Grotesque director Max Winkler presents episode 5. Deadlock

When director Max Winkler first read the script for the fifth episode of “Grotesquerie,” he knew he wanted to film most of the episode in one continuous take. The problem was getting everyone else to join the team.

“I just lied to everyone: ‘We can do this.’ I thought, ‘We can do this 1,000,000%,'” Winkler told TheWrap. Throughout the process, Winkler was reminded of one of his heroes, Marcelo Bielsa, the Uruguayan national team manager who famously never had a Plan B other than better execution of Plan A. That’s exactly the mindset Winkler brought to “Red Haze.”

“In my head I thought, ‘Oh my God, are you really going to get kicked out for this? Are you really going to burn your way into Hollywood with this idea? – said Winkler. “But we did it. I’m really proud of everyone involved.”

It’s easy to understand Winkler’s panic over “Red Haze.” The first half of episode five, clocking in at around 14 minutes and 30 seconds, feels like a crazy, demented nightmare pulled straight from the mind of David Lynch. If the season so far has been a slow build-up to madness, all hell has actually broken loose. Winkler wanted to present it as one continuous shot, “not to show off,” but to capture the panic that Lois (Niecy Nash-Betts) and sister Megan (Micaela Diamond) feel while trapped in a remote motel.

“(Continuous shots) are very overused. “A lot of times that happens, and then all of a sudden you become more aware of the shot and less aware of what people are going through, and it doesn’t make any sense,” Winkler said. “I wanted to get inside Lois and Megan’s heads, and I wanted people to feel overwhelmed by the things we keep throwing ourselves at.” He said Alfonso Cuarón’s “Children of Men” was an inspiration for this ambitious episode, as was Alexander Sokurov’s “The Russian Ark” and the works of Romain Gavras.

“Red Haze” picks up right after the events of episode 4. Trapped by a series of fires, Lois and sister Megan are driving down the road with a picked up hitchhiker, a bloody woman named Andrea. After Andrea advises them to stay at a nearby hotel and wait out the fires, she escapes to the bathroom to wash up. That’s when this terrifying saga begins to gain momentum.

Lois and sister Megan face an endless stream of people who need their help, from bloody Andrea and the motel clerk (also named Andrea) suffering from domestic violence, to a family who got into a car accident. As Sister Megan ran from desperate person to person, an exhausted Lois shouted at her to take a step back while she dealt with a painful phone call regarding her comatose husband. To add to the chaos, Grotesquerie – the serial killer the two women were tracking – showed up at the motel and started shooting at them. The extremely stressful sequence ended with the Grotesquerie kidnapping a still bloody Andrea before shooting Sister Megan. As Lois screams for help, the camera stops its jerky movements and slowly pans upwards, focusing on the desert skyline.

According to Winkler, the nearly 15-minute sequence took months to plan. He began by walking around the set with his cinematographer Carolina Costa, assistant director Anna Ramey Borden, and second assistant director Sarah Ford. While Winkler, Costa and Borden were determining the placement of the car platform and the various platforms, Ford played both the roles of Lois and Sister Megan. After making this initial sketch, Winkler and his team took the camera operator on set to further determine what was and wasn’t possible.

As the team worked out the details, they realized that their best chance of mitigating technical risk would be to film the sequence during the magic hour, thus limiting the number of lights needed. This meant they would only have four times to make this ambitious shot.

“It was very, very tense,” Winkler said. After bringing in the actors, Winkler compared the entire situation to a “theatre troupe.” The actors rehearsed for the first four hours of the day and then tried to get the shot at the magic hour.

“We wouldn’t understand it. We would have tried a different approach, but it wouldn’t have worked,” Winkler said.

Another confusing layer was Andreas. “Grotesquerie” cast identical twins Victoria and Madison Abbott to play bloody hitchhiker Andrea and abused motel clerk Andrea. As the scene continued, the twins were “constantly” fixing their hair and makeup as they each played their part.

“So Victoria ran out of the car. Madison is then at the front desk. Then Victoria changes and assumes the position of Andrea, who was thrown into the pool,” Winkler explained. “Madison then goes the other way, wet her hair and combs it back, then gives herself a new black eye and then comes out from behind the desk.”

To make impossible shooting more difficult, there was the issue of the desert heat. Winkler praised Neal Bryant for his camera work throughout the sequence, calling him the episode’s “secret weapon”. Bryant previously won Television Cinematographer of the Year from the Society of Camera Operators for his work on the third episode of “The Last of Us.” Bryant worked closely with Em cameraman Michelle Gonzales on this episode.

“We were saying we were cutting and he had to vomit in the bushes and the camera assistants were pouring ice water on him. It was 120 degrees and he had various devices with him that he had to keep turning on and off,” Winkler said. “We couldn’t do it without him. I wouldn’t even try to do it without him. It would be impossible.”

The heat also posed a challenge to the character of the Grotesquerie. Throughout much of the chaotic sequence, the black-clad killer can be seen lurking in the background. Unlike the other characters in this scene, the serial killer is almost always out in the sun, away from the shade.

“We kept having to hire new stuntmen to play the Grotesquerie because people were getting sick. People were experiencing heat exhaustion,” Winkler said.

Finally, on the third day of shooting and the third take, everything fell into place perfectly. The actors hit the nail on the head, the car crash and shooting went off without a hitch, and the twins’ costume changes were completed. All that was left was for Grotesquerie to complete the scene by shooting Megan’s sister.

“Grotesquerie gets out of the car. He holds a gun and drops the gun. “I remember thinking then that I was going to die and have a heart attack,” Winkler said, comparing that moment to the theater farce “Noises Off.” “But you can’t break down because everyone wants you to say: ‘It’ll be fine.’ So I took my headphones off and thought, “Great, let’s do it again.”

“I would say that was probably the moment where I needed the most inner resolve to continue to pretend that I knew what I was doing,” Winkler added.

Finally, on the last day and the last opportunity to set the stage well, Winkler and his team were given their chance. “Um, our B-camera operator, who was controlling while Neal held the camera for most of the movie, was crying. I felt like it was very indicative of what was at stake for everyone in trying to put this together and make sense of it so that it actually served the story,” Winkler said.

“It was incredibly complex and fun,” Winkler said, highlighting the work of Borden and Costa, as well as the team of stuntmen, camera operators and the series’ stars, especially Nash-Betts and Diamond.

“A lot of it was down to all elements of the entire group working together to hit that sweet spot, which we finally did on day four,” Winkler said. “It was a real team effort. “It felt like we were playing ‘Our Town’ or something in the desert, but with a lot of madness and violence.”

New episodes of “Grotesquerie” premiere Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on FX and stream the next day on Hulu.