education

THE PERFECT STORM

Demonstration & Workshop
11am, Friday 10th @ The Nerve Centre

The Perfect Storm is a dramatic recreation of the events of October 1991, when a group fishermen returning with their catch on board the "Andrea Gail", encountered a storm so huge and violent it would affect those who survived for the rest of their lives.

If you missed The Perfect Storm on its cinema release during the summer, you missed a remarkable merging of live action and computer effects. Stefen Fangmeier, of the computer graphics department of Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), will demonstrate just how his team came to recreate the ferocious violence of one of the worst storms in living memory. First, though, here's some background information on the making of The Perfect Storm ...

The essential dilemma for director Wolfgang Peterson was how to capture the immense power of huge storm that hit Gloucester. Recreating the storm at sea was obviously impossible (film crews will tell you that some directors like to think they're God, but not even the most autocratic director could not command the elements to perform on cue). So Wolfgang Peterson approached the storm scenes in three ways:

1. He and the cast and crew of The Perfect Storm went to Gloucester and shot live-action footage of the boat, the "Andrea Gail", and its crew in the seas off the coast. This footage was used mainly for close-ups of the crew fishing in the earlier stages of the film.
2. The crew then went to soundstage 16 on the Warner Bros. lot, where they built a large water tank surrounded on all 4 sides by blue screens. They then placed a replica of the "Andrea Gail" on top of a huge gimble Ð an adaptable platform that rocks and sways to mimic the movement of a boat in a storm (and which was so realistic that it caused seasickness among the cast). When Wolfgang Peterson yelled "action!" more water was sprayed from jets onto the decks of the boat, like spray from the sea, and from the ceiling, like torrential rain. In the midst of this, the actors performed their scenes again. So what were the blue screens for?
3. This is where Stefen Fangmeier and the computer graphics department of ILM came in. They recreated the stormy seas entirely on computer by using as a guide the footage of a sea squall shot by the coastguard on video. From this footage, they, in effect, animated the Atlantic Ocean and its mountainous waves, adding touches such as the lightening flashes that revealed huge waves all around the vulnerable boat. The "Andrea Gail" was also recreated on computer, for those longshots where it looks tiny against the waves. They built it up in digital layers, starting with the skeleton of the boat. They were, in effect, working from the inside out, creating the framework to paint the storm-ravaged details later on.
4. The digitised footage of the sea was then placed over the blue screen background of the footage that had been shot on the sound stage, to create a deadly realistic 3-dimensional storm raging around the vulnerable boat.

The scenes of the storm at sea were some of the most memorable in the film. So why, do you think, did Wolfgang Peterson bother to go to Gloucester to shoot live action footage?

[See the worksheet on The Gladiator for tips on how to begin your career in movies with a simple computer effect].