1/2 For Marco, disaster is an everyday occurrence (photo: AvroTros).
For a moment, shopping center De Biggelaar in Roosendaal seemed to be the epicenter of a terrorist attack last year. The vacant building was the setting for AvroTros series The golden hour, which starts on Sunday evening. Stunt coordinator Marco Maas briefly returned to his birthplace to record the violent scenes. “It’s a lot of death and destruction.”
“A difficult job.” This is how Maas describes his work for the new Dutch series, by the same director as Mocro Mafia. And that’s saying a lot coming out of his mouth. As owner of the famous Stunt team de Beukelaer, he worked on films such as Brimstone, De Slag om de Schelde and The Hitman’s Bodyguard.
So why was The Golden Hour such a challenge? “The series is full of big, spicy scenes of death and destruction. The question is always how you are going to visualize that. It takes months of preparation.”
As an example he mentions a scene that was shot on the market in Haarlem. “There a truck runs over thirty people. We then build a full scale model of that area in advance, so that we can devise exactly how the story is best presented. It’s really not just about the stunts themselves.”
In that respect it was a lot easier to work in De Biggelaar. After all, the shopping center has been completely empty for years. “Normally there are always some people coming to the edge of the set. I get it, because it’s quite a circus. I often explain what we are doing. But we didn’t have to take that into account at all.”
“My mother even visited the set.”
And so it was an extra special job for Maas, who lived in Roosendaal for years. “During the break I sat on the terrace with an old acquaintance. And my mother even stopped by. She doesn’t normally like to travel and therefore hardly ever visits me on set, but this was a great opportunity. I showed her around and explained everything.”
Actually, the shooting period in Roosendaal would last a little longer. “We planned another rooftop scene where some people would be shot. But that was exactly during that period of the riots in the Langdonk district. The mayor then withdrew the permit. Logical, but very sour for production. We eventually moved to Den Bosch.”
The first episode of Het Gouden uur can be seen on NPO3 on Sunday evening at ten to eight thirty. Will Maas be ready for the TV? “I am certainly curious. There was a special preview of the first two episodes recently, but I couldn’t attend. But a colleague said that it was more than successful. Very raw. Good, because it can sometimes be a bit more spicy on Dutch television.”
The trailer already shows some images of the attack in the shopping center.
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