page_title: Bagman (Better Call Saul)
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Bagman (Better Call Saul) / Production
caption_attribution_description: Vince Gilligan
context_page_description: "Bagman" is the eighth episode of the fifth season of the AMC television series Better Call Saul, the spinoff series of Breaking Bad. The episode aired on April 6, 2020 on AMC in the United States. Outside of the United States, the episode premiered on streaming service Netflix in several countries.
context_section_description: "Bagman" was directed by series co-creator Vince Gilligan, who considered the episode one of the most challenging episodes he had to direct in his career. Gilligan had been able to make arrangements to direct one episode in the fifth season after completing post-production of El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. Both co-showrunner Peter Gould and writer Gordon Smith, knowing this would be Gilligan's episode, planned for his directorial skills and continually teased Gilligan in the weeks leading up before the episode's filming that it was going to be well-suited for him. They had compared the episode to Lawrence of Arabia in terms of how they wanted it to look, and even had considered renting out the lens used to film that movie, but were worried about the liability if they had damaged it.
  The episode took over 18 days to shoot, compared to the average nine days for most other episodes. Most of the filming location was located on the To'Hajiilee Indian Reservation, about two hours outside of Albuquerque by car, though the pickup location where Jimmy meets the Cousins was only about 15 minutes away from the Albuquerque studios. Gilligan credits his production team for making sure the cast and crew were protected from heat and had plenty of water to assure the shoot went on without any issues. Gilligan wanted Bob Odenkirk to employ method acting techniques, and did supply him with weighed bags to tote, but Odenkirk had drawn the line at drinking urine. Gilligan praised the script from Smith, which he felt established the bond between Mike and Jimmy that was seen in Breaking Bad but otherwise absent in Better Call Saul previously. Gilligan's associate producer Jenn Carroll and assistant Melissa Ng helped to identify elements to add to Smith's script to further connect the relationship between Mike and Jimmy to what was seen in Breaking Bad.
  The shootout scene between Mike and the gunmen was a challenge for Gilligan, and he considered it "the most complicated single scene I've ever directed". He wanted to have Odenkirk visible in all shots, even while the stuntmen and practical effects were going off around him, as to show the shootout from Jimmy's point of view as much as possible. The overall sequence took about four to five days to complete. To film the scene with the flipping truck while Jimmy was in-shot, a temporary green screen was placed on site. Odenkirk's reaction in front of the screen was filmed first, followed by the truck flip without changing the camera's location after Odenkirk and the screen were removed. The Suzuki Esteem that had been shot up and pushed into a gully was a duplicate of the one they normally used in filming; the original was still kept at the local studios, allowing them to reuse it for any later flashback scenes as needed.
caption: Series co-creator Vince Gilligan considered "Bagman" to be one of the most challenging episodes to direct in his career.
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