Prey Director Dan Trachtenberg Reveals Secrets of Predator 2 Connection, Filming an Action Scene in Smoke (Exclusive)

CB: Right. Yeah. Now I want to dig into the connectivity that this movie has to Predator 2, which is very subtle.

Subtle enough that fans of the franchise picked up on it, but if you didn't know what it was, it didn't take anything away or leave you unclear about what happened. So I'm curious, when it comes to adding that, was that something you snuck in or was that something that you had to explain to an executive at Fox what you were doing?

Dan Trachtenberg: No, I don't. I mean, first of all, our Fox executives are super cool movie nerds, so okay, we lucked out there, but I was figuring out the movie and kind of had all the elements. And the thing that I was after was to have it set as early as possible that I really wanted to be as far away from a quote Western that it could be, I wasn't quite sure where exactly to go. And then I realized the gun, the gun from Predator 2, it has a date on it. And I quickly ran to look up like, wait, what was it again? What was it again? And it was like 17, 15. I was like, alright, that's our date. That's when we're going around that gun that sort of locked it into place. And then anytime someone on the movie didn't know the reference and in editorial it was like, oh, maybe we should lose that. That would allow us to do X, Y, or Z, or maybe it's getting in the way and we should just focus on whatever. And then I'd say, you're right, but the gun means like, oh wait, what is it? I'm like, it's the end of Predator 2. He's like, oh, oh, that's cool. You got to keep it. You got to keep it then. You know what I mean? Anytime anyone lobbied to maybe lose it because they didn't know what it meant. And we found a way to, as you said, incorporate it. So it's not really getting in the waves, you don't really need to know, but when you do, you do. And it's cool.

CB: I want to jump to the sequence in the fighting the fur trappers amongst all the smoke.

Which is that something you hear a lot of today and a complaint about blockbuster movies is they're dimly lit or the CGI elements make the image impossible to tell what's going on or what have you, but this is a great set piece. It looks good, it's fluid. You can track everything. What sort of prep do you do to make sure that you don't have those complaints when you released the movie?

Dan Trachtenberg: Well, I shared those complaints. I'm an action movie lover and very, very focused and aware on how much clarity and geography affects excitement. Certainly cutting pattern and faster speed and rhythm affect your emotion, affect your pulse, but they don't help with your understanding and enjoyment of the choreography. So I have just have an interest in making action sequences that feel as you described. And so we pre-vis the heck out of it to best understand it. And just me and DP just thought a lot about the shot structure and shot design and how every shot can link to each other and letting things play out in longer takes and making sure there's cool beats and then action happens. It's really very specific, high point, low point, high point, low point of what's happening. And so the story is happening inside story and fun is happening inside the sequence,

ComicBook.com: But you're also dealing with practical smoke. I rewatched the film last night with the 4K with the commentary. I heard you guys speaking about it. So what sort of challenges does that present when you have that on set?

Dan Trachtenberg: Yeah, I mean the scene almost didn't happen because the wind was blowing and the smoke was going in the wrong direct, not filling up our space because normally a sequence like this would be shot on stage and we went outside and so it almost didn't happen, but is a marriage, there are some sequences where the smoke wasn't quite there and so CG had to fill in the gaps. And then there's, sorry, but there's largely all the smoke we needed, which not just allowed us for a limited perspective for the sequence to work, but also the light became a beautiful thing smoke. And without the smoke it just would've been harsh. It just would've been a totally different scene. So very true. It was basically math between directionality where we're shooting and the placement of where the smoke machines were. And the big epiphany was putting them on a truck that was driving around to smoke out the set. So it wasn't just like all these machines in different places. It was keeping that in motion as understanding where the wind was going. Somehow our a d had this crazy sense of the wind's going to be in this direction for so long. Let's do this, let's place it here. And it was crazy.

CB: I want to move on to one of my favorite images in the movie is the Predator lifting the bear and the blood revealing The Predator.

Can you walk me through the history of how you make that image, which is does it occur to you 'Oh, we could have him reveal with the blood' and do you immediately know what's a cool image or does you see the final product and then you're like, now it's a cool image.

Dan Trachtenberg: I don't mean to toot any horns, but it's the first. It was definitely, I say quite a bit in the development phase is make sure that everything is only this movie, only this movie. Can we get this kind of scene or that kind of sequence. Don't want to have a scene in here that's like, oh, that could have been in the other Predator movie, or that could have been this Marvel film or this Star War. Only in this movie can you get this kind of thing. And so "Predator Fighting a Bear" is like, yeah, bear, in this time period. And the wilderness sort of feels like it's of a piece, it's of a theme, it's of a aesthetic. And so the Predator fighting a bear and having that like me and my action figures growing up, mashing 'em together like heck yeah. And then it became where there was also this conversation of when do we reveal the Predator? And so that just became this for me. I wish, and I guess it did become the trailer moment, but that's how I sold it to everyone is like, this is a trailer moment of the blood drips because we have no idea what the movie is. And you see this girl and she's going on this chance to prove herself and finds herself face-to-face with a bear and oh my God, and then the bear is killed and the blood drifts down, reveals what she's really up against, which is the Predator. That just felt like such an awesome sentence to visually articulate. And the trickiness was before that scene more firmly establishing the way the predator operates because in very early test screenings for people that had never seen a predator film, which is who we wanted to make the movie for as well, thought that it was a vampire drinking the blood. So it came down to adjusting, its animate, adjusting, its luck, and then also making sure that before that moment we had very clearly established that it's a trophy hunter.

ComicBook.com: Is any part of that shot of the blood practical, or is that all a visual effect?

Dan Trachtenberg: No, it's all a visual effect.

ComicBook.com: Had a feeling it was, but wasn't certain just because you guys marry those things well in the movie that I was like, maybe not, who knows?

Dan Trachtenberg: When you shoot practical elements of blood dripping on things and there's techniques that include practical acquisition of elements. But no, it's a digital and obviously the environment is all real. It's all in location. But yeah.

CB: Now another thing I learned from your commentary, and obviously it's only a very small part of the movie, is that you have footage from The Call of the Wild in the movie very, very briefly.

Was that simply an effect of being in post and being like, oh man, we need two shots here to do this.

Dan Trachtenberg: Yeah, we literally, we need those things. We need to transition. We only got a little bit, we needed more and Call of the Wild as a 20th century movie. And I remembered the hearing on commentary for Blade Runner that the end of Blade Runner that has Decker driving off into the countryside was because Kubrick let him use the extra footage from The Shining that already was like, oh, that's the thing we can do. And our exact supervisor worked on Call of the Wild and he shot second unit, shot the drone that footage, and so was aware of it. Yeah.

CB: Well, and this is maybe a bigger question, but one thing that people really responded to about the movie was that it was sort of a stripped down back to basics approach for Predator when so many of these other sequels had gone bigger. And not to imply that there might be another thing, but if there is another thing, how do you follow that up without falling into these same traps that other sequels fall into?

Dan Trachtenberg: You finally asked the right question for everyone who's been asking me about sequels. It's like, that is the thing is that oftentimes someone does a cool thing and the sequel is just, and then the next part, and then it's like, oh, well then that's just following up the cool. That isn't what that thing was. And so yes, in thinking about what sequels could be, the primary conversation was and always will be, what we can do that is also special. That hasn't happened yet. Not just for the Predator franchise, but for this kind of genre in particular. Can we still be doing something cool?

CB: Off of that, what do you think is maybe the biggest lesson you learned from the production of this movie that you're going to carry on with you into?

You've got Stranger Things lined up, you've got however many other projects we don't know about. What's something you learned making this movie that you're like, this is a lesson I will take with me?

Dan Trachtenberg: I mean, funny you asked about the burnt glade scene, but when that was going awry and I was kind of ready to throw in the towel and say, well, if we can't even get our morning done, there's no way we're going to get the entire scene. And my line producer pulled me aside and said, I know this is gnarly, but we got right before lunch, we just got a shot. We did get something. A movie is built one shot at a time, and it's a great life lesson. It's not just a great filmmaking lesson. It's a great life lesson. It's very overwhelming and easy to give up and turn away when you're looking at everything all at once. But if you just brick-by-brick, day-by-day, it gets done and it's accomplishable. So that's the thing I carry with me throughout.

CB: Well, and on the flip side of that, what's something that a problem you ran into on this movie that made you think only on a predator movie? Would someone have this problem?

Dan Trachtenberg: Well, in particular, a motor caught fire in the neck of the Predator suit and started smoking and everyone was safe. It was fine, it was dealt with, but it was a scary moment. And that is only, I mean, it's any man and suit movie. I shouldn't say only Predator , but yeah. Wait, would there be another thing? I think that's the thing. Yeah,

ComicBook.com: Speaking of the suit, the Predator, he has very specific noises, his clicks, his growls, his grunts. Did you guys create new ones? Did you go back to the old sounds? How does that work when you're doing the foley of the Predator?

Dan Trachtenberg: Combo? So Chris Bonis, one of the film sound designers, we got access to the legacy sounds, but certainly wanted to do more. And I'd asked for, I'll tell you two little stories about this. So on the one hand, a lot of the sound came from him finding a magical, he had his recorder and was lying upside down gargling, and he found the perfect head position and he recorded that and that became essential. And the other thing that's in the mix is in particular the growl at the end, after the predator gets his arm chopped off, he does a big growl. And inside of that growl is my, at the time, six-year-old daughter's laugh. That was recorded to put in the beginning of the movie with the kids playing when Naru was walking through in the camp. And the guys is a joke one day when I came back in from the bathroom on the mix stage, they played the scene and it just had her laughing and it was hilarious. It was very funny. And then they were like, let's just leave it in there. So they layered everything else on top of it, but my kids' laugh is actually in the front.

ComicBook.com: Can you pick it up when you hear it?

Dan Trachtenberg: I can hear it when I remember it. I'm like, oh yeah, that's there. Yeah. Yeah.

ComicBook.com: Well, if I can try and trick you into revealing something for me here, you've been very open about in the past about the video game influence on your movies.

Are you playing anything right now that might be sticking something in the back of your mind?

Dan Trachtenberg: I dunno about sticking something in the back of my mind, but I'm playing so many games, dude, I'm playing Starfield. I was just playing right before we started doing all these interviews and I'm playing, World of Warcraft. I am never not playing WOW.

ComicBook.com: I'm an Overwatch guy, so I understand.

Dan Trachtenberg: Okay. Yeah, yeah, I was playing Diablo before that. What else? I mean, those are the big in rotation. Sure. I should start playing a game Mutant Year Zero that I had in my Steam library forever and never bothered. I was just playing Balders Gate, which is, scratch that itch, but Mutant Year Zero. Very fun game and very cool world actually. There's definitely something to that. So check it out.

Prey is available now on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD October 3, with over two hours of all-new bonus features