Whiplash director Damien Chazelle has revealed how a short and intense shoot drove his three drummers to the brink of exhaustion.

The film, which stars Miles Teller as an aspiring jazz drummer and JK Simmons as his terrifying instructor, won three Oscars. It was shot in 20 days.

JK and Miles in Whiplash (Sony Pictures Releasing UK)
JK and Miles in Whiplash (Sony Pictures)

“We only had 20 days to shoot the whole movie, so we could’t do more than a few takes of each scene, but there were certain sequences where I knew we had to keep going,” he said.

“The sequence where JK circles through the three drummers, for hours and hours. We had two cameras, and they were both hand-held and circling, and we just did the whole scene in one take. Then we did it again. Then we did it again. Then we did it again.”

The 30-year-old continued: “Often without cutting; then I’d yell, ‘Go again, go again!’ And we did that probably 10, 15 times in a row without stopping, so by the end, the sweat is real. The drummers were really p***ed at me afterwards!

“I had a good yelling at just after we finished – ‘Are you f***ing crazy?’ But you needed it,” he added.

Damien, who based the story on his real-life experiences of being a jazz drummer, said actor JK – who won the Oscar for best supporting actor – often improvised some of the insults thrown at Miles’ character.

“He’s so brilliant. He makes words leap off the page,” he said.

“You give him an insult that maybe on paper doesn’t feel that sharp and he just punches it. Sometimes he had his own ideas too, so some of it is his own additions! It was a fun thing.”

Whiplash is available on DVD from June 1.