If you refer to the one and only James Cameron as 'Jim'... you're well and truly on your way to a blossoming career in the film industry; For the next few days we're plucking the depths of Alister Grierson's mind, director of James Cameron's new 3D pic - 'Sanctum'!
Andrew Wight, the screenwriter, is a renowned explorer and daredevil; do you share similar character traits?
If you embark on an adventure such as ‘this movie’, you have to be a dare devil in some way of the other. It was a very challenging shoot as you can imagine. Andrew’s been a caver and a diver for most of his adult life; I’m much more of the latte sipping adventurer… of Melbourne. But as apart of the prep for the film I actually learnt to dive and I did some cave diving with Andrew, which was very exciting. To try and get a sense of being in those ‘worlds’ and they really are quite extraordinary. It is a very challenging environment to shoot in.
What attracted you to the project, what caught your eye about the story?
The script wasn’t presented to me as a job offer, it was something that I happened to stumble across – what was really clear in the script was that it had been written by people who really knew what they were talking about, they generally knew these worlds. The language of the film, the way that the characters spoke to each other, the way that the world was described – it was very, very clear that the people that were going to make the movie knew these worlds intimately. So, I ended up pursuing it, and trying to find out who was trying to make this movie and see if they needed a director. I then discovered there was a James Cameron connection and they wanted to shoot it in 3D. This really blew me away as a concept, because it is so perfect for 3D, that kind of environment. So I pushed really hard to get the job and fortunately that liked ‘Kokoda’, my first film, and the connection it shared dramatically with the script. They also saw how tough it was to make ‘Kokada’, out in the jungle, with a tight budget, and a 24day shoot. With this film they had very much the same attitude, a difficult shoot, and they needed someone who could translate a small amount of money into a big amount of money, and I think that is one of the successes of this film.
What affiliation did Wight have with James Cameron prior shooting the film?
They’ve been working for ten years. Andrew was one of the producers on Jim’s first 3D documentary – ‘Ghost of the Abyss’. It was sort of through a ten year period that Jim was developing a whole new camera system, with inevitably ended up being a fusion Camera system which they used on Avatar. Jim after Titanic was very keen to do some adventuring, he fell in love with the ocean, and wanted to capture the world in 3D, shooting sharks, alligators, birds, this underwater world in 3D. They needed someone who had an experience running expeditions, and that’s where Andrew came in, he had been doing underwater diving expeditions and shoots for the last ten years. They ended up doing, ‘Aliens of the Deep’ etc building a very strong relationship over that time.
The film is 70% based underwater, how difficult is it exactly to shoot underwater? How’d you get around this?
The biggest challenge is communication and safety. So, what we did is we had a really comprehensive approach to working underwater. The structure of the day would be:
1. Arrive at work, get kitted up and go for a dive with my cinematographer, Andrew, and anyone else basically that wanted to come with us. We’d dive the step and block out the night’s work. Andrew would often operate as the stand-in, he’d do the action of the actors, and we’d look at the action from different angles and get an idea of how to shoot the scene.
2. We’d then jump out of the water and head over to the scale model of the set, sitting beside the pool. I’d then do a brief to everyone, inclusive of actors, stuntmen, safety, cameramen, grips; about what the days work was going to be and I’d block through what we were going to try and capture during the day. We had to make sure that we were never going to over reach what we were trying to achieve in a day.
3. We’d then go to the car park and block through exactly how we’re going to shoot underwater; everyone once more included – by this stage it was about dinnertime.
4. We’d then have a break, and by this stage it was usually about 11 o’clock at night. As we wanted to block out all unwanted light, even though of course we were shooting in a cave with ceilings etc, it was still ideal to shoot at night…we’d jump in the water and start doing it!
It is very laborious as you can imagine, for each diver in the water you’d have at least another three in the water for safety, lighting, or shooting, you can imagine what it’s like getting twenty people into position – it takes a lot of logistics! My DOP would be sitting next to me out of the water and we’d monitor everything happening under the water through surveillance cameras. I could talk to everyone through universal coms that carried my voice through the water…so I use to drive everyone nuts! Jules the cinematographer could talk to his team with direct coms into their ears!
(More Instalments to come!!)
No comments:
Post a Comment