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Riding the CG Wave

Oct 15, 2010 12:00 AM, By Ellen Wolff

Water simulation and visual effects on Hereafter.

           

Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

One of the most challenging assignments in visual effects is simulating photoreal CG water on a large scale. It was only two years ago that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bestowed Scientific and Technical Achievement Awards to the software brainiacs behind water simulation, and the best-known uses of this technology have been in fantastical films such as 2012, Poseidon, and Pirates of the Caribbean (read more about the water simulation technology). So it was notable to see water simulation playing a pivotal part in Warner Bros.' Hereafter by Clint Eastwood, a director hardly known for cutting-edge fantasy effects. Yet when Eastwood read Peter Morgan's script for Hereafter, he knew he would need to simulate a terrifying tsunami in order to propel this tale.

When Eastwood sent the script to Michael Owens, a former ILMer who's been his visual effects supervisor for the past decade, his message was, "Let me know what you think." Owens had overseen the digital crowds for Eastwood's Invictus and flotillas of warships for Flags of Our Fathers, but this challenge involved a level of complexity that they'd not tackled before. Hereafter, their ninth collaboration, would require what Owens calls "platformed" effects—effects that are meant to be noticed. "This was a more platformed thing because everyone knows we didn't have a tsunami on set."

Creating a terrifying flood that sweeps away a main character was crucial, especially since it comprises the first 9 minutes of the film. Actress Cécile De France, who stars in Hereafter alongside Matt Damon, is walking through a beachside village when the tsunami hits. Her experience of drowning, glimpsing a "herafter," and then being revived profoundly affects what happens next.

Owens replied to Eastwood's query by saying, "'We'll use a location for the street scene, but quite frankly I think everything else will be virtual.' Clint understood and agreed," he says. Owens said that they would need to storyboard and possibly previsualize the tsunami so that they'd know to approach it. "Clint never storyboards sequences himself, but he's always been very respectful when I've requested it because I only do it when it's really, really necessary. For this film, it really helped him to solidify in his mind the visual of the script. Then he lets go of it and goes off and shoots."

The prolific Eastwood was already in England shooting Hereafter while Owens was completing the post effects on Invictus, so the overlap was intense. In designing the tsunami sequence, Owens scoured footage of the 2004 Asian tsunami, and used some shots of it as placeholder images as the sequence design took shape. He hired visual effects art director Peter Rubin to draw the boards, and began interviewing facilities to handle the CG water simulation.

But most pressing of all was preparing to photograph De France in the water tank at Pinewood Studios while Eastwood was still shooting in England. Owens recalls Eastwood saying, "'Don't worry; if we make a mistake we can always come back. But let's see if we can do it.' So I put together a whole shoot with the tank," he says. Since Owens was still in North America finishing Invictus, to prep the shoot in London he hired Scott Squires, an Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisor and a fellow alum from ILM. Because the lighting was tricky, they used cineSync to conference with Hereafter DP Tom Stern and go over the storyboards. "Then I flew over a couple of days before the tank shoot and we shot it on the production's last day in London," Owens says. "We got a great deal of footage of Cécile in that water environment and wound up using most of it."