Fury Production Notes

April, 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theatre, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) commands a Sherman tank and her five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Outnumbered and outgunned, and with a rookie soldier thrust into their platoon, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.

Columbia Pictures presents in association with QED International and LStar Capital, a QED International / Le Grisbi Productions / Crave Films production, a film by David Ayer, Fury. The film stars Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, and Scott Eastwood. Written and Directed by David Ayer. Produced by Bill Block, David Ayer, Ethan Smith, and John Lesher. Executive Producers are Brad Pitt, Sasha Shapiro, Anton Lessine, Alex Ott, and Ben Waisbren. Director of Photography is Roman Vasyanov. Production Designer is Andrew Menzies. Film Editors are Dody Dorn, ACE and Jay Cassidy, ACE. Costume Designer is Owen Thornton. Music by Steven Price. Casting by Mary Vernieu, CSA and Lindsay Graham, CSA. Credits not final.

Fury has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for Strong Sequences of War Violence, Some Grisly Images, and Language Throughout. The film will be released in the U.S. on October 17, 2014.

Please note: Some production notes may contain spoilers.

April, 1945. As the Allies make their final push in the European Theatre, a battle-hardened army sergeant named Wardaddy (Brad Pitt) commands a Sherman tank and her five-man crew on a deadly mission behind enemy lines. Outnumbered and outgunned, and with a rookie soldier thrust into their platoon, Wardaddy and his men face overwhelming odds in their heroic attempts to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.

Columbia Pictures presents in association with QED International and LStar Capital, a QED International / Le Grisbi Productions / Crave Films production, a film by David Ayer, Fury. The film stars Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña, Jon Bernthal, Jason Isaacs, and Scott Eastwood. Written and Directed by David Ayer. Produced by Bill Block, David Ayer, Ethan Smith, and John Lesher. Executive Producers are Brad Pitt, Sasha Shapiro, Anton Lessine, Alex Ott, and Ben Waisbren. Director of Photography is Roman Vasyanov. Production Designer is Andrew Menzies. Film Editors are Dody Dorn, ACE and Jay Cassidy, ACE. Costume Designer is Owen Thornton. Music by Steven Price. Casting by Mary Vernieu, CSA and Lindsay Graham, CSA. Credits not final.

Fury has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for Strong Sequences of War Violence, Some Grisly Images, and Language Throughout. The film will be released in the U.S. on October 17, 2014.

About The FIlm

“I was a David Ayer fan from his previous work, especially End of Watch,” says Brad Pitt, who takes the lead role of Don “Wardaddy” Collier in Ayer’s new film, Fury. “Knowing the depths he goes to for realism and authenticity, and his unique structure, I find him to be one of the standouts. He’s also a vet, and from that firsthand experience, he has a wealth of knowledge on the subject that drew us all in.”

“Fury is not your grandfather’s war movie,” says producer Bill Block, who packaged the film for QED before Columbia Pictures picked up the distribution rights. “I don’t think we’ve seen the physical horror that the armored division went through. Outmanned and outgunned, they only won through true, raw fighting.”

“No one writes about men at their most vulnerable the way David does,” says producer John Lesher, who previously teamed with Ayer on his acclaimed film End of Watch. “In all of his films, I see some common themes: they are about brotherly love, friendship, fathers and sons, and some of these themes resonated quite heavily in this script.”

Fury takes place in late-war Germany, 1945. “The war’s almost over and this dying elephant – the Nazi empire – is on its last legs,” Ayer explains. “It’s a different world from your usual war movie, where we celebrate victorious campaigns like the invasion of the European continent, or D-Day, or the Battle of the Bulge, these famous battles that American troops have taken part in. One of the forgotten time periods is this last gasp of the Nazi empire, with an American army that has been fighting for years and is on its last reserves of manpower. The men are exhausted. In World War II, you fought until you either won or died, or were grievously injured and got sent home. The fanatical regime is collapsing, it’s a confusing environment where anyone can be the enemy – it’s incredibly taxing on the fighting man’s soul.”

It is into this environment that Ayer created the character of Don “Wardaddy” Collier, played by Brad Pitt. “Wardaddy is the tank commander – his responsibility is keeping his men alive,” Pitt says. “He’s responsible for their operations, their morale, and especially making sure that they are operating as a machine. His calls are going to determine who walks away and who doesn’t. But at the start of the film, they’ve lost one of their five members, and a new kid is thrown into our family. It’s not just that he’s new, it’s not just that he has no tank experience – he’s actually a threat to our survival; if he can’t perform the whole crew is in danger and people will die. He comes in with great innocence, and the question is, how do you raise a child in a day? Wardaddy has to get him calloused and get him performing, to ensure the safety of others.”

Into Wardaddy’s platoon comes Norman Ellison, a young man woefully unprepared for war. “He’s been trained to be a typist, but sent to the front lines in the 2nd Armored Division, to serve as an assistant driver. He’s stunned and bewildered – he’s sure that there has got to be some mistake,” Lerman explains. “Norman is there to fill the seat of a dead man, Red, who had served with the other four members of the crew, essentially since the beginning of the war. He’s this young, innocent kid – the kind of kid that anybody would like to have as a son or little brother – but war is no place for a kid like that. He’s going to have to change if he’s going to survive, and Wardaddy is going to show him how.”

Over the course of these 24 fateful hours, that training will be tested as the five men of the Fury – Wardaddy, the commander; Boyd Swan, the gunner; Grady Travis, the loader; Trini Garcia, the driver; and Norman, the assistant driver – take on 300 enemy German troops in a desperate battle for survival.

The intensity of the screenplay that Ayer wrote for Fury has become his hallmark, but the movie, like his screenplays for Training Day, The Fast and the Furious, and other films, also demonstrates a deep connection between the characters. “David’s movies are visceral and real, but they’re also deeply about brotherly love and friendship in the most extreme circumstances,” says Block.

In this film, Ayer has drawn a similarly complex relationship, as the bond that forms between the young Norman and the veteran Wardaddy forms the heart of the film. “Norman is young and fresh and innocent, and that makes him endearing, but it’s also the problem he must overcome,” says Ayer. “Wardaddy must break him of his innocence.”

“In a lot of ways, Norman is the son that Wardaddy never had,” Ayer continues. “He mentors Norman, parents him, guides him to become an effective soldier.”

Ayer tells that complex story through a deceptively simple structure. “The whole movie takes place in 24 hours, from dawn one morning to dawn the next day,” notes producer Ethan Smith. “It’s very straightforward in its construction, but very eloquent and complicated in its storytelling.”

With his 2012 film End of Watch, Ayer garnered acclaim for a unique and provocative directorial style. With Fury, he takes a new step in his career, says producer Bill Block. “This is an evolution of David Ayer’s style, a more formal and beautifully filmed picture,” he says. “Where in End of Watch, he created a docu-video style, this film is a period piece that maintains his signature – intense reality.”

“This is a distinctly David Ayer movie in the sense that it is a very authentic-looking war movie in its look and feel,” says producer Ethan Smith. “David steeps himself in research and works closely with tactical and military advisors to get all the details right. His directing process includes surrounding himself with the best people from various disciplines to ensure accuracy.”

Producer John Lesher says that the research pays off with characters and experiences that come to life on screen because they seem true to life. “I was so fascinated,” says Lesher. “And he said, ‘You should come to my office.’ I saw the extensive number of books and research and thought that he had put into this story. I was duly impressed.”

At the same time, Lesher says, Ayer wrote a screenplay that was relatable and true to any generation. “What I thought was so interesting and so compelling about this is that it felt very modern,” Lesher says. “Yes, it’s about World War II, and all the specificity and all the authenticity and all the research that David did really comes to life in the script. But it's really about men at war.”

Kevin Vance, one of the military technical advisors on the film, says that the commitment to realism meant a commitment to a furious, visceral film unlike any WWII film that has come before. “In most World War II movies, we have this association with ‘the good war’ – and it is,” he says. “But over 60 million people died in World War II. That’s a dichotomy that hasn’t been fully explored, and that’s what David demanded of this film.”

One way that the filmmakers were able to “get it right” was to enlist the aid of a number of veterans of the 2nd Armored Division who served during World War II. “David is ferocious about authenticity,” says Pitt. In order to make that authenticity happen for the crew, he relates, “he set us up with some beautiful experiences. We got to meet several vets who were all in their 90s; they had survived D-Day landings, and the Battle of the Bulge… it was a very humbling experience to sit in their presence and listen to their stories. They had very visceral descriptions of what it was like to be in the tank: the heat, the exhaust, it was oily, the smell of death was always in the air. Most of them were undertrained, they were underequipped, they were dealing with incredible hardships and weather, lack of food, lack of sleep. And they had to push on under the most harrowing of conditions.”

Block, QED, and Pitt hosted a meeting for the main cast with WWII veterans, including those who could provide first-hand accounts of what it was like to operate a tank in some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Four men in particular spoke to the actors, sharing their memories and experiences.

Donald Evans, who served in a reconnaissance company of the 66th Armor Regiment in the 2nd Armored Division, says he “didn’t know too much about the 2nd Armor” when he was assigned there. “I don’t even know if I knew they were in Africa.”

Paul Andert lied about his age in 1940 to get into the army at age 17, and was a staff sergeant with the 41st Infantry in the 2nd Armored Division during the war. “Patton became our division commander – he was strong in educating us,” he says. He recalls Patton’s memorable words on the importance of each of us doing what we can to show leadership: “Patton says, ‘You don’t push spaghetti; you pull it’” – that is, as a leader, if you make a move, your men will follow. Andert would remember these words again and again, in battle after battle. “He put the fight in us – he put in the idea to get out there and move. Don’t stay still.”

George Smilanich was a driver during the war, and he says that though each man had his assignment, “everyone on the crew could do anything the other guys could do. We could rotate if we had to – if we lost somebody during a battle, one of the other crew members could step in and take over, whatever job it was. We could drive a jeep, we could drive a halftrack, we could drive a tank. It was like a big, happy family – if I wanted the assistant driver to take over, I’d trade places with him; if the gunner wanted to step out, the assistant driver would step behind the gun. The commander gave the orders and told us what we should and shouldn’t do, but that’s how it was. And when we lost somebody and somebody else came in, he joined right in.”

Ray Stewart was just 21 years old in the spring of 1945 – not unlike the character of young Norman Ellison in the film. Assigned to a tank as a bow gunner, he says, “I had four guys in there who were trained by Patton, and I was the new guy. I was going to try to do the best I could. My tank commander at the time was trying me out. The gunner eventually moved into his place; he became the platoon leader. Of course, we had other guys that moved into his place.”

What’s it like being in a tank when the enemy is firing at you? Despite inches of steel protecting you, it’s still just as harrowing as one would imagine. “When they’re shooting those machine guns and it’s bouncing all around you, you’re feeling it in your armored car or your tank – just hearing it shakes you up,” says Evans. “There’s nowhere to hide.”

After a tank gets knocked out, the crew is assigned a new vehicle. What kind of guts does it take to get into the next tank? Stewart shrugs. “You just go and get in it,” he says.

Details of the tankers’ memories come alive in Fury – for example, that every fifth bullet from the machine gun is a tracer; that there are so many tracers that the heat can melt the barrel; that the difference between outgoing and incoming artillery is the incoming’s telltale whistle; that the outgunned Sherman tanks could find ways to use their exceptional mobility against the Germans’ mighty Tiger tanks. It’s these details that make the film feel true-to-life.

“Veteran accounts are hugely important, because they bring it to life,” says David Rae, one of the military technical advisors on the film. “They give you the actual ground truth of how a crew fought through different theaters – through Normandy, North Africa, through the low countries, and finally to Germany, that final push. They give you interesting stories that you can grab hold of and emotionally attach yourself to.”

About The Characters

Leading the men of the Fury is Don Collier – better known by his war name, Wardaddy. The role is played by Brad Pitt. “Wardaddy is representative of the backbone of the army – sergeants and NCOs really hold the army together,” Ayer says. “He’s very no-nonsense, very practical and pragmatic – all he cares about is getting the mission done.”

But Ayer says that Wardaddy is also a man with a hidden past. “He’s atoning for his history, through this incredible act of penance of fighting in this war and liberating Europe. He has his own moral code, but it’s not your civilian moral code; it’s very reflective of the time. He’s very stoic, but with life and humor and love for his men and a true hatred for the enemy.”

“When we first read the script, I was drawn to the unusual character arc of Wardaddy,” says producer Bill Block. “When we meet him, three years into the war, he’s a committed and accomplished killer – and what happens to him, happens in a way we’ve never seen. He becomes a compassioned hero, a leader to his other men, to complete his mission.”

“Wardaddy is an incredibly interesting character,” says producer John Lesher. “These guys have been together, under his command, since the beginning of the war. He’s a complicated, damaged soul and he’s intent on giving whatever wisdom he has to Norman. It’s an original character that David has created, and I think a really compelling one – the likes of which we haven’t seen before.”

Shia LaBeouf takes on the role of Boyd Swan. “He’s the gunner and basically the second-in-command of the Fury,” says the actor. “He operates the main gun system, the seventy-six millimeter high-velocity cannon. He’s a stone cold killer, but he’s also a man of faith – it’s interesting for me to explore how a man who reads scripture and has faith – a Christian – reconciles that with being in combat.”

To explore that dichotomy, LaBeouf drew on his experiences meeting military personnel who showed similar character traits. For example, LaBeouf spent time with Don Evans, a veteran of the 2nd Armored Division during World War II. “He’s a Christian man, a righteous man, who will tell you the difference between killing and murder – and there is a big difference. Don drove that home,” says the actor. “He lives his life by the book, but still will kill you if you are on the other side – and he’ll have no problems sleeping at night. I guess God put certain people here to collect souls – the Grim Reaper for God.”

LaBeouf also drew on conversations with younger veterans. “I met a captain named Shane Yates – he’s a captain, but he’s also a minister and a preacher and a chaplain in the army, for the Forty-Second,” says LaBeouf. “I got permission from them and from David to go live with them on a forward operating base and in the middle of their deployment. I spent about a month and a half with the National Guard, then linked up with the rest of the boys and we went to another little boot camp at Fort Irwin.”

LaBeouf was also inspired by working with David Ayer. “David has a wild history of his own, and he shares it with you and he listens. He’s our Patton – he’s kind of crazy, which is perfect,” he says.

“Often in World War II movies, you’ll see these archetypal characters – but David takes those archetypes and uses them as inspiration for real, authentic characters,” notes John Lesher. “Shia’s character, archetypically, is a guy who went to preacher school – we’ve seen that guy – but in David’s hands, he’s a man who believes in God, but loves killing, too. Shia gives such a soulful and deep and penetrating performance; his commitment was unparalleled and impressive.”

The linchpin to the film, according to Lesher, is the character of Norman Ellison, played by Logan Lerman. “Norman represents the audience in the film,” he says. “He’s the new kid with almost no military training, and it’s through his eyes that we learn about the tank, the grammar and the story of the movie. It’s his story of acceptance; his journey is the core of the film.”

Ayer says that in the closing days of World War II, it was not unusual for very young and very unprepared men to be thrust suddenly into battle on the front lines. “After the Battle of the Bulge, the U.S. was short on manpower, so they’d give these guys sometimes as little as three or four weeks of combat training, and pack ‘em up and send ‘em into war,” he notes. “Norman is very unprepared for what’s happening, and he becomes their hostage, in a way, as he’s thrown into this steel cage and dragged across the fields of Germany into combat. Norman ends up in situations that he’s absolutely not equipped for, and it’s Wardaddy’s job to train him, to get him to overcome the civilian’s sense of right and wrong.”

Logan Lerman plays the young soldier. He says he was attracted to the role for its complexity. “For actors of my age, there are a lot of simple characters out there,” he notes. “Norman, on the other hand, was very complicated and stressful to think about. It seemed like a challenge – it’s a great role, a great story, and I’d have the chance to work with a lot of people that I admire.”

One of those people is Ayer. Lerman was well-prepared for Ayer’s intense style of directing and followed the director – like a private following a general. “David takes you on this insane, amazing journey,” he says. “He scheduled a huge amount of prep time for us, the actors. He introduced us to the world we’d be living in – it wasn’t an easy ride, but I was down for it, excited for it. I like the challenge. I gave myself over to it, and it was some of the most creatively satisfying work I’ve ever been fortunate enough to be a part of.”

As a result of all of that prep, Lerman says, Ayer was comfortable giving his actors the freedom to interpret the characters as they saw fit. “We spent at least a month and a half, meeting every day – but really longer than that, meeting all the time – going over the script every time we would meet,” says Lerman. “We got to the point that we knew the material so well – every little section, every piece – that we became comfortable. We could play around, go in different directions – go ‘off book’ a little bit.”

After collaborating with actor Michael Peña on the film End of Watch, Ayer created the role of the tank’s driver, Trini Garcia, especially for Peña. “I believe around 350,000 Mexican-Americans served in World War II, many of them as drivers in the Armored Corps,” Ayer notes. “He’s a sophisticated guy, and back on the block, he’d be very much in charge – but in this situation, the exhaustion and the nerves and the stress, he’s turned to alcohol to try to solve it. There was a lot of alcohol use in the army at that time, and he wouldn’t be the first tank driver to be drunk driving.”

“It’s cool, despite his idiosyncrasies, he’s paying homage to all of the Latinos that fought in World War II that were unacknowledged,” says Peña. “My hat goes off to David Ayer – there were Latin guys who went to war and fought for their country, and it touched them, psychologically and physically.”

Jon Bernthal rounds out the crew of the Fury as Grady Travis. “He crawled out of a swamp,” says Ayer. “He’s the kind of guy who was a Depression-era child, grew up without shoes on his feet, working since the age of eight on farms – he’s just not equipped for the adventure he’s been forced into by circumstances.”

“If Wardaddy is the brains, Grady is the guts,” Ayer continues. Ayer says that as the Loader, he has a “special relationship” with the gunner. “He’s the guy shoveling coal into the furnace, the ammunition into this weapons system, and because of that they have a very close working relationship.”

It’s a relationship that goes beyond work, though. “Grady thinks of Boyd as the ‘mother’ of the group,” says Bernthal. “Grady has unbelievable respect for Boyd as the spiritual and ethical center of the group. With Boyd, he keeps his connection to something higher and to God. The loader/gunner relationship is incredibly interesting as they absolutely depend on each other. You’d think there would be a split between them – one guy who’s very much about Christ and preaching and the Bible, and then the other who is all about killing and women. But the two characters absolutely melded as one. We’re just two sides of almost the same person.”

About The Tanks

There were five main tanks used for filming, all various models of the M4 Sherman tank: in the film, the tanks are nicknamed Fury, Matador, Lucy Sue, Old Phyllis, and Murder Inc.

For Ian Clarke, the Picture Vehicle Coordinator, and Jim Dowdall, the Tank Crew Supervisor, the process of finding five original WWII-era tanks began as any other job might: by calling their colleagues. “The military vehicle fraternity in the UK is quite small and we all tend to know each other,” says Dowdall. “Eventually, we found the people who could supply the tanks and who were prepared to devote three months of their lives to this film.”

To populate the tank crews, Dowdall says, “We thought that the best thing would be to use trained tank crews – not collectors, but guys who’d been to Afghanistan and other combat situations recently. They could not only command the tanks properly, but think on their feet if something went wrong with one of these seventy-year-old vehicles.”

For the Fury herself, there were three main vehicles used by the production. First, naturally, was a real tank, supplied by the Tank Museum in Bovington, a late-war Sherman with a 76mm gun.

In addition, the crew created a set for specialized shots and filmmaking necessity: the process vehicle was built on a tank base with a platform mounted on top, so that the crew and cameras could film on the tank.

For shots of the Fury’s interior, production designer Andrew Menzies created an interior set. “That was the biggest technical challenge,” he says. “It’s a very small set, and every wall had to fly away, allowing David to shoot from any angle. At the same time, it would be on a gimbal, moving around, so that it would feel like a moving vehicle – and of course, as we were shaking it around, it couldn’t have any wobbling or loose parts.”

Gary Jopling, the film’s Assistant Art Director, created the tank interior set through drawings and models, then built the structure. “It does everything that a real tank would do,” he says. “The gimbal gives it a rocking motion, and the turret turns 360 degrees. The gun elevates and can be fired.”

To create the interior, the art department scanned the interior of the real tank, then enlarged it by 10 percent. From the scan, they built a set from a box metal frame with a resin fiberglass coat. To create those flyaway walls that would allow for camera placement, 42 pieces float in and out.

Jopling and the props department then dressed the interior with equipment from real tanks. “We gathered pieces from various tank enthusiasts around the country to ensure the interior looked authentic,” he says. “Everything functions as it would in a real tank. Bible’s area in particular is quite complicated. For example, he has a telescope that he wants to be able to look through and that has a fine adjustment to it.”

The filmmakers also found a creative solution to the way that the Fury could load a shell, fire, and eject the empty shell. “Special Effects created a ram system that pushes the block across like a real gun, and then retract. A ram pushes the head into the shell and ejects it with a puff of smoke, so that it creates the illusion of firing and ejecting an empty shell.”

The tank – which was a rolling set that had to be dressed and maintained as a picture vehicle every day – also became a second home of sorts for the actors who portray its crew. “When they had boot camp, they were taught to live outside; later, when Fury became available to them, we couldn’t really get them out of it,” says Tank Crew Supervisor Jim Dowdall. “They put their own stamp on it. They began to live and to eat inside it. Between rehearsals, instead of getting off the tank, they just hunkered down inside and talked and lived like a tank crew would. I think that shows in the movie – there’s a familiarity.”

Jon Bernthal – like all of the actors – became very attached to the Fury. “They say it ain’t the size of the dog in a fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. She’s a badass tank,” he says, describing the tank. “She’s not the biggest, not the strongest – you should see the Tiger! – but she’s all heart.”

Adds Logan Lerman: “Seeing the tanks up and running, these seventy-year-old vehicles – it was a beautiful sight.”

For Michael Peña, the reality of learning his way around the tank helped him get into character: “We had to train a lot outside of the tank to make sure we could get in and out like real soldiers. At first, even getting through the hatch, which is just a little bit wider than your body, would be kind of challenging,” says Peña. “Then, when you’ve done it hundreds of times, you get your own little technique to get in and out. It’s muscle memory.”

With so much action in and around the tank, recording the dialogue required tenacity and problem-solving. As he did with each of the department heads, Ayer stressed to sound mixer Lisa Piñero that realism was key – so they sought to capture the sound as realistically as possible, and with the correct look and sound of the original equipment. However, two obstacles stood in the way. First, for the internal tank scenes, the original communications equipment is not only 70 years old, but was never meant to survive the test of time and did not capture high-fidelity sound even when new. Second, for the external tank scenes, the real tanks and even the process vehicle were so loud that they overwhelmed all other sound.

Piñero and her team solved the problems in two creative ways. First, to get the true-to-life look, they modified vintage T-30 throat microphones and T-17 handheld mics – originals from the war – with new connector material, and adapted the interior tank plug-in communications boxes to accept a return signal from Piñero’s sound cart. The practical props could now be used as true recording devices.

For the shots on the exterior of the tank, the sound wizards first experimented with mic placement to find which mics and placements got the best pickup. Once filming began, many scenes involved a moving tank that then stopped for a dialogue or battle scene; for these, the sound team would lay hundreds of feet of microphone cable through deep, flinty, clay mud. Finally, to get any dialogue lost to the incredibly loud moving tanks, the sound team and the actors used a dedicated truck that they specially soundproofed for ADR sessions.

In the film, the American tank column faces their most deadly threat: a German Tiger tank. “It’s the ultimate tank of war,” says Menzies. “A Sherman really stood very little chance against a Tiger – it’s set up as a formidable weapon.”

There are only six remaining Tigers from the period, and the Tank Museum has the only one that is in running order. “The Tiger 131 is a very important tank,” says David Willey, the curator of the museum. “The tank we’re using sat on a hillside in Tunisia, being attacked by British tanks of the 48th Royal Tank Regiment. It knocked out at least two of those Churchill tanks, but was hit by others – you can see the damage on it. The German crew abandoned the tank, and after the war, it was handed over to the Tank Museum.”

“Since the vehicle was captured in 1943, it’s been used a few times, but never the way we’ve used it,” says Jim Dowdall, the Tanks Crew Supervisor. “You’ve got to look out for it, because the metal is old – you’ve got to make the conditions perfect to make it as kind as possible to the vehicle.”

Of course, the filmmakers took no risk of damaging the real Tiger – so, for the shots in which the tank is damaged, they created a copy. The original was measured and the museum had all of the original drawings. “We cut the tank out of quarter-inch steel – it’s a self-supporting structure,” says the production designer, Andrew Menzies. “We then put it on a smaller tank base, and we added the wheels with visual effects in post-production. It was really important to everyone that our copy looked absolutely correct, right down to the nuts and bolts that hold it together.”

About The Production

Fury was shot over twelve weeks in the fields of Oxfordshire and at Bovingdon Airfield in Hertfordshire. According to producer John Lesher, a number of practical conveniences brought the production to England. “First, there’s an amazing crew base, so that was a good place to start,” he says. “But there’s also an amazing amount of assets in England – tanks, armored vehicles, both German and American. Finally, the light in England – that beautiful northern light – and the weather was a good match for Germany. For all of these reasons, England became the ideal place.”But before production began, Ayer and his team began an extensive research process, researching every aspect of the story – from the kind of tanks that the Fury would encounter to the type of artillery and other weapons involved to the campaigns that her crew would have seen, right down to uniforms and hair.

“It’s in the little things,” says David Ayer. “Even when somebody in the audience doesn’t understand what they’re seeing, when it’s right it all snaps together and matches the pictures that we’ve all seen in newsreels and on TV. That’s what I’m after.”

Ethan Smith says that all too often, cinematic history has shaded our view of what World War II was like. David Ayer went back to the source. “David would talk about how in the late 1940s, when Hollywood started making World War II movies, the die was cast for a clean look,” says Smith. “What David wanted to do was not reference cinematic history, but actual history. So we would watch hours and hours of Signal Corps footage and closely studied how the men would walk, carry their weapons, approach a mission or relax on the side of a road, and that became the template for our movie.”

In addition, Ayer and his team were advised by three military advisors and four Armored Division veterans of World War II, who lent their knowledge and experience to the production.

Kevin Vance and David Rae were the military advisors primarily responsible for working with the actors to make them into credible tankers. Among their other duties, Vance and Rae created a bootcamp for the five lead actors.

Vance had previously collaborated with David Ayer on End of Watch, talking the cast through the approach to different aspects of community policing. On the set of Fury, he helped the actors to delve into the warrior mindset. Vance had previously worked in the United States Special Operations community for fourteen years and spent many years in high threat areas around the world; Rae spent 23 years in the British military, many of those in that country’s armored division.

As part of their duties, Vance and Rae organized a boot camp for the actors. “We wanted the cast to operate and think and as a team. Function as one unit. Some elements were individually tasked for competition and stress, but ultimately by the end of the camp they were to be interdependent. Not just to act, but be a crew,” Vance says. “Every element had intent. Even in their clothing, the weaponry, and their rations – everything was very basic, to mimic the era. They were also exposed to the elements throughout the week, so they got a very small taste of what the World War II generation went through. Rain, mud, wind - and sleep deprivation. Six days of pre-production were allocated for the boot camp, and of the six days, the first couple of days were designed to break them down mentally and physically – keeping them fatigued, sore and uncomfortable. From there, we built them up together. That metamorphosis was crucial.”

The bootcamp wasn’t hazing – it was necessary, according to Rae. “They needed to have that bond,” he says. “It needs to be portrayed on screen – you’d pick up on it if it wasn’t there, because you’re quite intimate as a crew. The cliché is ‘no rank in a tank’ – we all know who the boss is, and we know where the line is and wouldn’t cross it, but we’re very, very close to each other. You know everything about each other. You look after each other. It’s a brotherhood, within a tank.”

But it wasn’t only about emotional connection – it was about the actors’ knowing their roles in the tank like they know their own names. “You have to know your drills. When a battle starts, muscle memory kicks in,” says Rae. “Whether it’s 1945 or 2014, you’re working as a machine. My personal goal for the bootcamp was to insure they looked like five people moving in the same direction.”

“Our bootcamp was mandatory,” Pitt says. He’s careful to note the differences between their bootcamp as actors and the hardships that soldiers experience in wartime – “we were tourists,” he says – but even though it was a simulation, the experience as close to the real thing as possible. “We were full on, up at five in the morning, two hours of PTs, schooling, grunt work, obstacles until late evening, cold rations, sleeping in the rain – and somebody’s gotta do point guard, changing on the hour. It was designed to break us down, to get a taste of the little hardships, but then also to build us up when we were at our lowest, morale-wise.”

That boot camp was invaluable, says LaBeouf. “We got to know each other,” he says. “Six days in the woods, you get to know a little bit more about each other and become more of a unit. We’re all part of something we know bigger than us and we’re doing this for a lot of men. I think camp really made us look at the flag differently; it’s a talisman, it’s very religious. It’s spiritual. It’s transcendent. My dad’s a veteran, so I’ve always had a respect for it, but sitting with Kevin and the boys out there in the woods, it got very emotional.”

“The boot camp was absolutely vital to the process,” adds Jon Bernthal. “We built a real trust with each other… that doesn’t happen from just being on a film set.”

Vance and Rae’s counterpart on the German side was Ian Sandford, a former paratrooper in the British Army, who served as a German Military Advisers. With an avid interest in Germany during World War II, he taught himself German so he could read original training manuals; he would later run the supporting actors playing German troops through machine gun drills.

About The Photography

Director of Photography Roman Vasyanov, who previously collaborated with writer-director David Ayer on End of Watch, notes that this film took a very different approach to the photography. Where End of Watch was inspired by documentary-style filmmaking, Fury would be much more classical in its methods. “After I read it for the first time, I knew that it couldn’t be handheld,” he says. “It had to be a choreographed dolly and a moody photography, with the camera just following them and not bringing any extra energy.”

Adds producer John Lesher: “The visual grammar of the film is very beautiful, old-fashioned moviemaking. We wanted to take a more David Lean approach, a simple, beautiful, classic film approach.”

In terms of the look, Vasyanov explains, “I wanted to make a very naturalistic, minimalist movie. For me, this film is, first of all, a drama and the other things are secondary. I didn’t want to light it too much or do anything fancy with the camera – it’s not like an action movie. This is probably the most minimalist movie I’ve ever shot, and the minimalism brings the performances to the foreground.”

Vasyanov explains that many recent World War II films have been influenced by the famous war photographer Robert Capa, but Fury would take another tack. “For me, I chose a completely different language – it’s a sort of road movie,” he says. “When you see real footage of World War II, you never see a cameraman running with the camera. Usually, it’s shot on a very long lens. Sometimes the wide shot tells the story better than millions of close-ups, just because you can feel a different aspect to this madness of war. You can feel silence.”

The entire movie was shot on film and not digitally. “I knew that our palette of colors would be very restricted, and film has a better color,” he says. “Also, this would be an anamorphic, widescreen movie. We did some tests and there was great resolution, great highlights and a beautiful shallow depth of focus on film. It was the best way to capture this beautiful landscape and the tanks travelling.”

One of Vasyanov’s greatest challenges was to authentically light the dim interior of the Fury. “I sat for a couple of hours in a real tank, and I looked at the hatch to see how the light behaves,” he says. “Most of the time, it’s overcast and cloudy, so the sun is not going through the hatch to the inside of the tank. So, we created a system of LEDs, which we put on the floor and taped on the walls. We worked in very low light levels, just enough to get focus and exposure.”

About The Production Design

Production Designer Andrew Menzies was charged with realizing Ayer’s vision for the authentic look of the film. “I didn’t feel this movie was about design; It was about reproducing history,” says Menzies. “To that end, pretty much every vignette in the film is derived from images that we derived from research. Several images that really triggered with me when I was doing research were the battalion area – I came across these pictures of men in deep mud up to their knees and struggling and pulling things through it and heavy equipment in the mud. I realized that really was the essence at that time in the war…a lot of the day to day was through mud and drudge and cold.”

“Like any movie, it’s about mood,” he continues. And on Fury, that mood can be summed up with one word: the mood is mud. “We wanted as much mud and grime and dirt as much as possible,” he says. “We added mud and brought in tons and tons of mud dirt to build that texture of the movie. The mud was the connecting glue in the film.”

The only location which had limited mud was the German town set that Menzies built on a runway at Bovingdon Airfield in Hertfordshire. Menzies studied of German towns to incorporate appropriate architectural details – shutters, wood and plasterwork – into his build.

The German town scenes form the middle act of the film and create a break in the mood of the movie. It’s a village that has been relatively untouched by war. “It’s the first time they can let their hair down and relax and the men would find alcohol, food and women – they really relaxed,” Menzies says. “So I used slightly more cheerful colors in the town – for this beat in the movie, you feel a respite from the drudge of war.”

The German town set was built in twelve weeks. “David wanted to shoot the tanks coming in, so we designed it around the action, the tanks and snipers in windows. We ended up in a square where the majority of the scene is held. The size of the town was driven by the size of the tanks; if we had made too small a square, then the tanks would look silly in there.”

One of Menzies’ more unusual builds was the sawmill that continuously burns during the Crossroads Battle at the climax of the film. “It’s quite an unusual construction because it had to look like a wood building, but it had to burn continually as we shot the battle scene over the course of a week. And, of course, the burn had to be controlled – we had to be able to turn the flame on and off on command. So we built it out of steel and concrete. It looks like a wood building, but we burned it over the duration of the shoot.”

About The costumes

To keep the production as real as possible, Ayer and his team also engaged in extensive research into the military uniforms of the time that would become the film’s costume wardrobe. “We studied a lot of photographs and we were fortunate to have some good people to advise us on what should be correct,” says Ayer. “There’s an amazing amount of detail in these uniforms, because whereas the U.S. military basically wore work wear to fight in, the German military wore men’s tailored uniforms that were built on traditional European tailoring techniques; a lot of them were handmade. Interestingly enough, the Germans – especially the officers – typically fought in what we would call dress uniforms, with full medals.”

Costume Designer Owen Thornton worked very closely with Ayer to study exactly what was required. “We did two years of research to try and get things right with the costuming and uniforms for this period,” he says. “We went through the inventory of what the American soldier would be wearing in 1945. Europe had just been through one of the longest winters in fifty years, so the look of the solider had dramatically changed; he’d be wearing an overcoat on top of a field jacket, on top of sweaters, on top of shirts, on top of thermals. We tried to re-create the look of a homeless soldier who lives in foxholes, eats his rations cold, and who hasn’t washed or shaved in a couple of months.”

For research, Thornton says that the filmmakers eschewed Hollywood history in favor of the original sources. “We looked at thousands of Signal Corps photographs – original photographs from World War II which were very specific,” says Thornton. “We started from January 1945, going up to the end of the war. We meticulously went through archives of the Second Armored Division and looked for individuals who stuck out to us in photographs.”

Despite giving each soldier his own personality in his uniform, Thornton says that there are broad consistencies that they drew, based on the research. “By the end of the war, the American army looked like a ragtag mob,” he says. “Their clothing resembled civilian work wear. They used a lot of herringbone, loose-fitting fabric uniforms; their field jackets were made of wool, so their look had a brown color palette. Conversely, if you look at the German army for the same time period, their uniforms were completely different; they were sculpted and form-fitting. The German army employed artists whose full time job was to draw new camouflage patterns, so by the end of World War II they had at least 35 different patterns. We incorporated as many of those as we could.”

An important part of costuming is making the clothes appear lived-in, broken-in, and worn. For a costumer, this is called “breakdown.” “Part of the wardrobe department includes a breakdown crew – fabric artists who’ll make a brand new garment seem like it’s had a year’s worth of use,” Thornton explains. “They’ll wear the color down and make pockets look like they’re about to blow out. They’ll put rips in and then do repairs on top of those rips. We did this to 350 American uniforms and 350 German uniforms –each one of these outfits is unique, and each soldier has his own story.”

Of course, Norman Ellison’s breakdown is far different from that of the other men of the Fury. While the other four men of the Fury have been together for many years, Norman is just joining the crew. “We weren’t subtle about who the new guy was,” says Thornton. “The other guys are covered in dirt, grease, holes, stains and damage. They’re grubby and tired men. We created their look with dirt and damage, whereas Norman is brand new and fresh faced. He’s clean shaven, has a beautiful haircut and no dirt in his fingernails.”

In addition to the military costumes, Ayer’s screenplay also required civilian costumes to be conceived with the same diligence and attention to detail. To that end, Maja Meschede, the Civilian Costume Designer, travelled to Berlin and rented clothes made in the 1930s and 1940s. “Every little item – buttons, hooks and bars, shoe lacing – had to be of that time,” she explains. “The fabric from those times has much more texture and a three-dimensional quality than any fabric that you can get nowadays.” Any costumes that had to be made, such as Irma and Emma’s dresses, were created using original fabrics from the time.

About the Make-up And Hair

For Make-Up and Hair Designer Alessandro Bertolazzi, the first step was to put away the makeup and to play with dirt. “We had tons of reference, but had no idea how to make it work,” he says. “So, we started by putting fingers in the dirt make-up and then smearing it on their faces. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the first step to forgetting the idea about classical make-up.”

In creating the look, Bertolazzi referenced such artists as Oskar Kokoschka, Francis Bacon, and Egon Shiele. “The drama, the pain and the suffering is really perfect in these paintings.”

Bertolazzi spent a day training his team of make-up artists how to forget Hollywood and classical training. “I would add some brown to the face with a brush, and then start smudging it and spritzing it and adding some blood, and everybody had fun with it,” he explains. “There were different levels of dirt, so level zero was a light patina and level four was for people who stayed in the field camp in the mud and smoke for weeks on end.”

About The Music

For Fury’s score, David Ayer turned to Steven Price, who earlier this year won the Oscar® for his score to Gravity. After reading the script, Price knew he had a terrific opportunity. “The script was gripping,” he says. “David has a way with writing characters: you feel that you know them, and want to know more about them, very early in the film, which is sort of a great trick to pull off.”

Wanting to be involved early in the production, Price first met Ayer on the set of the film, which was shooting not far from Price’s home in England. “It was remarkable – we approached, and I could see a lot of smoke in the distance. When we got there, they were shooting long shots of one of the big tank battles in the film. There were no cameras to be seen – it felt like you were really just watching an intense battle,” he recalls. “I met with David, and from our conversation I could see what he was aiming to do and I wanted to be a part of it.”

“This movie is about the bit of the war that hasn’t really been dealt with in films – the last few weeks of WWII. There’s an easy assumption that a soldier’s experience at that point wouldn’t have been as intense so close to the Allies victory, but the reality is the opposite,” Price continues. “Noone was surrendering without a fight. It’s a story that hasn’t been told, and the way David has told it is authentic, and really emotional and beautiful.”

Price says that Ayer was one of those filmmakers who have an innate understanding of what film music can accomplish. “The main note I got from David was that he wanted the audience to feel,” he explains. “He pointed to his heart and stomach. He wanted a real guttural experience for the audience and to feel like you’re going through this hell along with the characters, but within that, you’re also feeling this brotherhood, these beautiful relationships that are conjured up.”

In that way, Price notes, though the film has heavy war action, it also takes the audience on an emotional journey as the men in the tank form a family of sorts. “The film is about that family – they had gone through three or four years of the most horrific experiences, and it was about how they were dealing with that. David and I talked about the psychology of the characters, and we drew a framework of where they were in their lives.”

Just as he did on Gravity, where Price frequently incorporated the sounds of radio waves into the score , Price was able to find a distinctive voice for the music of Fury by using unusual and unconventional instruments in a fusion with the orchestral, choral and solo writing featured throughout. On this film, he had access to recordings made on the set, and later, weapons, dogtags, and parts of the tank itself were called back into duty as percussion equipment in the studio. “I used some of the sounds they recorded at the time of shooting – like shells dropping on the floor of the tank – which I’d take away and manipulate to become ambiences inherent within the music,” he explains. “When we got to the final sessions, we also had a selection of the original props they used in the film. They were brought along to the studio, to Abbey Road, and I used those to create some of the percussion elements in the score. It felt like elements of the score grew out of the visuals and grew out of the story. That’s what I was looking to do – to extract something of the quality of the visuals and David’s vision into the music. When I start on a film, I like to think about how I can make the music as distinctive as possible and make it feel like it couldn’t belong to any other story.”

It’s not that audiences are meant to recognize these sounds, Price says. “Oftentimes, you’ll never hear them as what they are, but the very first sound in the film is, for example, the sound of soldiers identification dog tags, slowed down a vast amount. It’s essentially unrecognisable, but it somehow gives a very haunting and fitting quality to the opening of the film.”

Price also made heavy use of a choir, often chanting and singing in German. “The idea was that while the characters are supposed to be winning the war, in fact, they’re in the middle of Nazi Germany and surrounded. We wanted to give a very unsettled feeling – the whole score gives you a sense of being in danger. So I used the choir in different ways -- sometimes as a group, sometimes solo, very closely miked. It’s this constant presence, this undercurrent of unsettling darkness.”

The two major themes in the film, of course, are the themes attached to Wardaddy and Norman, as so much of the film is about their relationship. “This is a very thematic score. The way that David writes his scripts, it’s very much about the relationships between the characters, so that allowed me to see how the themes combined with each other as we learn more about them,” Price explains. “The first themes you hear in the film are the motifs attached to Wardaddy – his theme is initially quite blunt musically, but it develops throughout the film as we learn more about him. Norman on the other hand, starts off as such an overwhelmed and frightened character, with a theme that continually shifts around, and doesn’t settle at all. As the film goes on, he develops a strength, and so does his theme. In fact, the themes gradually evolve throughout the film. A lot of the work in this film was reducing the themes down to their bare elements, finding the combinations that really meant something emotionally.”

In the end, Price, says of his work, “The idea of the mass mechanization of war was the key to all of it, for me – the score proceeds in this weighty, machine-like manner. I was very careful to give it a heavy tread and purposeful sense of moving forward.” But, Price notes, it’s also a score that captures the beauty of the relationships between the characters. “While there is a big orchestral element, there are also a lot of very intimate cues,” he explains. “I recorded a lot with solo cellos and solo violas and also solo voices. And often the score goes from these very, very tiny and pure moments to these primal, orchestral sounds. We were constantly contrasting the human beings with this mechanized world that they were existing in.”

About The Cast

BRAD PITT (Don “Wardaddy” Collier / Executive Producer), one of today's strongest and most versatile film actors, is also a successful film producer with his company Plan B Entertainment.

This past year, Pitt won an Academy Award® as a producer of 12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen. In addition to its win for Best Picture, the film won Oscars® for screenwriter John Ridley and supporting actress Lupita Nyong’o. Pitt also played a supporting role in the film. Pitt is currently starring in and producing By the Sea, opposite Angelina Jolie, who is also writing and directing the film.

In 2013, Pitt starred and produced one of the year’s top ten grossing movies, World War Z, for Paramount. Following Z, Pitt played a supporting role in Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor directed by Ridley Scott as well as Andrew Dominik’s Cogan’s Trade. This is the second time Pitt has starred and produced a Dominik film, the first being The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, for which he was named Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. In 2011, Pitt gave two of his most complex and nuanced performances in Bennett Miller’s Moneyball and Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, films he also produced. Pitt won the New York Film Critics Circle Award and the National Society of Film Critics Award for both roles. Additionally, Pitt was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globe Award, BAFTA Award, and an Academy Award® for his work in Moneyball. The movie also received an Academy Award® Best Picture nomination. Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards® as well. In previous years, Pitt was an Academy Award® nominee for his performance in David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys, for which he won a Golden Globe Award. He was also a Golden Globe Award nominee for his performances in Edward Zwick's Legends of the Fall and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel.

In 2009, Pitt starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds as Lt. Aldo Raine; and appeared in Joel and Ethan Coen's comedy thriller Burn After Reading. Opposite George Clooney, his Burn After Reading co-star, he also appeared in Steven Soderbergh's hits Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen.

It was Pitt's role in Ridley Scott's Academy Award®-winning Thelma and Louise that first brought him national attention. He soon went on to star in Robert Redford's Academy Award®-winning A River Runs Through It, Dominic Sena's Kalifornia and Tony Scott's True Romance. Pitt also received critical acclaim for his performances in the two David Fincher films: Se7en and Fight Club. His recent films include Doug Liman's Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which was one of 2005's biggest hits and Guy Ritchie's Snatch.

Pitt's Plan B Entertainment develops and produces both film and television projects. Plan B has thus far produced the Academy Award® winning film 12 Years A Slave, World War Z for Paramount, Martin Scorsese's The Departed, Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart, Robert Schwentke’s Time Traveler’s Wife, Rebecca Miller’s The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ryan Murphy's Running with Scissors, Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy, Ryan Murphy’s Eat Pray Love, and Matthew Vaughn’s Kickass. The company is currently in post-production on Rupert Goold’s True Story, starring James Franco and Jonah Hill. On the television side, Plan B’s “Resurrection” has been picked up for its second season on ABC.

SHIA LaBEOUF’s (Boyd “Bible” Swan) natural talent and raw energy have secured his place as one of Hollywood’s leading men.

LaBeouf was most recently seen in Nymphomaniac, from avant-garde director Lars Von Trier, and had the title role in Charlie Countryman opposite Evan Rachel Wood, Mads Mikkelsen and Melissa Leo. In 2012, he was seen starring in Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep, a thriller about a former Weather Underground activist who goes on the run from a journalist who has discovered his identity. The film premiered to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival and featured an award-winning ensemble cast that includes Robert Redford, Julie Christie, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon and Chris Cooper. He was also seen in John Hillcoat’s crime drama Lawless, alongside Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska; the film debuted to a standing ovation at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

LaBeouf starred in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which marked his third and final turn as the enterprising and heroic Sam Witwicky. From the original Transformers, which earned over $700 million around the world theatrical release and became the highest grossing DVD of the year, to the second installment, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which garnered global receipts upwards of $836 million, Sam continued to find himself in the middle of a life and death struggle between warring robot legions on earth.

Additional film credits include Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps opposite Michael Douglas, the fourth installment of Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, alongside Harrison Ford, D.J. Caruso’s Eagle Eye, the Anthony Minghella-scripted segment of the romantic anthology New York I Love You, the popular thriller Disturbia, the Oscar®-nominated animated film Surf’s Up, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which won Best Ensemble Cast at the Sundance Film Festival, Emilio Estevez’s acclaimed drama Bobby, The Greatest Game Ever Played, I, Robot, Constantine, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, and HBO’s ”Project Greenlight” feature The Battle of Shaker Heights, produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. In 2003, he made his feature film debut in the comedy Holes, based on the best-selling book by Louis Sacher.

In 2007, LaBeouf was named the Star of Tomorrow by the ShoWest convention of the National Association of Theater Owners, and in February 2008 he was awarded the BAFTA Orange Rising Star Award, which was voted for by the British general public. In addition, he was nominated for four Teen Choice Awards for Transformers, winning the Breakout Male Award, the Teen Choice Award for Movie Actor in a Horror/Thriller for his performance in Disturbia; he was also awarded a Scream Award. In 2004, he was nominated for the Young Artists Award for Leading Young Actor in a Feature Film and the Breakthrough Male Performance at the MTV Movie Awards for his performance in Holes.

On television, LaBeouf garnered much praise from critics everywhere for his portrayal of Louis Stevens on the Disney Channel’s original series “Even Stevens.” In 2003, he earned a Daytime Emmy award for Outstanding Performer in a Children’s Series for his work on the highly rated family show.

In addition to his work in front of the camera, LaBeouf has also directed several projects including music videos for Kid Cudi, Marilyn Manson and Sigur Ros and a short film, “Howard Cantour.com” which premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. He has also penned several graphic novels through his self-publishing company, The Campaign Book.

LaBeouf currently resides in California.

LOGAN LERMAN (Norman Ellison) has come of age in the entertainment industry with an impressive body of work. He maintains a fearless pursuit of challenging roles, evolving with each new project and fast becoming one of Hollywood's most in-demand actors, for both independent and mainstream film.

Lerman was most recently seen in Darren Aronofsky's Biblical epic Noah, opposite Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, Douglas Booth and Emma Watson. The film has taken in more than $350 million worldwide.

Lerman previously starred in the coming-of-age indie drama The Perks of Being a Wallflower alongside Emma Watson, Paul Rudd and Ezra Miller. The actor received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Charlie, a shy 15-year old coping with love, friendship, loss and heartbreak; he was nominated for a Broadcast Film Critics Award for his performance in the film. Produced by John Malkovich and his team at Mr. Mudd, the film went on to garner nominations and wins at both the People's Choice Awards and The Independent Spirit Awards. Lerman, and his co-stars Watson and Miller, were also nominated for a total of four MTV Movie Awards for their performances in the film.

Lerman began his film career landing a role as the youngest son in Roland Emmerich's war drama The Patriot, opposite Mel Gibson. That same year, he appeared as the younger version of Gibson's adult character in Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy What Women Want. Lerman starred as the title character in Chris Columbus' Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and reprised his leading role in the second installment of the franchise Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. Additional film credits include: Stuck In Love; The Three Musketeers; The Butterfly Effect; Hoot; Joel Schumacher's The Number 23; Penny Marshall's Riding in Cars with Boys; James Mangold's critically-acclaimed remake of 3:10 to Yuma; Meet Bill; Richard Loncraine's My One and Only; and Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's Gamer.

On the small screen, Lerman made his mark in WB's dramatic series “Jack and Bobby,” portraying Bobby McCallister, in a show that followed the lives of two brothers as they went to high school and matured, with one going on to become President of the United States. Prior to that, Lerman appeared in the made-for-television film “A Painted House,” winning him his first of three Young Artist Awards.

MICHAEL PEÑA (Trini “Gordo” Garcia) has distinguished himself in Hollywood as an actor with a wide range of performances who has worked with an impressive roster of award winning directors. Peña earned notable recognition for his performance in Paul Haggis’ provocative Oscar® winning film Crash, alongside Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon and Terrence Howard. With the film achieving critical acclaim for the film’s interpretation of complex race relations in contemporary America, Peña joined his fellow actors in garnering multiple best ensemble nominations, winning awards from the Screen Actors Guild and the Broadcast Film Critics Association for the cast’s performance.

In September 2012, Peña was seen in David Ayer’s critically acclaimed End of Watch, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. The film is about two young officers in South Central LA who are marked for death after confiscating a small cache of money and firearms from the members of a notorious cartel during a routine traffic stop. For his role as Officer Zavala, Peña was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and the film was recognized by the National Board of Review as one of the Top 10 Independent Films of the year.

Most recently, Peña was seen as labor organizer Cesar Chavez in Chavez. The film is directed by Diego Luna and produced by Canana and Mr. Mudd.

Beginning October 2, Peña can be seen in the Fox 10-hour miniseries “Gracepoint,” a remake of the UK’s “Broadchurch.” The show centers on Detective Emmett Carver (David Tennant), the lead investigator on the case of a shocking murder of 11-year-old Danny, which puts a small town under scrutiny. Peña will play Danny’s father, Mark, a well-liked local plumber and family man. Like anyone else, Mark is left devastated by the murder, but as his wife, Beth (Virginia Kull), suspects, he may be hiding something about that fatal evening.

Peña has been seen in a range of films in the past year, including the independent film Everything Must Go alongside Will Ferrell and Rebecca Hall and Gangster Squad opposite Sean Penn, Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling; his voice was heard in the Fox animated feature Turbo.

Peña’s further film credits include The Lucky Ones, co-starring Rachel McAdams and Tim Robbins; Jody Hill’s comedy Observe and Report with Seth Rogen; Robert Redford’s political drama Lions for Lambs, along with Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep; and Werner Herzog and David Lynch’s psychological thriller My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done with Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe and Chloe Sevigny.

Peña’s other noteworthy credits include Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, which chronicled the heroism of American servicemen in the direct aftermath of the September 11th attacks; Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby; Matthew Ryan Hoge’s The United States of Leland; Gregor Jordan’s Buffalo Soldiers; Antoine Fuqua’s Shooter; Brett Ratner’s Tower Heist and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel.

On television, Peña also starred in the HBO film “Walkout.” Based on the true story of a young Mexican American high school teacher who helped stage a massive student walkout in the mid 1960s, Peña received an Imagen Award for Best Actor in the television category for his performance. He recently re-teamed with Danny McBride on the second season of HBO's “Eastbound and Down.” He also appeared on the F/X drama “The Shield” for its fourth season as one of the central leads opposite Glenn Close and Anthony Anderson. Other television credits include Steven Spielberg’s NBC series “Semper Fi.”

Raised in Chicago, Peña began acting when he beat out hundreds of others in an open call for a role in Peter Bogdonovich’s To Sir, With Love 2, starring Sidney Poitier.

Classically trained actor JON BERNTHAL (Grady “Coon-Ass” Travis) was most recently seen in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street.

It was recently announced that Bernthal has been cast opposite Winona Ryder, Alfred Molina, Oscar Isaac, and Catherine Keener in HBO’s six-hour miniseries “Show Me a Hero,” from David Simon, co-creator of “The Wire.” Based on the nonfiction book by Lisa Belkin, it tells the story of the youngest big-city mayor in the nation who finds himself thrust into the center of a racial controversy when a federal court orders him to build a small number of low-income housing units in the white neighborhoods of his town, Yonkers, NY. Bernthal will play Michael H. Sussman, a hard-driving Harvard-trained lawyer who represented the NAACP when it joined the government’s anti-segregation cast against Yonkers.

With a busy production lineup, Bernthal will soon begin production on Denis Villeneuve's Sicario as Ted, co-starring opposite Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro. In addition, Bernthal has been cast in the highly anticipated Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's film adaptation to Me & Earl & the Dying Girl, in the role of Mr. McCarthy. Additionally, Bernthal has also been cast as Monroe alongside Dakota Fanning and Evan Rachel Wood in an untitled project to be written and to be directed by Gerardo Naranjo.

In television, Bernthal starred as Shane Walsh in AMC's breakout hit television series “The Walking Dead,” based on Robert Kirkman's comic book of the same name. Bernthal's extraordinary portrayal of a survivor of the zombie apocalypse marks another remarkable turn in a career defined by acclaimed and varied performances both on stage and on screen. “The Walking Dead” earned a Golden Globe® nomination for Best Drama Series, a Writers Guild of America nomination for Best New Series, and recognition as one of AFI's Ten Best Television Programs of the Year. The series also set new records as the most watched drama series in basic cable history, and is aired internationally in over 120 countries and 33 languages.

Bernthal also starred as the lead in Frank Darabont's “Mob City” for TNT, and was part of the ensemble in the Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg HBO miniseries “The Pacific.” His other television work includes appearances on “Boston Legal,” “CSI: Miami,” “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “How I Met Your Mother,” and “Without a Trace.” His first series in a starring role was “The Class,” created by David Crane and directed by James Burrows.

Bernthal's first major film role was in the Oliver Stone picture World Trade Center with Nicholas Cage and Maria Bello. He has also starred in Date Night with Steve Carell and Tina Fey; in Roman Polanski's award-winning The Ghost Writer opposite Ewan McGregor; Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian opposite Ben Stiller, Christopher Guest and Hank Azaria; Grudge Match opposite Robert De Niro; and the independent films The Air I Breathe with Kevin Bacon and Julie Delpy and Day Zero with Elijah Wood. Alongside his father, Bernthal has launched a production company called Story Factory with several film and television projects in development.

Bernthal, a veteran of more than 30 productions, earned a 2011 Ovation Award nomination for his role in Rogue Machine Theatre's “Small Engine Repair,” which had its New York premiere for MCC in Fall 2013. Bernthal also produced the play, a dark comedy drama which charts three working class friends in Manchester, New Hampshire as they reunite for an evening of drinking, fighting and reminiscing. Bernthal had previously starred in Neil LaBute's “Fat Pig” at the Geffen Playhouse. His other theatre credits include Langford Wilson's “Fifth of July” at New York's Signature Theatre, the off-Broadway production of “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” where Bernthal played Ui, at the Portland Stage Company, and “This is Our Youth,” at the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. His love of theatre led him to open his own non-profit theatre company Fovea Floods, in upstate New York.

During his college years, Bernthal was given the remarkable opportunity to study at the prestigious Moscow Arts Theatre in Russia, renowned for its regimented program and disciplined training. Educated in acting, acrobatics, ballet and rhythm, the intense training provided Bernthal with a solid foundation in his craft. While studying at MAT, Bernthal was discovered by the director of Harvard University's Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, at the American Repertory Theatre in Moscow. He was invited to study and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts.

Bernthal was a professional baseball player both in the U.S. minor leagues and European Professional Baseball Federation. These days, Bernthal prefers boxing, for which he has trained for years and boxes six days a week. He also teaches boxing to at risk children to teach them discipline and work ethic, leading them to channel their issues into a sport which teaches them confidence and control. Bernthal also works to retrain pit bulls that have been abused, then placing them in new, loving homes.

The Golden Globe, BAFTA, International Emmy Award, and Critic's Circle Award-nominated actor JASON ISAACS (Captain Waggoner) began his acting career at Bristol University, where he studied Law, but found himself acting, writing and directing most of the time. After graduation, he trained for three years at London's prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama. In 2000, his breakout role as Colonel William Tavington in Roland Emmerich's feature film The Patriot garnered him numerous nominations, including one from the British Film Critics' Circle.

Two years later, Isaacs began his role as Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He went on to reprise the role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and in the last two films, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Parts I and II.

His other film credits include Black Hawk Down, Green Zone, Peter Pan, Friends with Money, The Tuxedo, Sweet November, Windtalkers, End of the Affair, Armageddon, Event Horizon, Good, Abduction and the festival favourite and Michael Powell Award winner, Skeletons.

Isaacs has won multiple awards and nominations for his television roles including the BAFTA Best Actor nomination for ”The Curse of Steptoe” and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for the BBC's ”The State Within.” The critics raved over his performances in ”Scars” and Lynda LaPlante’s ”Civvies” and as Michael Caffee in three seasons of the Peabody Award-winning series ”Brotherhood,” for which he was nominated for a Satellite Award as best leading actor. He later won that award for starring as Jackson Brodie in series one and two of the BBC’s ”Case Histories,” a role that garnered him various other nominations including an International Emmy for Best Leading Actor. ”Case Histories” also won the BAFTA Scotland Award for best drama series. Most recently, he produced and starred as Detective Michael Britten in NBC’s critically acclaimed dual-reality drama ”Awake,” which aired on Sky Atlantic in the UK. On American TV, he has also appeared in “The West Wing” and “Entourage.” He also recently appeared in “Rosemary’s Baby,” a miniseries event for NBC. Isaacs is currently filming the USA network event series “Dig,” set in contemporary Jerusalem, from the creators of “Homeland” and “Heroes.”

Isaacs was most recently seen in Sweetwater alongside Ed Harris and January Jones and has a number of films being released in 2014 including Field of Lost Shoes, directed by Sean McNamara which will be released in September, Stockholm Pennsylvania, Things People Do, RIO and London Fields.

On stage, he created the role of Louis in the award-winning Royal National Theatre production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angels in America” and has performed to packed houses at London’s Royal Court, Almeida, King's Head and Trafalgar theatres. He most recently starred in a sell-out run of Pinter’s “The Dumb Waiter” with comedian Lee Evans.

SCOTT EASTWOOD (Sergeant Miles) is a third-generation native Californian, born in the waterfront city of Monterey. Even though he was born in California, Eastwood grew up in both California and Hawaii, dividing his time between his mother (Jaclyn) and his father (Clint). From an early age, Eastwood was always active, and when he wasn't playing Pop Warner Football, he was surfing, fishing, or doing some other outdoor activity.

After graduating high school, Eastwood enrolled at Santa Monica City College, doing everything from parking cars to working construction, as he pursued a career in acting. He eventually graduated from Loyola Maymount University with a degree in communications. For the past several years, Eastwood has been traveling the world, living life, shooting movies, and surfing exotic beaches. He's been very fortunate to have great friends and a large family, all of whom have played a role in making him the individual he is today.

In Vanity Fair magazine’s March 2013 Oscar® edition, Eastwood was singled out as one of Hollywood’s rising stars. Building on this honor, Eastwood recently landed the lead role of Luke Collins in The Longest Ride, an adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel, starring opposite Britt Robertson, which he wrapped shooting in August of 2014.

Other films include the independent features Dawn Patrol and Walk of Fame. Eastwood also had a lead role in Lionsgate’s Texas Chainsaw 3D, as well as Trouble with the Curve. Other films include Invictus, Gran Torino, Flags of Our Fathers, Carmel, An American Crime, and Lionsgate’s swimming film, Pride, alongside Bernie Mac and Terrence Howard.

About The FIlmmakers

DAVID AYER (Writer / Director / Producer) garnered widespread acclaim and accolades for his hyper-realistic portrayal of life behind the blue line in End of Watch (2012). He moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and the experiences of his upbringing shaped much of his artistic vision and his inside knowledge and affection for the culture surrounding law enforcement can be seen throughout his work.

At 18, Ayer joined the United States Navy, where he served as sonar man aboard a nuclear attack submarine during the Cold War. After an honorable discharge, Ayer began writing. He wrote and was a co-producer on his “calling card” spec script Training Day, which became a hit film and garnered Denzel Washington an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Ayer co-wrote the submarine thriller U-571, starring Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton and Harvey Keitel. Other writing credits include The Fast and the Furious, starring Paul Walker and Vin Diesel, S.W.A.T., starring Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell, and Dark Blue, starring Kurt Russell. Ayer made his directorial debut with his original screenplay Harsh Times. The gritty drama, starring Christian Bale and Freddy Rodriguez, was released in the fall of 2006. He then went on to direct the crime thriller Street Kings, which was released in 2008.

He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.

BILL BLOCK (Producer) is the founder and CEO of QED International, a leading independent motion picture production, financing and sales distribution company focused on bringing high quality filmed entertainment to the worldwide marketplace. Known for such films as Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 and Elysium, Oliver Stone’s W and Barry Levinson’s upcoming comedy with Bill Murray, Rock the Kasbah, QED International maintains the creative spirit of independent filmmaking while providing attractive returns with mitigated risk to its financing partners, and maximizing the global exploitation of their films.

Block has produced, financed, acquired, or distributed dozens of theatrical feature films, and has worked with some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers, including Peter Jackson, Oliver Stone, Steven Soderbergh, Jon Favreau, David Koepp, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher McQuarrie, and Woody Allen. With a team of top executives to facilitate the financing, packaging, and distribution of films, QED is recognized as a destination where world-class filmmakers and producers can find a full-service partner on their projects.

Prior to QED, Block was President of Artisan Entertainment. Along with Bain Capital, Block led the LBO of Live Entertainment, a publicly traded video company, which became Artisan. He recruited the management team, helped secure new production financing, and turned Artisan into a competitive force in the independent acquisition and distribution world. At Artisan, Block supervised all divisions – international, home entertainment, and television syndication to quantify and offset risk with Artisan’s banking and distribution partners. Among the projects that he produced or acquired are: The Blair Witch Project; The Buena Vista Social Club; Darren Aronofsky’s Pi and Requiem for a Dream; The Limey, directed by Steven Soderbergh; The Ninth Gate, starring Johnny Depp and directed by Roman Polanski and Made, starring Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. Block also bought the Spanish-language film Open Your Eyes, sub-licensed the remake rights to Paramount, and Executive Produced the remake, Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise.

Before this, Block was one of the industry’s leading talent agents. As Head of West Coast Operations for International Creative Management from 1992 to 1997 and founder of the Intertalent Agency, Block’s clients included such artists as Kim Basinger, Samuel L. Jackson, Steven Seagal, Charlie Sheen, John Travolta, and Forest Whitaker; and filmmakers Sam Raimi, Roland Emmerich, Billy Friedkin, George Armitage, Stephen Hopkins, Peter Hyams, and Herbert Ross. Block attended Columbia University and lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two sons and daughter.

DAVID AYER (Producer/Director/Writer) Please see above biography.

Fury marks ETHAN SMITH’s (Producer) seventh collaboration with QED International and producer Bill Block and his second collaboration with writer-director David Ayer, having previously produced Sabotage starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He recently produced Barry Levinson’s “Rock The Kasbah” starring Bill Murray, Bruce Willis and Kate Hudson, also with QED.

Smith was previously Executive Producer on QED's Alex Cross staring Tyler Perry as well as Texas Killing Fields produced by Michael Mann and starring Sam Worthington and Chloe Moretz.

Smith was Co-Producer/Line Producer on Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules for 20th Century Fox. Based on the bestselling book series by Jeff Kinney, the films were produced by Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson.

Prior to that, Smith was Co-Producer of Oliver Stone's W, starring Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Banks. He was a producer on the TV series “The Nine” on ABC as well as on New York episodes of the hit CBS series “Without a Trace.”

Smith started his career in New York on films including Sherrybaby starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and The Ballad of Jack and Rose starring Daniel Day-Lewis, both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Smith is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts and lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters.

JOHN LESHER (Producer) is the founder and President of Le Grisbi Productions, an independent film and television production company.

Lesher produced 2012’s End of Watch, written and directed by David Ayer, and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Peña, and Anna Kendrick. Lesher also produced Blood Ties, co-written and directed by Guillaume Canet. The film stars Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, James Caan, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, and Matthias Schoenaerts. The film premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and was distributed by Lionsgate.

Lesher most recently produced Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s Birdman starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Emma Stone and Zach Galifianakis. The film will be released in October.

Le Grisbi Productions is developing feature projects at multiple studios, including Warner Bros, where it has set up Dark Invasion, written by Taylor Sheridan for Bradley Cooper to star; Cicero, written by Tom Shepherd for Tom Hardy to star; and Satori, written by Shane Salerno & Don Winslow for Leonardo DiCaprio to star.

Le Grisbi also has a first look deal for original series at HBO. Projects that have been set up there include: ”Hobgoblin,” written by Michael Chabon; ”The Landlord,” written by Dan Clowes; ”Muscle,” written and to be directed by Derek Cianfrance; ”Toni/Twan/(Antoinette),” written by Dee Rees for Viola Davis to star; and ”T‐Cell,” written and to be directed by David Ayer.

Lesher is a graduate of Harvard University and began his career as an agent at the Bauer-Benedek Agency. He then went on to become a partner at United Talent Agency, followed by the Endeavor Agency. He worked with such diverse talent as Alejandro González Iñárritu, Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, Walter Salles, Fernando Meirelles, Sydney Pollack, Bennett Miller, Judd Apatow, Adam McKay, Harrison Ford, and Ben Stiller.

In 2005, Lesher left Endeavor to form Paramount Vantage, where he was responsible for such films as Babel, An Inconvenient Truth, There Will Be Blood, and No Country for Old Men. In 2008, he was appointed president of Paramount Pictures, working on such studio titles as Star Trek, Up in the Air, Benjamin Button, Transformers, and Shutter Island, among others.

During that time, he guided the studio to 49 Academy Award® nominations, 13 wins and one Best Picture.

BRAD PITT (Executive Producer / Don “Wardaddy” Collier) Please see above biography.

SASHA SHAPIRO (Executive Producer) is currently a Managing Director of Media Content Capital, a private equity investment fund focused on media, internet and entertainment companies.

Shapiro has over 20 years of experience in the global entertainment industry. For 14 years, he worked in various senior executive positions at Warner Bros. Studios. His last position at Warner Bros. was Senior Executive responsible for Strategic Business Development for WB Cinema, a division responsible for new market entries, strategic planning, financial evaluation and implementation of new business opportunities. He initiated and managed various global deals and new market entries for Warner Bros. Cinemas in foreign markets such as Egypt, China and Vietnam.

After leaving Warner Bros., Shapiro served as Executive Vice President of Culver Studios and President of International for Pacifica Ventures, owner of Culver Studios and a specialty real estate developer/operator of film/TV studio facilities. Shapiro consulted various divisions at Warner Bros. on their market entries' activities and consulted for companies such as Imax, RealD, TV channel Russia Today, Film/TV studio Lenfilm among others.

He is currently a producer and executive producer on a number feature films.

Shapiro is a Board Member of SONIFI Solutions, QED International and Digiboo. He is serving as head of the Advisory Board of the 2nd largest film studio in Russia – Lenfìlm. Shapiro is also a member of the Advisory Board of the St. Petersburg University of Film and TV Engineers.

Shapiro holds a Ph.D. from the Moscow Aviation Technology University, in Russia, and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.

ANTON LESSINE (Executive Producer) is a Los Angeles-based film producer whose credits include John Turturro’s romantic comedy Fading Gigolo, starring Turturro, Woody Allen, Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara, and Mac Carter's supernatural thriller Haunt, starring the Oscar®-nominated actress Jacki Weaver.

ALEX OTT (Executive Producer) previously co-produced David Ayer’s Sabotage and End of Watch.

He is a graduate of University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.

BEN WAISBREN (Executive Producer) is Chairman and President of LSC Film Corporation, which co-finances major motion pictures with Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. He is also an attorney with the international law firm of Winston & Strawn, where he advises clients in the U.S. and Europe in the media & entertainment and finance sectors. His clients include independent production and distribution companies, private equity firms, hedge funds, investment banks and commercial banks.

Earlier in his career, Waisbren was a managing director and head of investment banking restructuring at Salomon Brothers in New York, following a legal career at a large Chicago law firm, Lord, Bissell & Brook, where he led a national bankruptcy litigation practice.

Prior to joining Winston & Strawn in early 2013, Mr. Waisbren was the President of Continental Entertainment Capital LP, a direct subsidiary of Citigroup, with operations in New York, Los Angeles and Paris. Before that, he was a managing director of a global hedge fund company, Stark Investments, where he was a co-portfolio manager in the fixed income and private equity areas, and responsible for investments in the feature film industry, and the formation of the firm’s structured finance fund and a related, branded middle market leveraged lender, Freeport Financial.

Waisbren served as a member of the Board of Directors of France’s Wild Bunch, S.A., a pan-European motion picture production, distribution and sales company, from 2005 until 2009, in connection with private equity investments that he managed.

He was Executive Producer of Warner Bros. Pictures’ 300; Blood Diamond; V for Vendetta; Nancy Drew; The Good German; Poseidon; and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. In addition, he was Executive Producer of the following independent studio releases: Cassandra’s Dream; First Born; Next; Bangkok Dangerous; and Gardener of Eden. He served as an executive producer of Columbia Pictures’ 22 Jump Street, Sex Tape, The Equalizer, and several upcoming films, including The Interview, Pixels, and Goosebumps.

ROMAN VASYANOV (Director of Photography) was born in Moscow, Russia. The son of a Soviet print photographer, Vasyanov found his passion when his father gave him a camera at age 12.

Vasyanov pursued his education at the VGIK Russian Film Institute, graduating in 2003. Here, he studied under acclaimed Soviet cinematographer Vadim Yusov, who shot such Tarkovsky masterpieces as Ivan's Childhood, Solaris and Anredrei Rublev. In 2004, Vasyanov won the KODAK award for Best Student Cinematography for his short Alive.

With a degree under his belt, Vasyanov shot his first feature, The Hipsters, which won five NIKA Awards (Russian Academy Awards). The film also garnered the attention of the United Talent Agency, with whom Vasyanov developed a strong relationship. In 2010, Vasyanov shot the Phillips short The Gift, directed by Carl Erik Rinsch for Ridley Scott & Associates. The spot was very successful, claiming the Grand Prix Award at the 2010 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for Film Craft. Roman has since shot over 300 commercials.

Shortly after moving to Los Angeles, Vasyanov shot End of Watch, which was written and directed by David Ayer and starred Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña). The film was shot on a micro budget over 22 days in South Central. Using various types of small digital cameras, Vasyanov achieved a unique POV effect that put the audience right in the middle of the action. End of Watch was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 2013 Independent Spirit Awards.

Vasyanov then began working with acclaimed commercial director Fredrik Bond. Together, they shot the “Surfing” spot for Puma, which was included in the film archives of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For this, Vasyanov won the Excellence in Cinematography AICP award in 2013.

ANDREW MENZIES (Production Designer) first encountered the film industry when he was eight years old and had a chance meeting with John Wayne. The crew of Brannigan used Menzies’ London apartment building for filming, and Wayne personally took Menzies on a set tour. He fell in love with the creativity he saw that day and went on to study at the Royal College of Art in London where he received his M.A. in Film Design Studies.

Menzies began his career in set design, then worked his way up to art director, working with Oscar® winning production designer Rick Carter on such films as James Cameron’s Avatar and Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Munich.

As a Production Designer, Menzies values the collaborative nature of his position and has applied that philosophy to projects as varied as 3:10 to Yuma, Knight and Day, The Crazies, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

DODY DORN, ACE (Editor) has edited two of David Ayer’s previous films: End of Watch and Sabotage.

Her numerous other credits include Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, Matchstick Men, and A Good Year, and Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia and Memento, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Editing, an AFI Film Award for Editor of the Year and an American Cinema Editors Eddie nomination, among other honors.

Further feature film editing credits include Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, William Monahan’s London Boulevard, Casey Affleck’s I’m Still Here, Mike White’s Year of the Dog, Michael Lindsay-Hogg’sWaiting for Godot and Guy, Christopher Munch’s The Sleepy Time Gal, Audrey Wells’ Guinevere, and Kirby Dick’s celebrated documentary Sick.

On television, Dorn edited Seasons 1 and 2 of the HBO series “Enlightened” and pilots for the television series “Touch,” “Prime Suspect,” “Chicago Code,” and “The Good Wife.” She was nominated for an American Cinema Editors Eddie and Emmy for her work on Robert Allan Ackerman's miniseries “My Life with Judy Garland – Me & My Shadows.”

She began her career as a sound editor on such classics as Silverado, The Big Chill, and Children of a Lesser God, winning the Golden Reel for Best Sound on James Cameron’s The Abyss. Dorn lives in Venice Beach with her propmaster husband, Kevin Hughes.

JAY CASSIDY, A.C.E. (Editor) began his career as a film editor in the 1970s working on documentaries and political advertisements. Over the course of his professional career, Cassidy has edited more than 30 films. He has collaborated with Sean Penn on all the films Penn has directed, most notably Into the Wild (2007), for which Cassidy was nominated for an Academy Award® for Film Editing. He was twice again nominated for the Oscar®, for his work on David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. In addition to Fury, he also serves as an editor of the upcoming film Foxcatcher.

Other credits include An Inconvenient Truth (2006), which won the Academy Award® for Best Documentary in 2007, Brothers (2009), Conviction (2010) and Waiting for Superman (2010).

Cassidy is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and American Cinema Editors.

ALESSANDRO BERTOLAZZI’s (Hair and Make-Up Designer) most recent credits as Hair and Make-Up Designer include Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible, Duane Hopkins’ Bypass and Giacamo Cimini’s The Nostalgist.

As a Personal Make-Up Artist, he has worked with Javier Bardem on Pierre Morel’s The Gunman, Sam Mendes’ Skyfall and Ryan Murphy’s Eat, Pray, Love; with Naomi Watts on Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar; and with Monica Bellucci on Giuseppe Tornatore’s Baaria, Rebecca Lee’s The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Marco Tullio Giordana’s Sanguepazzo and Giovanni Veronesi’s Manuale d’Amore 2.

Bertolazzi has worked as the Make-up Department Head on Sergio Casrellitto’s Twice Born, Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love, Saverio Constanzo’s Solitude of Prime Numbers, Gabriele Muccino’s Kiss Me Again, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful for which he was nominated for a Mexican Ariel Award for Best Make-Up and the Moroccan unit of Babel, Stefano Busoni’s Imago Mortis, Maria Sole Tognazzi’s The Man Who Loves, Pupi Avati’s Giovanna’s Father, A Dinner for them to Meet, La Seconda Notte di Nozze and When Will the Girls Arrive, Angelo Longoni’s Carravaggio for which he was nominated for a Premio David di Donatello Award and numerous further films.

He has also worked in television and on a number of operas and theatre productions around Europe.

Since 1984, Bertolazzi has been a Professor in Make-Up at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts, in Rome, Italy.

STEVEN PRICE (Music by) is an award-winning composer, musician and music editor. This year, he received the Oscar®, the BAFTA, the Critics’ Choice Award, the Satellite Award and ASCAP’s first ever Film Composer of The Year Award voted on by his peers for his groundbreaking score for Alfonso Cuaron’s film, Gravity. A guitarist from the age of five, he went on to achieve a First Class degree in Music from Cambridge University. Beginning his career in the London studio of Gang of Four with guitarist/producer Andy Gill, Price contributed string arrangements and his musical stylings can be heard alongside artists including Michael Hutchence and Bono. Following his work with Gill, Price was introduced to film composer Trevor Jones. He went on to work as a programmer, arranger, and performer on many projects with Jones over the next five years, composing additional music for projects including Thirteen Days, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 80 Days Around The World, Dinotopia, and Crossroads, for which Price was also the featured guitar soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Having become a regular in the studios, Abbey Road recommended Steven Price to Howard Shore, this leading to his role as music editor on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. An extensive period of music editing followed the success of these movies, with Price contributing to projects including Batman Begins for Christopher Nolan, and Scott Pilgrim for Edgar Wright. His talents led to collaborations with celebrated composers including: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, Harry Gregson Williams, Patrick Doyle, George Fenton, Dario Marianelli and Anne Dudley.

Although Steven Price became a leading music editor, his true focus remained composing. He wrote music for several productions on UK television networks, along with advertising campaigns in the UK and US. For films, he contributed original music to Richard Curtis' 2009 movie Pirate Radio. Price collaborated with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich on the score for the Edgar Wright film Scott Pilgrim vs The World, contributing additional music. His score for Joe Cornish's debut feature Attack The Block, produced by Edgar Wright, earned Price the award for Best Original Soundtrack from both the Austin Film Critics Association and the Sitges Film Festival. Price reteamed with director Edgar Wright on the Universal film The World’s End. Price then began working again as the music editor for Alfonso Cuaron’s film Gravity. Cuaron and Price began collaborating to create a sound that would mirror the ambition of the director’s vision for the film. This led to Price writing beautiful, complex original music that captured Cuaron’s imagination so much that he brought Price on to score the film. Price and Cuaron recently reteamed for the NBC series “Believe.”