Tracker
Warning : coddler for Tracker season 1 , instalment 9 .
Summary
The latest installation of CBS ' new crime drama , Tracker , features a heartfelt reunion both on and off screen . Season 1 , episode 9 sees Colter team up with a local detective to find a young woman who disappeared after a seemingly supernatural incident . Although she is presumed dead by jurisprudence enforcement , her widow father remains surefooted that Lana is alive and being hold against her will .
Behind the scene of " Aurora , " Justin Hartley join forces withThis Is Usco - lead , Jon Huertas , who serves as the film director . Huertas expresses his excitement to return to the director ’s chair and play off of the tachygraphy he develop with both Hartley and executive manufacturer , Ken Olin . shoot the episode present several challenges , from soaked - space action sequences to unexpected snow , but Huertas think the result was well deserving the effort .
CBS ' gripping serial Tracker has score an former renewal for season 2 , and there are already a ton of exciting details about the Modern instalment .
Jon Huertas chats withScreen Rantabout reuniting withJustin Hartley , unpacking Colter ’s backstory , and his thoughts on Aurora ’s supernatural storyline .
Huertas Was Approached To Direct Tracker While Filming This Is Us
Screen Rant : You reunited with Justin Hartley and Ken Olin for this sequence ofTracker . How did the opportunity deliver itself ?
Jon Huertas : Before This Is Us ended , when Justin and Ken were putting the show together , they ask me if I would ever want to come and direct on the show if it gets pick up , and I said , " Absolutely . " I ’m a immense rooter of both of those guys . I acknowledge that Ken is a lover of my study as a director , which makes me palpate good . [ Laughs ] So if he ’s gon na take me , it ’s gon na make me feel even better . So that ’s how it add up about . They involve me at the end of This Is Us if I ’d be interested if the show commence up on its feet , and it did . It falter through some strike and some other things and I finally got to go up to Vancouver and bound into the director ’s chair again .
How did your workings relationship with Justin help you as a film director on this project ?
Jon Huertas : We have a shorthand , because we know each other so well . I recollect the undertaking I want to act upon on are projects where I ’ve actually , hopefully , worked with someone on the show , whether it ’s behind the television camera or in front of the photographic camera . Having that rapport with masses pass water the job easier . Working with Justin is easygoing , because he ’s such a gifted guy . He guest starred on Castle many years ago , and I remember how natural and how great he was . I was like , " Who is this bozo ? " I had never picture him or heard of him before .
Years after , I remember watching the pilot of This Is Us , and I was like , " Okay , so that type , Kevin , and the room he snap when it came to the pilot … " His piece of work was so wondrous . He ’s been one of my best-loved worker on that show , and in general , for so long . It makes my job as a director slow when I ’m working with him . It ’s a joy to be able to spot in the director ’s chair when you have a great producing theatre director like Ken and a corking player like Justin .
I ’m peculiar how being a veteran actor like yourself also helps you behind the scenes .
Tracker follows lone-wolf survivalist Colter Shaw as he navigates the country as a reward seeker. Utilizing his expert tracking skills, he aids private citizens and law enforcement in solving various mysteries while grappling with issues from his fractured family.
Jon Huertas : I think it open me a tachygraphy as far as how actors and manager speak to one another . I remember that the serious music director are ones that , even if they ’ve never been in front of the television camera or process onstage , they ’ve at least taken some performing socio-economic class just so they can understand how to talk to an actor to pull functioning from them and get the worked up emotional meter that they ’re look for in the panorama . If you could talk to an doer in their spoken language , that helps make it easy . That strength of being an role player is something that I bring to directing . But , also , as a television director , you ’ve got to fend up in front of a lot of mass sometimes and tell them , " This is what we ’re doing . "
Having had to do that for so many year and throw dialogue out there in front of the entire two - hundred - individual crew — I’m comfortable . I ’m well-situated enough to ask for what I need from the crowd and take for what I want . I ’m also fine with the Holy Writ " no , " because as an thespian , you take heed that a lot . You have to get used to people say you no . Like , " No , you ’re not ripe for this part . " So if I require for the earth as a director , and they say me no , it ’s no pelt off my back . The water beads up and seethe off my back .
If they say no , I figure out another way to do it . As an role player , when you are making choices in a view , there are these obstacles that are usually give to you , either in the handwriting or from your co - star ’s carrying into action , and you have to whelm those obstacle . So accept to overcome obstacles is something that I ’ve had to do as an actor , and now as the director , you have to do that . It ’s my best-loved part of point . Figuring out how to overcome obstacles that are thrown in your path .
Colter’s Backstory Lends Itself To The Tracker Case
Trackeris still in its first time of year , but of the episodes that have aired so far , what excited you most about the plot line for Aurora ?
Jon Huertas : I love the plot line because it felt like a Graeco-Roman thriller flick that I grew up love . I call back one of the movies that it reminded me of was Prisoners with Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal . I fuck that movie . It ’s one of my favorite , and this episode kind of lent itself to have that vibration and feeling . When I read it , I think it was cool that Colter bring forth to have a true mate in this , an fact-finding partner , when team up up with the local tec . I just think that was something I had n’t seen on Tracker .
At the end , she says , " Hey , there ’s a place for you here at the department . " That was a innate thing for him to come down in lockstep with someone and solve this criminal offense together . I like that about the book a lot . One of my favorite things , as a director , and in aliveness , is collaborating with people and with creative person . I can only imagine that really dependable investigators love collaborating with other really dependable investigators . And so to get that feeling between those two quality and have that chemistry between those two eccentric was important .
What about Colter ’s backstory ? What interests you most about Justin ’s character , and what did you operate with him to bring out for this episode specifically ?
Jon Huertas : There was some stuff and nonsense I wanted to put in there that we were n’t able to . I ca n’t wait to see more of Colter ’s backstory unfold because there ’s so much there to unpack . His backstory lent itself to this case that he ’s influence . He did n’t have the family building block that was normal — growing up in the woods and being this survivalist . I think the idea of a normal family is something that he care he had . When he see a Church Father — it ’s put down him , lose his daughter . I know it ’s about Colter being a rewardist and get this reward money , but I feel like every episode is about that human story .
We get a little taste of the supernatural . Have you worked in that genre before ? Were you delirious to touch on it here ?
Jon Huertas : I ’ve run in the supernatural as an doer . I did a motion picture years ago call The Objective with one of the directors of The Blair Witch Project . We have elements of detect footage in this episode , so I ’ve done it before . I ’m a heavy doubter . I do n’t believe in the supernatural , in person . What I liked is that we were able-bodied to bring with the audience . Some the great unwashed might conceive in the Harkwood Witch , and some might not , and there ’s the fact that kids are film student . Are they just making all this up ? Are they try out to do their own Blair Witch Project ?
I think it was really cool and ground it enough so people who are more skeptic like me can invest in that and go , " Yeah , none of this is real . " But then there ’s enough of a interrogative sentence presented to where people who do lean into the supernatural can go , " I think this part was real . Maybe he really did get scratch by some wild , inconspicuous witch . " I liked that we were able to tug at both end of the twine . The people who are questioning and the people who are perhaps a niggling piece more of worshipper in the supernatural .
It was fun . I guess my personal experience did n’t really affect how I was going to tell this story because , being such a skeptic , and I detest say that , but I do n’t trust in ghosts or witch . I consider in Wiccan . I think [ it was about ] just appease really true to the script . There was such a great author that we had on this episode . I think letting the handwriting guide us through that is what I wanted to do .
The Opening Scene Of Tracker Episode 9 Was A “Happy Accident”
There are a lot of heavy scenes in " Aurora , " but is there one in exceptional that you found dispute to get the right take for ?
Jon Huertas : The most challenging part of the episode was the action stuff in the basement because it was such a small space . We wanted to keep an air of mystery and suspense and peril , and because it ’s such a modest place , it was a little tough to make trusted that we ’re doing that and making it feel like Colter is lost in this labyrinth space . That was pretty challenging . And then there were some logistic challenge that we dealt with , which terminate up being a well-chosen chance event . For our opening move scene , I checked the weather condition before I lead my hotel , and it was going to be no precipitation . It was going to be forty degree . I was like , " I ’ll put a couple of bed on , but not too thick . "
The fix was like forty moment away . I ’m studying my playscript , so thirty moment into the drive , I had n’t looked out the windowpane yet . When I finally look out the window , there are three inches of snow on the ground . We did n’t design for this . So it ended up being very , very cold . I had a very difficult shot with a laggard that I was doing with the nosepiece . We had a lot of citizenry out there , and our background artists and costume department did n’t realize there was die to be snow . Everybody was freeze , we had to take a suspension .
It was unmanageable to get the drone to hit the right flight path . It was a mint of logistics that were just in jeopardy when it come up to how we put it together . And now , that ’s one of my favorite moments . The possibility guessing is one of my best-loved moments in the whole sequence . I just experience like it all plays out and cut together so well . Because it ’s three old age prior to the rest of our account , the snow end up being a great piece of product value . It feel cold , dismal , and lamentable as this drone is flying in . And that ’s precisely what we want for him to find this girl ’s trunk . It ended up being perfect .
I was excited to see you direct " Double Trouble " forThe Rookie . That episode was in true offence format , and Eric Winter and Melissa O’Neil played characters who were drastically different from Tim and Lucy . Could you partake some brainwave into how you navigated that ?
Jon Huertas : That was a really fun sequence . The Rookie had done a couple of other true crime episode before that . We pose the script kind of late , but the script was so dissimilar from the other episode they had shoot that were true offense . In the book , it was just surveillance camera and organic structure Cam River . I had pitched to Alexi Hawley , the showrunner , " Now that this infotainment filmmaker , you , has become successful , I think he ’s kick upstairs , and now has a Cops - style film work party . " So it countenance us to get a little closer and deeply into the activity . And also , it was Alexi Hawley ’s on - photographic camera debut as an actor . In the original handwriting , he was n’t on camera , he was off camera .
I was like , " I think we should capture you on camera . That would be fun . " I had so much sport doing that installment , because you countenance these characters to part this quaternary rampart and utter directly to the audience , and that ’s rarified in a procedural television show . The actors had so much merriment in these roles , which permit me to have a lot of fun . I ’ve known Eric Winter for a longsighted time , and he has so much fun playing that [ Dim ] character . It ’s so funny . So does Melissa O’Neil . I reckon that they really love step out of Tim and Lucy to be these demented raging characters . I had a slap-up metre doing that episode , and really let actors to have merriment , and allowing Alexi to have fun in front of the camera .
About Tracker
TRACKER stars Justin Hartley as Colter Shaw , a lone - wolf survivalist who cast the country as a reinforcement searcher , using his proficient trailing science to help private citizen and law enforcement resolve all mode of mysteries while contending with his own fractured household . The series is ground on the bestselling novel The Never Game by Jeffery Deaver .
young episode ofTrackerair Sundays at 9 Prime Minister ET / PT on CBS .
Tracker follows solitary - wolf survivalist Colter Shaw as he navigates the body politic as a reward seeker . Utilizing his expert tracking skills , he aid individual citizen and law of nature enforcement in figure out various mysteries while grapple with issues from his fractured family .
