Where were you positioned while all of this was going on?
Petersen: We were all sitting in front of a long row of monitors at the back of the stage, watching the images. It looked like a high-tech operation, which was pretty amazing. We had the walkie-talkies and stuff like that, but when I really wanted to talk to the actors, I had to run all the way down to the tank, get into a boat and row over to them!
Sometimes I just stayed on the boat, because it had a real galley and that kind of stuff, but it was so horrible to be there. For the actors, it was fine, because they were used to getting smashed with water all the time. But for me, it was uncomfortable to be on the boat, and you got dripping wet in a few seconds! So I mainly stayed away from that and went back on my little boat to the row of monitors.
When we shot on the boat itself, we used Steadicam, but that only worked if [the motion of the boat] was not too wild. Once the Steadicam guy falls into the water, that’s it!
So if you’re simulating the boat climbing up 100-foot waves, it’s probably time to abandon the Steadicam?
Petersen: Yes. Steadicam is not possible [in that situation]! The Steadicam operator might start to get uncomfortable at a wave height of 10 feet, so we did more of that footage when we shot on the real sea but only when it was calm.
Back on stage, how did you plan to incorporate ILM’s digital storm backgrounds with your practical boat?
Petersen: The entire stage was surrounded with bluescreens, and the rest of the shot was always added later by ILM. Despite all of the water crashing over the boat against bluescreen, ILM can add more water in the foreground and seamlessly blend their computer-generated seascape behind the boat.
Were there times when you took the bluescreens down so you could get in-camera shots of the Andrea Gail in the storm without using additional visual effects?
Petersen: Yes. We had a lot of shots in which we were working with good, old-fashioned paintings of ’real’ backgrounds. We did all kinds of variations of backings for Storm Phase I, Phase II, Phase III and so on, until [the storm] was just apocalyptic. We had a lot of spray and stuff in front of the paintings, so they looked pretty good. In the past, we would say of this technique, ’We’ll do the Poor-Man’s Process,’ but [this time] we said, ’Our movie is so good, we don’t want Poor-Man’s Process. Let’s call it Middle Class!’ We subsequently referred to those takes as ’MC shots.’ Maybe that term will get into the filmmaking vocabulary!
Was it a challenge for you as a director to look past the technology?
Petersen: Absolutely, and that’s not easy! The big danger is that at the end, you are so overwhelmed by the technical things that you lose sight of what’s really important, and that’s the people and the story. On the other hand, it’s very hard to overwhelm me, because I’m quite experienced with dealing with these kinds of tools. Also, I kept really good control of the movie financially. We ended up about $350,000 under budget! Have you ever heard that about a movie dealing with water!? I’m very proud of that.
Is The Perfect Storm the most technically challenging film you’ve made?
Petersen: Das Boot was truly challenging, but this project was also extremely challenging and satisfying. The Perfect Storm is probably the film that I’m the proudest of.