that location and we ended up having to do it on the roof of our studio in the middle of nowhere. We tried greenscreens, but they weren’t big enough and there was wind, so we ended up having to replace a lot of the backgrounds.

Filmmaker: So, for those backgrounds you just left them as-is on the day without any greenscreen and then VFX replaced them in post?
Stacey: We ended up going through Company 3 in Toronto and had an amazing visual effects supervisor called Geoff Scott, and he basically replaced the whole background. We did have greenscreens below for an angle where you’re looking straight down on them. For that high angle, we shot plates for the street, but for the background we didn’t have anything. They just comped that in.
Filmmaker: Obviously those guys are on wires that you painted out, but how high up are they at that location?
Stacey: Two, maybe three stories. They had harnesses and we did wire removal. It was the stunt guys going across, but Gerry and everyone else would still have to do the final bit.
Filmmaker: Were there already two buildings next to each other like that at your warehouse or did you have to construct some sort of façade for one of them?
Stacey: The higher wall was our actual stage and the rooftop they leave from was smaller, almost like a garage. The production designer Sébastien Inizan built it more into a roof and added a bit of a side wall. It’s a tricky space, because it’s sort of on a hill in the middle of nowhere, and it was really hard to get lights around. We ended up having to put a lot of big construction cranes far away with soft balloon lights just to get enough ambient light. It was hard to get an edge light, although looking back on it now, if we’d known we were just going to replace the background anyway, we could have just had a big light on a stick back there [in the shot].

Filmmaker: Tell me about this crazy set up. Is this for when they spin around in the tunnel or when they crash in the mountains?
Stacey: The mountains. This was on location, and we tried to match the angle of the light [from the stunt of the car crashing]. The car is actually on a gimbal, so it spins around.
Filmmaker: If you look on top of the car you see the camera body rigged, and you can see the umbilical cords leading in to the vehicle where you’re in Rialto mode with an operator inside.
Stacey: Exactly. This was actually done with the actors, and you can feel the whole world spin. Then we shot the plates to try to match that same swerve. 
Filmmaker: In terms of lighting, is that some sort of mirror or shiny board that you’re bouncing light into?
Stacey: Yeah, because we wanted a really harsh shadow that felt like it was coming from the sun. I think it was a 6K into the mirror. 
Filmmaker: And that’s just a frame of diffusion for the actual sun?

Stacey: Yeah, because it was a little bit too harsh. 
Filmmaker: Where did the idea come from to attach the greenscreen to the car with speed rail so it would rotate with the vehicle when you spun it?
Stacey: At first, the car was going to be independent of the green, then we thought, “That’s silly. It doesn’t have to be.” So, we rigged it so it would just spin with the car and the car could spin at quite a speed. We had a great grip team. Juan Bueno was our key grip. I loved his name—like Johnny Good. (laughs)
Filmmaker: Where did you shoot the elevator shaft sequence at the World Diamond Center? 
Stacey: That was a tricky discussion. We were going back and forth on where to build it. We tried to build it in an old silo. It didn’t work; we didn’t have the stage space to build it in there. So, this was actually the elevator shaft in our warehouse location.
Filmmaker: The old warehouse you built your sets in had an elevator and that’s what you used?  
Stacey: Yeah. It was kind of dangerous because even though it was only two stories deep, there was still a drop. All the actors and stunts had to be wired up. We put greenscreen on the bottom and top to extend it and added lights in there. It was tricky to work in that real space, because it wasn’t like we could pull walls or anything. It was so tight. Luckily we had a great stunt team. We had a camera on a wire on a Mini Libra remote head so we could go down parallel with the actors or move from looking down on them or pulling them. We had to do it in a lot of pieces with closeups of Nick [Butler] and Donnie [Jackson] and then the stunt people would actually do the full, high speed moves down or up. 

Filmmaker: Are those just Astera tubes you put in the shaft?
Stacey: Yeah, Astera tubes in a housing to make them look a little more industrial.
Filmmaker: Let’s talk about the scene between Butler and Jackson on the latter’s balcony in Nice. It’s kind of like Den 2’s version of the Heat restaurant scene. Is that mainly lit by the practicals over the table where they sit?
Stacey: Yeah, pretty much. The practical that was already there was really harsh, so I asked our production designer Sébastien [Inizan] to make it softer and more directional with lampshades so that it’s more of a pool coming straight down. Then we had Asteras for an edge and a small, soft light with a Chimera just off to the side just to get more of an eye light.
Filmmaker: When they move over to the edge of the balcony, I saw a behind the scenes photo where you’ve got a small light armed out over the edge to hit them. 
Stacey: We couldn’t always use that arm because sometimes it just got in the way. So, down on the ground floor we also bounced some Maxi Brutes into the wall of the building next door and that gave us a really soft, warm bounce. 
Filmmaker: A classic heist movie scene is all the crooks gathered around a table to go over the plan. What are the challenges of a scene like that, where you’re covering six or seven stationary characters?
Stacey: Those are always really tricky and a nightmare for the editor. We basically put two dollies back-to-back with a Steadicam rig on one and a Ronin on the other. The Ronin was on a wider lens, like a 40mm, and then the Steadicam was on a 65mm. We would just go around and around constantly but change the timing a little bit. It worked and the good thing about it for the actors was that we could just keep shooting with very little adjustment in between. The lights above them were Astera tubes, which you can control on your phone. We added a little atmosphere, but after that everything was just constantly moving.
Filmmaker: The movie opens with diamonds being stolen off a plane at the airport in Antwerp by thieves disguised as police officers. There’s a cool bit where the cop cars roll out of cargo containers and speed over to the plane’s hangar.
Stacey: The hangar was actually quite dim, but it already had a sort of blue/green feel, and we thought it was nice to come out of the warmth of the sodium [of the cargo container area] and into that light, where it’s almost glowing. We added a lot of Vortexes in the ceiling of the hangar and that pretty much lit it all. That was a tricky scene. It was the first scene that we shot in the movie, so you’re working with a new crew for the first time. We also only had the airport for a certain amount of time from, I think, 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. Every time we came in to scout, we had to go through security. It was also really hard to hide the crew when we shot. We had buses that were like airport buses that everyone was hiding in. It was exciting to shoot, but definitely pretty challenging. 
Filmmaker: For that shipping yard, did you have to live with the existing practicals for the wide aerial shots?
Stacey: We did kill some of the practicals. There were some really nasty metal halide super white ones that we actually turned off. We did get control on some of them, but to be honest we shot this whole sequence in one night and we problems with getting the cars out of the ramp. We lost a lot of time with that, but then we managed to do a lot of stuff with the drone, then also with a pursuit arm and handheld in the cars as well. 
Filmmaker: Can you put the Venice 2 on a drone or is it too heavy?
Stacey: You can. It’s called an Alta heavy lift drone, and it actually fits the Venice. It’s amazing. 
Filmmaker: To finish up, tell me about the car shootout speeding through the mountain tunnel.
Stacey: Stunts would do the first move with free driving cars. Then we would do it with the Pods, specifically with Gerry and O’Shea. Then we’d do a pass with the stunt guys with an Ukraine arm. Specific moves had to be done in pieces. For the 180 spin where the car goes backwards, the stunt guys could do the spin, but to go backwards required another rig called a biscuit rig that allowed the car to go backwards while Gerry could lean out the window and shoot. But the trickiest thing about that scene was that we lost the tunnel location and [the new tunnel] we got was so short that we could only shoot for less than a minute each run. So, you’d have to repeat everything and try and avoid seeing the night outside, because it was supposed to be like the sun’s just coming up. We also tried to add a bit more atmosphere, but with the tires already squealing, it got too smoky and we had to wait for it to clear out. We used a lot of existing lights in the tunnel, but a lot of them were broken. So, I was just outside the lip of the tunnel with the DIT constantly adjusting the iris on the camera with a remote, trying to remember where I needed to open up a little because of a broken light or when I had to close down because suddenly those lights got bright again. It was quite amazing, the orchestration of all the elements.