With a film that spends 80% of the time inside a sperm whale it would seem a big ask to get a whale to agree for an entire film crew to shoot for months on end inside its stomach. So here’s how they filmed inside the Whalefall Whale…
What they decided to do was to build practical sets, and have visual effects add all the muscle movement and the translucency and the gelatinous feeling to the whale’s stomach. “We created a photorealistic environment that could move in a practical way, but there are things in nature, things like organs and muscles, that are very difficult to recreate, so we learned how to do those in the computer,” explains visual effects supervisor Guillaume Rocheron. “And there we learned how to simulate the translucency of the skin and the gelatinous materials that are semi-translucent, and which would be impossible to manufacture with materials that were durable enough for shooting.”
“Shooting the film practically was extremely important for a concept like this, because it is so extreme,” says producer Brian Grazer.
How many Whalefall whale stomachs were there?
In order to realistically capture Austin Abrams’ character Jay inside the stomach of a sperm whale on screen, the filmmakers created a number of different sets to allow for multiple angles from which to film the actor. These sets were built on soundstages at CBS Radford Studios in Studio City, and included: an end-cap set, a side-entrance set, a second stomach set, a side stomach set, an esophagus set, and a larynx set.
When it came time to create the Whalefall whale stomachs themselves, Rocheron reached out to the world-renowned special effects studio Wētā Workshop, which has helped transform modern filmmaking, earning multiple Academy Awards® for its groundbreaking artistry and craftsmanship. Because so much of the film takes place inside the whale’s stomach after Jay is swallowed, the team at Wētā knew they needed to create practical sets that felt believable, immersive, and alive.
The early prep work at Wētā was all about building the stomachs and understanding how they might work, and what kind of camera access we would need
The goo!
For Rocheron, another hurdle was figuring out how to create a Whalefall whale stomach and make it cinematic and compelling, without it looking too dark and repulsive. What followed were months of discussions and experimentation, during which time he worked closely with DoP Aaron Morton and production designer Ramsey Avery. “Bottom line, if you’re going to be in a whale’s stomach, it’s going to be gross, no matter what, so one of our biggest fears from day one was not immersing the audience in absolute grotesquerie for two hours,” says Avery.
“We started with a digital model, moving into a foam mock-up, then from the foam mock-up, moving back into a digital model that was more accurate,” explains Avery. “And then from that more accurate digital model, building it again in foam and going back and testing that with an actor and with camera and with lighting to see how that all interacted. That was the whole process all the way through: design something in a digital model, execute it in a mock-up kind of way, put a person inside of it, put a camera inside of it, and then make whatever we learned from that. And every time we learned something, make those adjustments for the next iteration of it.”
WĒTĀ’s on-set supervisor Ben Milsom (“Blade Runner 209,” “Alien: Earth”) oversaw the manufacture and filming of the Whalefall whale stomachs and the giant squid. His first job was to create a prototype of the stomach, as the filmmaking team needed to ensure the design worked for all parties involved. “
The inside of the stomach has a fleshy, skin-like texture, which was created with a platinum-based silicone that was hard-wearing, and with a slight tint of colour and texture. The shell of the stomach was made out of mattress foam, which was sprayed with silicone via a popcorn gun, which gave it the appropriate texture. “The outside of the stomachs was then layered in a canvas material,” says Milsom, “and then we had D-rings put on the whole stomach that would sit inside a speed rail frame with bungee cords attached to the D-rings that we could pull to stretch out the stomach.”
There are two stomachs in the story. “Stomach One is the one that Jay first arrives in when he gets swallowed by the whale,” Milsom explains. “It is quite small, and it has the oesophagus sphincter coming into it and the stomach two sphincter going out of it. It kind of looks like a heart when you see it from the outside.”
How they used the stomachs…
Executive producer Doug Merrifield breaks down all the stomachs used on production. “We had four versions of stomach one on two different hydraulic motion bases, stomach two on another motion base, a smaller stomach rigged to a 360-degree barrel roll motion base, and a clamshell- like insert stomach that matched stomach number one that was the easiest to access for pickups, close-ups, and hand work. So, it was a bit of a three-ring circus whenever there were multiple stomachs working at the same time. Every Friday, the stomachs would be rotated to go into recovery and repair mode over the weekend
“The four versions were built at WĒTĀ in New Zealand and shipped to Los Angeles for principal photography,” Milsom continues. “There were two matching stomachs, which had removable ends and a removable side panel, and they were essentially our workhorses in terms of coverage. We needed two copies because they would get such a workout, and they got so hammered when filming with them, so we would swap them out so that one was being repaired while the other one stayed on the three-point rig with the two motion bases.”
“The food stomach was anatomically the same, but it was what we referred to as the tenderizer, and that was used for close ups,” Milsom says. “It had a whole side, which just opened right up so you could just shoot it like a curved wall. The top of it came off as well, so it was more or less a multi-use close-up set and a good B camera setup. We had it on a frame and a cradle, which allowed us to put water in them and for them to be watertight on the lower half.
The fourth version of the Whalefall whale stomach was the barrel roll, which was essentially the same kind of stomach skin inside a circular truss on a wheeled frame, and it was able to turn 360 degrees. “There are several moments in the story where the whale does a full breech in 360 degrees, so we were able to have Jay in a stomach and turn him 360 degrees on camera.”
Stomach two, which is essentially the second stomach that Jay goes through, which contains all the whale’s stomach acid, was much longer and bigger. “We made it a lot more red and visually unpleasant,” says Milsom. “It is shaped like an intestine, and has a high entrance way, which is connected to stomach one. We built it in two halves, but again, we had to build a big cradle because we had to fill half of the cradle with slimy methimazole, so it wasn’t just water, but more like a soup, which was very difficult to film in because it was slippery as hell.”
Stomach churn….
While the Whalefall whale stomach sets created a one-of-a-kind cinematic landscape on screen, their behind-the-scenes co-stars were the massive platforms, gimbals, and motion-control systems that supplemented the manual manipulation used to bring the stomachs to life.
Stomach number one had four different rigs: three rigs that would actually move it, and a four-point rig which was mainly used for the flashback sequences. And then we had our large gimbal that was used for very quick, extreme motions, so when the whale is diving down or swimming back up to the surface, it got the water to slosh around. All the rigs were motion controlled, which allowed us to create precise movements inside the stomach.
The stomach sets were mounted on different platforms designed to recreate everything from the subtle movement of a sperm whale swimming through the ocean to the extreme forces Jay would experience as the whale dove, rolled, and moved through the deep.
Together, these platforms became an essential part of the filmmaking, allowing the practical stomach sets to move, contract, tilt, and roll around Austin Abrams. Combined with the manual manipulation of the stomachs, they created the physical sensation that Jay was truly trapped inside a living, moving whale.
related feature : Visual Effects Supervisor Guillaume Rocheron talks about his work on, ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’……
related feature : ‘Whalefall’ – director Brian Duffield, Josh Brolin & Austin Abrams introduce the ultimate survival thriller!
The post How they filmed inside the Whalefall whale….. appeared first on Any Good Films.
from Any Good Films https://ift.tt/RMbU7qt
