Australia — “Kick On” Ran 1,536 Setups in 20 Days to Keep Its Siege Action Practical

• “Kick On” ran 1,536 camera setups across a 20-day shoot in Melbourne, about seventy-seven a day.
• A childhood friend of the director who works as a stuntman plays the doorman.
• A head cast of Tyrone Ngatai is destroyed on set, timed by the stunt and makeup-effects departments.

Posted: September 14, 2026

Nick Kozakis’s Kick On world-premiered in TIFF’s Midnight Madness on September 14, and the number worth pulling out of the release-day press is the schedule: 1,536 camera setups across a 20-day shoot in Melbourne. Kozakis calls that “a psycho amount,” and on an action picture it is a department-level problem before it is a camera one — roughly seventy-seven setups a day means the reset is the job. Every hit, fall and contact beat has to be repeatable on a compressed turnaround, with pads, blood rigs and eyelines re-established each time and no margin to rehearse a sequence back into shape once the unit has moved on. Kozakis came up directing music videos, which is where the frenetic cutting rate and the appetite for intimate close-ups inside the violence come from, and it is the close coverage that drives the setup count.

The casting detail is the one performers will notice. Kozakis put a childhood friend who went on to work professionally as a stuntman into the doorman role after watching him work through previsualisation — “I can’t unsee — like, you need to play this character.” That is a stunt professional carrying a character rather than doubling one, and on a siege film built around sustained close-quarters contact it means the performer is handling both sides of the job in the same take: the acting beat and the impact that follows it.

The action is designed to be caught in camera rather than assembled afterwards. Prosthetics designer Larry van Duynhoven (Scarecrew Studios) built an exact head cast of Tyrone Ngatai that is destroyed on set for a trauma beat — a practical gag that has to be timed jointly by the stunt and makeup-effects departments, because the destruction is a one-take consumable and the performer’s position, speed and follow-through all have to be locked before it fires. “It’s just so much more fun to be able to play with the practical elements,” Kozakis says. He has also said he would not trade the cast’s reactions and fear for spectacle, which is the argument for shooting the contact live rather than cutting around it.

The film is an Australian production, shot in Melbourne, lensed by Shyam Ediriweera and cut by Liam Kelly, with Blue Finch handling sales. No stunt coordinator or fight choreographer has been credited in the release-day coverage or on public credit listings yet — credit pending.

Source: Variety — ‘John Wick Cracked Out on Meth’ Toronto Midnight Madness Film ‘Kick On’ Director Nick Kozakis Says Real Stunts Sell the Brutality · IF Magazine — Nick Kozakis’s ‘Kick On’ to make world premiere at TIFF

Learn more on IMDb: Kick On (2026)