Homeland's Director Breaks Down the Season 7 Finale Episode

Hi, everyone.

I'm Lesli Linka Glatter.

I'm the director and executive producer of Homeland,

and this is Notes on a Scene.

This is the finale episode

of the seventh season of Homeland.

Max, can you hear me? Yeah.

We start off right in the middle of the action.

Carrie Mathison is trying to get out of Russia.

They are within seconds of getting to the embassy,

and as they're about to go,

they pull over because the Soviet Police

has blocked off the entrance,

and there are the Soviet Police right there.

We filmed this in Budapest, Hungary.

Right down here is the real American Embassy.

It was a big deal to shoot in this area

because this is where, really, all the embassies are.

This is actually a treasury building,

and we put a fence there,

and we put up all the signage that's here

because none of this existed, and then all the police cars,

the Russian police cars, were brought in.

Everything you see here, all of this, this is all ours.

Everything that is Russian is all ours because Hungarian

is obviously a completely different language.

He left the hotel five minutes ago with the package.

The camera is outside of the car looking into Carrie,

and we'll have, when we turn around,

another camera outside of the car,

but I want everything to feel like you're in their world.

Now Carrie gets out, Ansen has to make a decision.

Back in the Dark Ages, I was a modern dancer,

and then a choreographer before I started directing.

Choreography has ended up being an amazing skill.

Doing action, directing action, you're moving,

you know, people and things through space,

and that's something you do as a choreographer

and a dancer all the time.

I love choreographing action,

but I love action that has meaning.

I don't really care about blowing up a truck for no reason,

I want it to push the story forward.

This, we had multiple cameras on.

So, the cameras is, actually, right where this is.

We had a camera in a store back here.

We also had a high angle which we ended not using

because this felt like we were more in the scene

and trying to keep it, again, as visceral as possible.

In this piece, the whole idea is that we are with her.

We wanna feel like we are in Carrie's head.

In Homeland, there's a level of anxiety everywhere.

It never really goes away,

and we go back and forth between modes.

So, we'd go from being a scene that was all handheld

into a scene that let's say was all Steadicam,

which keeps you slightly uncomfortable.

You never quite know what footing you're on.

When Carrie first goes down the street,

it is the same street we did the car crash, but this cut,

where the train station is, is a different street.

This is an actual train station,

but this is one of the main train stations in Budapest.

We did not have control of the station,

which was a little tricky.

This was actually written for a market,

but I thought a market, hm,

that's not gonna be so interesting.

It's not gonna have a lot of twists and turns,

and I wanted something where Carrie really had a journey

and we could be with her on that journey,

and the minute I saw this area around the train station,

I thought ah, this is it.

This was not a very big car.

To get all of the camera people,

everyone inside of this car when it was driving,

I was in the trunk of this car.

You know, the camera's in the front seat.

So, if the driver is here, driver's here, and camera's here,

there's no place to put anyone.

I have lots of photos of myself in the backup cars.

So, now, you know, Saul is turning around

and talking to Simone and showing her who she's gonna be.

Carrie Mathison, your favorite.

What's happening with her?

So, now, we are on this little rickshaw.

The rickshaw...

I'm a terrible drawer.

It's terrible, it kinda looks like, yeah,

like a seat with wheels,

and then you've got a guy behind who's pushing this thing,

and then the camera operator is sitting on it,

holding the Steadicam.

So, holding the camera like that,

and we are right behind Carrie.

So, I wanna feel like we are running with her.

(breathing heavily)

She's making a choice now.

She's gonna be going up to the main area

of the train station, and so,

more objective shot to see where you are,

to see what she's dealing with,

and thank goodness we can see her there

because Carrie has a bright red scarf on, and again,

this is a mix of our background,

but probably all of these people here,

I would tell you, these are not our people.

Anyone that's in this area, this is our background.

We tried to surround her with our people,

but you know, people...

It's human life.

People are going to work.

This train here, we owned that train.

So, that train stayed there the whole day.

As far as the other trains,

they were coming and going all day long.

I love, in Homeland, going from the macro of the world,

the wide shot, to right in her face and in her energy,

and this is footage we shot.

Everywhere we go, we are shooting video footage,

small video cameras.

We had cameras everywhere.

We had cameras here, we had cameras there,

we had cameras here, we had another one there,

we had another one there.

The GRU was watching everything.

Now, we are at the airport.

This is the real Budapest International Airport.

This was very tricky for shooting because,

of course, the airport is operational.

This is an area that is not,

but it still is an operational airport,

so we have to stop for when planes were landing.

The joys of filmmaking.

So, you know, the military is guarding this.

These are extras.

Most of them have military training.

These are real guns.

This actor here who's coming up, this guy here, this guy,

amazing Russian actor who's living in Hungary.

Communicating with this guy,

everything had to be translated

from Russian to Hungarian to English.

We have diplomatic immunity.

(speaking Russian)

Fuck off, asshole.

Lock it!

Saul has basically slammed the door

on this immigration officer, but of course,

all of the soldiers are gonna come in and circle the car,

and this guy did this huge hand movement the first time,

and apparently, that's what the Soviets do.

He is actually a former Soviet military guy.

So, he knew procedure, so I had him do it,

but not quite as big as he did it the first time.

I didn't want it to be operatic.

Homeland is realistically real,

and that was keeping him to what would be natural for us.

Get me the embassy.

This whole market, none of this existed.

We built the whole thing,

and this is a real mix of our actors

and people that are actually in the station.

We heard a lot of people saying they were really nervous

that they thought the Soviets had come back,

especially the older background players.

They saw Soviet policemen and they were pretty freaked out.

Claire is amazing to work with.

She is the best partner in crime ever.

She is game to play.

As far as stunts, she is game to try anything.

She has done a lot of running around.

This sequence, for me,

is a great example of what Homeland is.

You're on the edge of your seat,

you have characters that are leading you through the story,

leading you through the action,

you're never comfortable because our characters aren't.

I'm always interested, thematically,

in people being put in extraordinary circumstances

where they're forced to deal with who they really are,

and Carrie and Saul, they are in those circumstances.

The stakes are very very high.

That's what I love doing.