Travicity
02-02-2011, 10:17 PM
Deep Dive With Sanctum Director Alister Grierson
Alister Grierson spill(unks) the beans about shooting in caves, 3D psychology and working with James Cameron.
4
Based On A True Story?
Jordan Hoffman: How much of this was shot on a sound stage and how much was shot in a cave? Especially the specific cave you mention?
Alister Grierson: Well, I don’t want to give too many spoilers away, but I can let you know there isn’t actually a cave in Papua New Guiniea. We just made that up.
Jordan Hoffman: Made up?!! The beginning of the film says it is based on a true story?
Alister Grierson: Yeah, no, that’s based on a true event that happened in Australia, where Andrew was leading an expedition of 15 people - they’re trying to break a world record, a cave diving length record, and the last day of the expedition the cave system collapsed and they’re all trapped for two days. Eventually they all got out and survived, but the terror of that experience stayed with him.
Jordan Hoffman: That’s what informs the screen play?
Alister Grierson: Yeah very much so.
Jordan Hoffman: Did they come to the same realization that they had to explore to escape, to follow the water, because they could not exit the way they came in?
Alister Grierson: Exactly, they had to explore a new way out of the cave, and eventually they got out. In terms of doing a fictional dramatic story, we need to come up with a whole bunch of other series events to create conflict and chaos. So we cherry-picked a whole bunch of other events that either Andrew had witnessed or heard from cave-diving buddies, and then we strung them to together to create something as action-packed as we could. But the cave itself is shot obviously in some on a stage, some in a real cave, but all in Australia. We set the film in Papua New Guinea because it felt like to me that the mention of the jungle and the tribal elements, had an interesting metaphorical effect for me. You’re just going further and further back in time, you know. So I start the movie at a small port and then we end up at a custom village, and then we’re in a cave, and then we’re going really primeval, you know? Really ancient, we’re actually in a space that’s older than humans. It was a visual motif that appealed to me.
3
Down In The Hole
Jordan Hoffman: On that subject, what’s it like bringing such a large 3-D camera into such enclosed and small spaces? The thing is like a mini-van!
Alister Grierson: Not quite a mini-van, but I know what you’re saying. Look it’s tricky, it’s tough, there’s no doubt about it. We’re shooting in underwater caves in mount Gambian, South Australia, using the side-by-side rig, which is a little different from the Fusion rig, where we used on the rest of the film. At that time we didn’t have an underwater housing for the Fusion rig, so the camera we used was the side-by-side camera rig, which is still pretty chunky anyway.
There are two parts to the unit: you’ve got the kind of capture unit, and the long umbilicle that carries all the information to the record unit. It’s actually the record unit which is the chunky element, like a small filing cabinet. The hardest part, interestingly enough, was getting the camera into the cave, because the entrance to the cave is like a manhole in the middle of a cow-paddy, it’s a really strange experience, this is where I learned to cave dive, we shot in the same cave. So you’re in the middle of a cow-paddy, someone moves a pit of corrugated iron and there’s a little manhole, and you look down and there’s maybe 30 feet through the core of the earth, this tiny little hole, and then you’ve got to be lowered down through that into the dark and into the cave to do the dive, which is quite confronting, you can imagine.
Jordan Hoffman: So you have to get the whole production unit through that? All the food and equipment?
Alister Grierson: No, no, no, no, no. So we lived above ground, and then we’d go below ground to do the coverage. The thing about those caves, and this is what’s tricky about shooting location, is it’s freezing cold, it’s ice cold, and so you go and you become hypothermic within about two hours in the water, even wearing dry suits, let alone wet suits, so for example our actors are wearing wet suits. Now, most of the underwater material we shot in a tank at Warner Bros. studio, so that we could manage the issues, particularly the water temperature and cleaning the water, and safety issues and so on, but on location the doubles had to wear these wet suits which were built to work in a warmer environment and so that was just freezing and that could only work for 90 minutes at a time, and only in two blocks. It would probably take about an hour and a half to actually get everyone and all the equipment into the cave and then we could shot for about an hour and a half and then an hour and a half to get everyone out. So that would be like one block, so we could do two blocks a day, so we’re only actually ever working for say 2 hours, 3 hours.
Jordan Hoffman: Sounds like you had some tight scheduling?
Alister Grierson: Yeah, you know, we really had to try to extract everything put it up on the screen. I’m really pleased with the result, I think it’s a really exciting film.
2
Captain Camerom
Jordan Hoffman: The Executive Producer of your film, James Cameron, is big name attached to this one. I wonder was he involved from the beginning?
Alister Grierson: Andrew Wight, the producer of the film had been working with Jim for the last 10 years on his underwater documentaries. Andrew had this idea for the film and talked about it with him, and Jim was very excited because he wanted to get 3D in the water and in caves and he thought it was going to be a perfect marriage.
Those two worked together developing the story and the concepts about how to put it all together. And then it came to me when Andrew decided to shoot the picture in Australia and was looking for an Australia director. Jim was very much at arm’s length in terms of creative developments of the picture, because he was in the middle of making Avatar at the time, but he was supervising. For example, I’d work very close with my creative team, and I was putting all of my decisions through a loop with Jim. He would give feedback whenever he felt like he wanted to give feedback. Which is always the form of, “Have you thought about this?” or “What do you think about this?” When we’re shooting, we are left to our own devices, but Jim really became useful creatively at the end of the project, particularly in the edit. I’d come over to Los Angeles and explain the film to Jim and he could give his feedback and make changes as a result.
Jordan Hoffman: What were some of the notes or suggestions that he gave?
Alister Grierson: The thing is, Jim is a master storyteller. He understood intuitively the whole structural thing with the film that we were struggling with. In the early cut, the intensity of the film was unrelenting. It was just too much to ask the audience to bear with. We realized that we needed to structure it in a way that we could get the audience through moments, and then give them an opportunity to breathe, the same way that the characters stop and breathe. I remember seeing the first assembly and, even having made it, it was just so arduous. I remember thinking, “No one is going to be able to bear it.” You know, it’s a claustrophobic environment. Especially seeing how the 3D and the visual environment work in creating that full effect. It’s a very immersive feeling and, even though you know it’s make-believe, you’re feeling that claustrophobia, your heart’s racing, and we’ve got some great, powerful visual moments where we shock people.
1
A Sense of Depth
Jordan Hoffman: Regarding the 3D aspect, there’s not a lot of moments where things are flying at the camera. Are you part of the philosophy where 3D is more for the psychological, sub-conscious effect?
Alister Grierson: I think so. Yes, our philosophy was not to have things flying at peoples’ faces. That’s the whole structure of the Fusion camera system – to make the 3D experience as comfortable as possible for the audience. So that they really could forget that they’re in a 3D movie, but their perception in stereo is heightening the experience of watching the film. If that’s true or not, I’m not sure. There are emerging studies about how the brain is responding to this 3D stimuli and so on.
But for us, the feeling was an underwater cave and 3D built like a perfect marriage in terms of representing something. Our 3D is quite conservative. It’s like Avatar, we’re not trying to stretch peoples’ eyeballs around. At the end of the day, we just want them into the story. This is a big thing we got from Jim, not only a working methodology but a philosophy we could take and experiment with ourselves. The big difference between Avatar and us, of course, is that we’re all live-action, so our problems were very different than Jim’s problems. His problems were CGI and motion-capture...
Jordan Hoffman: You had actual humans to deal with.
Alister Grierson That’s right. To keep alive!
Jordan Hoffman: So what are your some of your favorite disaster movies or scenes?
Alister Grierson: When I was a kid, I was a big John Carpenter fan. Escape from New York had a really big effect on me. It’s funny, you watch it now and it’s sort of campy, but at the time I really loved it. I think that started a spark with my film ideas. As we were making this picture, we talked about some of the things like The Poseidon Adventure, Gene Hackman back in the day. The other thing we talked about was Deliverance, and tried to find a marriage of the two, aesthetically. Deliverance really feels like grounded, real people. It’s just them fighting their own fears, at the end of the day. It’s man vs. nature, and man confronted by his own fears, and there’s subtextual stuff going on as well.
Jordan Hoffman: Have you seen Sanctum with an audience yet?
Alister Grierson: Only the test screening, like a pure audience that had nothing to do with the film, about two months ago. We got a really great response, it was really exciting.
Jordan Hoffman: So they were squirming at the moments you wanted them to squirm?
Alister Grierson:Oh, yeah. We’re freaking people out. (laughs) It’s just so great when you hear 400 people gasp together, or laugh together.
Alister Grierson spill(unks) the beans about shooting in caves, 3D psychology and working with James Cameron.
4
Based On A True Story?
Jordan Hoffman: How much of this was shot on a sound stage and how much was shot in a cave? Especially the specific cave you mention?
Alister Grierson: Well, I don’t want to give too many spoilers away, but I can let you know there isn’t actually a cave in Papua New Guiniea. We just made that up.
Jordan Hoffman: Made up?!! The beginning of the film says it is based on a true story?
Alister Grierson: Yeah, no, that’s based on a true event that happened in Australia, where Andrew was leading an expedition of 15 people - they’re trying to break a world record, a cave diving length record, and the last day of the expedition the cave system collapsed and they’re all trapped for two days. Eventually they all got out and survived, but the terror of that experience stayed with him.
Jordan Hoffman: That’s what informs the screen play?
Alister Grierson: Yeah very much so.
Jordan Hoffman: Did they come to the same realization that they had to explore to escape, to follow the water, because they could not exit the way they came in?
Alister Grierson: Exactly, they had to explore a new way out of the cave, and eventually they got out. In terms of doing a fictional dramatic story, we need to come up with a whole bunch of other series events to create conflict and chaos. So we cherry-picked a whole bunch of other events that either Andrew had witnessed or heard from cave-diving buddies, and then we strung them to together to create something as action-packed as we could. But the cave itself is shot obviously in some on a stage, some in a real cave, but all in Australia. We set the film in Papua New Guinea because it felt like to me that the mention of the jungle and the tribal elements, had an interesting metaphorical effect for me. You’re just going further and further back in time, you know. So I start the movie at a small port and then we end up at a custom village, and then we’re in a cave, and then we’re going really primeval, you know? Really ancient, we’re actually in a space that’s older than humans. It was a visual motif that appealed to me.
3
Down In The Hole
Jordan Hoffman: On that subject, what’s it like bringing such a large 3-D camera into such enclosed and small spaces? The thing is like a mini-van!
Alister Grierson: Not quite a mini-van, but I know what you’re saying. Look it’s tricky, it’s tough, there’s no doubt about it. We’re shooting in underwater caves in mount Gambian, South Australia, using the side-by-side rig, which is a little different from the Fusion rig, where we used on the rest of the film. At that time we didn’t have an underwater housing for the Fusion rig, so the camera we used was the side-by-side camera rig, which is still pretty chunky anyway.
There are two parts to the unit: you’ve got the kind of capture unit, and the long umbilicle that carries all the information to the record unit. It’s actually the record unit which is the chunky element, like a small filing cabinet. The hardest part, interestingly enough, was getting the camera into the cave, because the entrance to the cave is like a manhole in the middle of a cow-paddy, it’s a really strange experience, this is where I learned to cave dive, we shot in the same cave. So you’re in the middle of a cow-paddy, someone moves a pit of corrugated iron and there’s a little manhole, and you look down and there’s maybe 30 feet through the core of the earth, this tiny little hole, and then you’ve got to be lowered down through that into the dark and into the cave to do the dive, which is quite confronting, you can imagine.
Jordan Hoffman: So you have to get the whole production unit through that? All the food and equipment?
Alister Grierson: No, no, no, no, no. So we lived above ground, and then we’d go below ground to do the coverage. The thing about those caves, and this is what’s tricky about shooting location, is it’s freezing cold, it’s ice cold, and so you go and you become hypothermic within about two hours in the water, even wearing dry suits, let alone wet suits, so for example our actors are wearing wet suits. Now, most of the underwater material we shot in a tank at Warner Bros. studio, so that we could manage the issues, particularly the water temperature and cleaning the water, and safety issues and so on, but on location the doubles had to wear these wet suits which were built to work in a warmer environment and so that was just freezing and that could only work for 90 minutes at a time, and only in two blocks. It would probably take about an hour and a half to actually get everyone and all the equipment into the cave and then we could shot for about an hour and a half and then an hour and a half to get everyone out. So that would be like one block, so we could do two blocks a day, so we’re only actually ever working for say 2 hours, 3 hours.
Jordan Hoffman: Sounds like you had some tight scheduling?
Alister Grierson: Yeah, you know, we really had to try to extract everything put it up on the screen. I’m really pleased with the result, I think it’s a really exciting film.
2
Captain Camerom
Jordan Hoffman: The Executive Producer of your film, James Cameron, is big name attached to this one. I wonder was he involved from the beginning?
Alister Grierson: Andrew Wight, the producer of the film had been working with Jim for the last 10 years on his underwater documentaries. Andrew had this idea for the film and talked about it with him, and Jim was very excited because he wanted to get 3D in the water and in caves and he thought it was going to be a perfect marriage.
Those two worked together developing the story and the concepts about how to put it all together. And then it came to me when Andrew decided to shoot the picture in Australia and was looking for an Australia director. Jim was very much at arm’s length in terms of creative developments of the picture, because he was in the middle of making Avatar at the time, but he was supervising. For example, I’d work very close with my creative team, and I was putting all of my decisions through a loop with Jim. He would give feedback whenever he felt like he wanted to give feedback. Which is always the form of, “Have you thought about this?” or “What do you think about this?” When we’re shooting, we are left to our own devices, but Jim really became useful creatively at the end of the project, particularly in the edit. I’d come over to Los Angeles and explain the film to Jim and he could give his feedback and make changes as a result.
Jordan Hoffman: What were some of the notes or suggestions that he gave?
Alister Grierson: The thing is, Jim is a master storyteller. He understood intuitively the whole structural thing with the film that we were struggling with. In the early cut, the intensity of the film was unrelenting. It was just too much to ask the audience to bear with. We realized that we needed to structure it in a way that we could get the audience through moments, and then give them an opportunity to breathe, the same way that the characters stop and breathe. I remember seeing the first assembly and, even having made it, it was just so arduous. I remember thinking, “No one is going to be able to bear it.” You know, it’s a claustrophobic environment. Especially seeing how the 3D and the visual environment work in creating that full effect. It’s a very immersive feeling and, even though you know it’s make-believe, you’re feeling that claustrophobia, your heart’s racing, and we’ve got some great, powerful visual moments where we shock people.
1
A Sense of Depth
Jordan Hoffman: Regarding the 3D aspect, there’s not a lot of moments where things are flying at the camera. Are you part of the philosophy where 3D is more for the psychological, sub-conscious effect?
Alister Grierson: I think so. Yes, our philosophy was not to have things flying at peoples’ faces. That’s the whole structure of the Fusion camera system – to make the 3D experience as comfortable as possible for the audience. So that they really could forget that they’re in a 3D movie, but their perception in stereo is heightening the experience of watching the film. If that’s true or not, I’m not sure. There are emerging studies about how the brain is responding to this 3D stimuli and so on.
But for us, the feeling was an underwater cave and 3D built like a perfect marriage in terms of representing something. Our 3D is quite conservative. It’s like Avatar, we’re not trying to stretch peoples’ eyeballs around. At the end of the day, we just want them into the story. This is a big thing we got from Jim, not only a working methodology but a philosophy we could take and experiment with ourselves. The big difference between Avatar and us, of course, is that we’re all live-action, so our problems were very different than Jim’s problems. His problems were CGI and motion-capture...
Jordan Hoffman: You had actual humans to deal with.
Alister Grierson That’s right. To keep alive!
Jordan Hoffman: So what are your some of your favorite disaster movies or scenes?
Alister Grierson: When I was a kid, I was a big John Carpenter fan. Escape from New York had a really big effect on me. It’s funny, you watch it now and it’s sort of campy, but at the time I really loved it. I think that started a spark with my film ideas. As we were making this picture, we talked about some of the things like The Poseidon Adventure, Gene Hackman back in the day. The other thing we talked about was Deliverance, and tried to find a marriage of the two, aesthetically. Deliverance really feels like grounded, real people. It’s just them fighting their own fears, at the end of the day. It’s man vs. nature, and man confronted by his own fears, and there’s subtextual stuff going on as well.
Jordan Hoffman: Have you seen Sanctum with an audience yet?
Alister Grierson: Only the test screening, like a pure audience that had nothing to do with the film, about two months ago. We got a really great response, it was really exciting.
Jordan Hoffman: So they were squirming at the moments you wanted them to squirm?
Alister Grierson:Oh, yeah. We’re freaking people out. (laughs) It’s just so great when you hear 400 people gasp together, or laugh together.