There’s nothing complex about Poseidon’s story – a big ship gets slammed by a giant wave, rolls over, and everyone tries to escape. But it took some of the most complex visual effects shots yet to make it believable.
Director Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, The Perfect Storm), no stranger to water-filled disaster films, gave visual-effects supervisor Boyd Shermis three objectives. “He said, ‘I want to out-storm The Perfect Storm, out-Titanic Titanic, and I want everything to be photo-fucking-real.’ I promised him I would make it photoreal.”
All told, the film includes around 535 visual effects shots out of 900 created in post-production. “The post schedule was so compressed, we had to start shots even if there was only a remote idea they would be in the film,” says Shermis.
The Moving Picture Company (MPC; London) handled interior shots of water crashing through the lobby and ballroom. Industrial Light & Magic (ILM; San Francisco) built the digital luxury liner, created the ocean around the ship, and the giant wave that rocks the boat. CIS (Hollywood) built the ship’s galley, a corridor, the thruster room, and a raging torrent of water in the corridor. Hydraulx (Santa Monica) composited elements for the engine room from miniature shots and then built a 3D version. Giant Killer Robots (San Francisco) created a nightclub sequence, shots that take place in an elevator shaft, and 3D stunt actors. Pixel Playground (Encino, CA) helped survivors crawl through air conditioning ducts. And, Frantic Films (Los Angeles) worked on the previs.
“We spent a great deal of time in previs working with virtual camera lenses and camera angles that would make the ship look big,” says Shermis. “It’s easy to make it look like a toy boat.”
Even though sets and miniatures were used, and actors were filmed in water tanks, some of the most dramatic sequences were digital or augmented with digital sets and digital water.
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