American Cinematographer - July 1998 - 64

Space Chase
Hoover recalls. "It looked

watched the model

we

dailies. But when

great when

onscreen

in

put the shuttles
in, the scale suddenly
changed tenfold, and it looked so
much vaster. It gets rather violent
and the gas is moving very fast, cre¬
ating currents that blow the shuttles
we

and the gases

around."
One of these

whipping astral

gusts causes the Independence to be
hit by a meteor that destroys an
engine, causing the craft to plummet
in

spiraling crash. This high-speed
sequence was overseen by Hoover at
Bay Effects' stage in Culver City. He
notes, "Pat was really involved in the
design of the crash, but it turned out
that he had too many things going
on, so I came in to help out on that.
The landscape filled the stage, which
was about 110' long by about 80'
wide. There was a huge ceiling rig
a

that flew the Vi 2-scale shuttle model,
which

suspended from wires.
about 10' long, very
detailed, with working landing gear
and cockpit lights, mannequins in
the cockpit, wingtip lights, engine
lights in the rear thrusters and real
interactive smoke spewing from the
engine. It was also rigged with a huge
amount of timed pyro events for the
crash itself. We might have had 50
charges going off, which was an
astronomical undertaking for the
pyro crew headed by Richard
was

That model

was

Stutzman and Dave Green. We had

least six

running any¬
where from 48fps to 72fps, depend¬
ing on the lens length - I tended to
go a little faster on the longer lenses.
at

We did

a

cameras

lot of cool shots where the

positioned in great
places. I hid Eyemos inside of rock
cameras

were

formations that the shuttle would
crash into

-

I hit at least three

or

four

cameras,

great

action."
McClung and Timme han¬

but

July 1998

on

an
a

huge terrain model," McClung says.
"It does a hard landing in this field of
icicles and just slides and slides,
finally coming to a halt - that was
all done in-camera. Then Cinesite
did

digital rig and ceiling
removal, and actually handled a lot
of paint-outs to remove the perma¬
nents from the stage."
some

After the Freedom lands, it
one of the two Armadillos

releases

(six-wheeled all-terrain vehicles)
that head for the site where
heads will

be

planted to decimate

the asteroid. While
cle

war¬

a

full-scale vehi¬

measuring some 20' long was
by the first unit with the actors

shot
on

location in South Dakota, model

supervisor Alan Faucher built

74fully
radio-controlled for use in high¬
speed effects, then rerigged for
a

scale miniature which could be

motion

control; the radio-con¬

trolled version was

actually filmed in

the South Dakota location for wider
shots of the Armadillos' journey.

Shooting the V4-scale radiohigh-speed
a

number of obstacles for

cinematographer Philipp Timme,
who had to generate mood lighting
and practical gas swirling over the
miniature landscape while filming at
faster-than-normal

we then broke that up with
setpieces placed in front of them,
which is very similar to what John

Schwartzman did
asteroid

on

the full-sized

Disney's Stage 2."

set on

Then there

was

framerates.

the ambient

atmosphere, which was created by
smoking the set - a strategy that
became nearly impossible in this
case since the smoke
appeared to be
swirling around too rapidly.
"Fortunately, our stage effects crew
was
very good at creating a very sta¬
tic, general atmosphere," Timme
says. "Since the asteroid was sup¬
posed to have this constantly windy
look, we blew small puffs of smoke
through the set with a lot of fans and
air movers, which helped create the
feeling of speed against the static
backdrop of atmospheric haze. We
also had little practical steam vents
that were supposed to be geysers on
the surface, which dissipated very
fast. At high speed, the little puffs of
smoke blowing through the asteroid
looked like gale-force winds and
made the environment

controlled Armadillo
offered

beam;

it had

more

hostile

very cool look."
McClung pulled in some
high-powered help to complete cer¬
tain outstanding effects sequences
for Armageddon s climax. Master
animator Phil Tippett's company,
Tippett Studios, handled 21 shots
for a sequence involving a squall of

-

a

Timme

boulders and rocks that blows in

oid sequence was very

the astronauts

explains, "The whole aster¬
dark, very
backlit, with 'God-light' - these fin¬
gers of light - coming down. That
was
actually somewhat tricky. The
stage was only 24' tall, and it was
hard

to create

that look when the

set

reached three-quarters

of the way up
to the ceiling, because you need the
distance to put the lights up. We
were

able

to

achieve

most

of the

shots in-camera

are

as

drilling into the

asteroid's surface. After DQ success¬

fully dispatched the villainous aster¬
oid via miniatures and CG, Digital
Domain's Rob Legato, fresh off his
Oscar-winning triumph on Titanic,
agreed to supervise a very compli¬
cated shot of the meteor hitting
Shanghai, which involved high¬
speed miniature work, photo
and

CG

animation.

by splitting the
God-lights up into a lot of sources,
mostly Pars - everything from 6Ks

Effects' effort to finish the shots of

dled the dramatic

down to Arri Pocket Pars. We tried

the Freedom's

Freedom

big
source that was very far away by let¬
ting every single Par create its own

we

got a lot of

landing of the
using the same wire rig
over a huge model landscape repre¬
senting a field of strange icicles. "We
62

flew the 10' shuttle model

overhead track and crashed it into

to

make them all look like

one

cutouts

Meanwhile,

Earth.

McClung

led

Bay

triumphant return to
■
American Cinematographer - July 1998

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