In the past couple of weeks I’ve talked about complex sets and production weeks, but in my opinion the hardest practical effect to achieve is massive natural water disasters, like a tsunami, a flood or a boat sinking. Many famous films have water disasters like the film 2012 and Pirates of the Caribbean, but a lot of the time these effects are done using CGI, but a couple films and TV shows take the leap and use real water tanks and wave machines to get the full effect and it shows.
Titanic:
Obviously, everyone knows that Titanic takes the cake in extreme water spectacles. James Cameron wanted to make you feel like you were on that boat.
One of the most harrowing scenes to film practically in the Titanic was the after crashing down the stairwell. They had to get the shot exactly right with the first take because the staircase was rigged to fall apart a specific way and after that take if the shot didn’t work they would have had to halt production and fully re-built a completely destroyed set.
On top of that the boat they built and sunk in a massive water pool in Mexico cost over $150 million dollars and the movie itself cost over $200 million, making the most expensive movie ever made at that time. On top of everything else because everyone had to be in the water for so long, people were freezing to death and getting ill, no one could pee so people started peeing in the water, it was overall just bad. “When the production moved to Mexico, and literally thousands of extras and stuntmen re-enacted the sinking of the Titanic on a replica built to 90 per cent scale, Cameron imposed a work regime that left everyone else reeling. After spending hours each day standing waist-deep in chilly, dirty Pacific sea water, many cast members came down with colds, flu or kidney infections.” (Gumbel).
The Impossible:
Another movie that went all the way on getting realistic water effects and shots with the actors in the water disasters them selves was the 2010 film “The Impossible” which was another true story about the Tsunami that hit Thailand. In an interview done with director J.A. Bayona he tells The New York Times, “One of the early decisions was not to use C.G.I. water, because it was very expensive, but also because it didn’t feel real,” Mr. Bayona said during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. “So we decided to go with real water, which was kind of a crazy thing.” (Murphy).
The filmed used 3 different types of water rigs to get different needed scenes. The wave was a massive pool that had a maxi-miniture, which is just a larger scale miniature of the resort buildings that get destroyed by the wave. “The special-effects team worked with Edinburgh Designs, a company specializing in simulating waves for surfing schools and pools at water parks. “They work on creating the perfect wave, but what we wanted to create was very nasty, wide and imperfect, so it was something completely different for them,” he said (Murphy).
For the current that pulls the mom, (Namoi Watts) and the eldest son (Tom Holland) they used what they called a massive flowerpot so that the water would be controlled but large enough to make them feel like they were actually being yanked around. For this footage the actors were shot in a surge of water created in an outdoor tank in Alicante, on the southeast coast of Spain… “We put them in what looks like a giant flowerpot, so we could move them in the water safely,” Mr. Bayona said. Powerful pumps moved 3,000 liters per second to create the pull” (Murphy). This was tricky and put everyone a little on edge because the person who was on screen the most taking the hit from the water was Holland, who at the time was only about 13 or 14 and the crew were extra careful to make sure he didn’t get hurt or actually start to drown.
Fox’s 9-1-1
The final project that used complicated practical water effects was Fox’s hit television 9-1-1. In their season 3 opener a tsunami hits the coast of California and the main characters are stuck trying to help everyone at the Santa Monica boardwalk and other places around Los Angeles.
The TV sho creators and producers chose to take the whole cast and crew and fly down to Mexico to film in the same monster pool that Titanic was filmed in. They even built half of the Santa Monica Ferris Wheel and had it sticking out of the water like it had been washed away. In a Fox featurette on the episode, Bradley Buecker, the director and one of the show’s executive producers, said “We built a replica of the Santa Monica Pier and really it’s one of the most insane things I’ve ever done.”
Using that pool they fully flooded fake streets had full fire trucks submerged in water and put the whole cast out on real rescue boats with cameras attached to them as they filmed them rescuing extras from the water.
For a network show that doesn’t have as big a budget or as long of a shooting schedule as a major motion picture the episode that the tsunami took place in could have been pulled form a major block-buster film they looked so good.
All three films achieve incredible feats, but the complexity and the months of preplanning paid off because these movies and tv show really pull you in and make you feel the panic the characters have as their lives flash before their eyes because they’re drowning in real water.
taylorsniffen.com 