Maxance Vincent
Philip Silvera has been a part of the Daredevil family ever since the show began to air on Netflix in 2015, and came back to be a part of Daredevil: Born Again, after a creative overhaul during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. In returning to the series almost ten years after the first season aired, the supervising stunt coordinator and second unit director of the series explained to Awards Radar on Zoom that showrunner Dario Scardapane and executive producer Sana Amanat made it very easy for him to come back and craft some great action setpieces, based on the new direction the show now had:
“The tone they wanted to set was very specific about returning to that world within that same continuity and evolving where the characters have grown over the past seven or eight years since you last saw them. That was pretty easy for me, from my point of view, because if we return to that world, that’s exactly what I know. I’ve grown as an action director since then, so it’s easy to slide right back into it, with newer, fresher eyes.”
Working with directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead was also easy for Silvera, who said that it was great to “sit, talk, design, and come up with ideas. They have such a unique artistic point of view on the world that just adds such a layer of texture to so many different moments and shots.”
One of the most significant aesthetic hallmarks of the television series is that each season will contain an “oner,” where Daredevil will fight a horde of bad guys as the sequence is conceived to make it look like it was filmed in one continuous take. The first episode of Daredevil: Born Again opens with a one-take confrontation between the titular character and Bullseye, after Foggy Nelson is shot.
In crafting the sequence, Silvera explains that the team never compares this specific one-take to previous ones. Rather, “it’s how we tell the story for this moment, specifically for each character. I’ve always tried to do that with each scene. How do we design an action scene for that character at this moment? That’s the secret to it all. Justin, Aaron, Dario, and Sana had all thought this would be what they wanted to do before I even joined the show. Justin and Aaron had this vision for it to feel like this constant pullback, which they dubbed the train tracks of fate, because with Foggy’s death, it was always just going to be leading to that impending doom of what was going to happen, and Matt crossing the line.
So once we have these conversations, we go into the design of the characters and the moments of the sequence. It’s setting up a scenario that feels right and is never forced for the characters and the environment around them. If Bullseye is coming in and he’s attacking Karen and Foggy at a bar full of cops, he’s gotta think about how to do it. How does he incapacitate them if they engage in the fight? Daredevil can’t let him create space, because if they get in his way, he’s going to kill them as well. There’s an emotionality to how we design it, because if Matt is in a blind rage, he’s not paying attention to everyone around him. He’s totally fixed on Bullseye the entire time. All those elements that go into the design of the characters.”
With so many great action scenes and moments to unpack, there was so much to talk about with Philip on his work in the series. I invite you to listen to our full conversation below:
[Some of the quotes in this article have been edited for length and clarity]
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