What Campbell found was surprising: Stahelski and Kolstad, both former stuntmen, asked for the violence to be stripped down, understated and “totally real.” “They wanted us to dial it all back just a little blood mist and muzzle flashes,” he says. “Everything up to the look of “300” (2006), where it’s slo-mo blood flying everywhere.” “We did different levels of blood and gore,” Campbell remembers.
When Jeff Campbell, a visual effects supervisor with VFX studio Spin, initially set to work on the first “John Wick,” the 2014 action-thriller from director Chad Stahelski and writer Derek Kolstad, he started with an industry-standard test: Establish a single, simple kill-effect meant to get a sense of the look of the violence the filmmakers were after.
