Riz Ahmed on his finest film moments: "Jake Gyllenhaal was a weirdo!"

‘Sound Of Metallic’

The scene: Heavy metallic drummer Ruben storms out of a gig, lastly admitting to his girlfriend that he has listening to loss.

“We used various completely different methods to simulate the deafness – and on this sequence I’m sporting audio blockers deep inside my ear canal. We took listening to aids and repurposed them to emit a white noise. You’ll be able to’t even hear the sound of your individual voice. It was fairly a visceral ,intense expertise usually because Darius Marder, the writer-director, would management the extent of white noise. We’d be doing a scene and I’d be speaking to somebody and unexpectedly it could kick in. There’s that sense of: ‘Dangle on a minute, what’s occurring – the place am I?’ It’s one thing spontaneous that you just’re capturing on display.”

‘Nightcrawler’

The scene: A weird job interview, during which conman Lou (Jake Gyllenhaal) affords Rick (Ahmed) an undefined, unpaid place.

“Man, I’ve had some dangerous auditions. In order that’s all the time an inspiration when doing a job interview [scene like this]. You don’t wanna be too determined however you don’t wanna be too chilly. It’s a really self-conscious factor. So there’s all the time that to attract on however to be sincere, Jake Gyllenhaal was such a weirdo (in one of the simplest ways) [while] taking pictures this movie. I keep in mind he was ravenous himself to attain the impact of this bottomless starvation that the character had. I used to be simply watching him remodel in entrance of my eyes. It was simply unsettling to be round him… Folks point out this scene and I’m identical to: ‘Dude, I used to be simply there whereas this weirdo was doing his factor and I used to be simply reacting like you’re!’”

‘4 Lions’

The scene: Incompetent terrorist Faisal has simply unintentionally blown himself up – Omar (Ahmed) and his accomplices sift by way of their buddy’s stays.

“What’s attention-grabbing behind this entire sequence is: we shot, clearly, the Faisal blowing himself up by mistake scene and we weren’t meant to try this subsequent sequence the place I are available in and begin shouting at everybody for an additional week. After which on the day, because it generally is with low-budget filmmaking, it was: ‘Proper, issues have moved round. We would lose subsequent week’s location so we now have to try this scene now. Might you simply prepare in two minutes?’ And really that may generally actually enable you to. You don’t have the prospect to overthink it. So what you really had was one thing fairly frenetic as a result of we’re all like: ‘Can we get this scene proper? Can we do it?’ And it finally ends up infusing the scene with that sort of intense vitality.

“It’s bought a few of my favorite traces in it, man. ‘Leap off the tree and blow up the web arse-first.’ ‘Is he a martyr or a jalfrezi?’ It’s simply bought killer line after killer line. However on the time you’re simply making an attempt to get by way of the scene and also you watch it again and also you’re like: ‘How did we preserve a straight face?’ and then you definitely keep in mind: ‘Oh yeah, we didn’t for 9 takes out of 10.’”

‘Venom’

The scene: Unhinged baddie Carlton Drake (Ahmed) bonds himself with a symbiote alien and goes on the rampage.

“it was a brand new expertise for me since you do the voice however then they animate all of it. This entire sequence of Riot instantly smashing up the management room and deciding to go full-blown nutter was lots of enjoyable. Simply to unleash that sort of aggression. However they don’t allow you to do the entire struggle sequences. They map that in animation so that you’re nearly like one of many followers. I’m ready to see what they’ve animated. They offer you a tough concept of what the struggle sequences are gonna be like. Then they present you photos and stuff however whenever you go in to voice the character, you’re getting into after they’ve finished the animation. In a means it takes the strain off. You don’t should do all that loopy acrobatic struggle stuff.”

‘The Lengthy Goodbye’

The scene: A devastating far proper assault ends in a tragic loss, earlier than our protagonist provides a significant closing speech.

“This was on the shortest day of the yr when it comes to daylight and I keep in mind after we shot that ultimate bit we had two takes. So we shot the primary take and I used to be stood within the flawed place, the sunshine wasn’t on me. So we mainly solely had one take – and generally that may actually focus you. When you realize you’ve solely bought one crack at it. You’re on the mercy of circumstance, so in a means it’s important to give up to it. Then you definitely get right into a move and issues begin occurring. It ended up being a stable take that we may use. That’s not an argument for all the time working underneath crazily tough circumstances, however generally having these restrictions, having that strain, can actually focus everybody.”

‘Encounter’ streams on Amazon Prime Video from December 3