CG worked hand-in-hand with the practical effects team throughout, reuniting Shermis with special effects supervisor John Frazier, with whom he shared a 1994 BAFTA nomination for Speed. Frazier thought of it in terms of “elements,” such as a virtual set into which he would add a live stunt or the various extensions the visual effects team made to double the distance of a physical hallway.
In a key scene in which one of the survivors is slammed by a plummeting piece of machinery while crossing a makeshift bridge, Frazier’s crew worked with the actor to show his supports giving way. “We made the steel substructure bounce as if from the impact and the visual effects team then created the air conditioner unit that falls on top of it.”
“Remarkable as the CG work is,” observes producer Henderson, “we used it in combination with as much live action footage, sets and stunts as possible. We want audiences to feel that these are real rooms with real walls and real water. Whenever we could achieve a shot practically, we would.”
With the exception of the opening shot captured at the Sepulveda Dam, the ship’s (upright) disco filmed at L.A. Staples Center, and the Warner Bros. commissary kitchen standing in for Poseidon’s galley, all sets for the film were built on five studio soundstages, including the famous Stage 16, where Petersen had helmed a different vessel five years earlier.
The site of such classics as The Old Man and the Sea and P.T. 109, Stage 16’s water tank was previously enlarged for The Perfect Storm from 8 feet to a depth of 22 feet, making it, at 95' x 100' x 22,' the world’s largest soundstage pool with a 1.3 million-gallon capacity. Stage 16 now housed Poseidon’s most ambitious set, the upside-down ballroom which ultimately takes the violent impact of a 90,000-gallon rush of water, while neighboring Stage 19 held an identical but right-side-up replica of the ballroom, for scenes shot prior to the deadly wave’s impact.
Additional stages were renovated to replace wood flooring with concrete, and new plumbing was installed to recycle the huge volume of water back and forth among them. Building sets upside down, or sets that would be tilted drastically, meant using a lot more steel reinforcement than is commonly used as normal structural supports and furnishings can no longer rely on gravity. The upside-down lobby, for example, was a five-story, 72-foot high interior featuring a collapsed elevator shaft that stretched across a three-story drop to the stage floor, all of it requiring a rock-solid support system. Its construction took a 100-person crew five months, using 750,000 pounds of I-beam steel and 10,000 sheets of plywood. Rust-resistant auto body paint protected portions that would be submerged for long periods.
“Working in these sets was like being in a toy shop,” says Petersen, who particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of the pre-wave ballroom set, “with all its glamour and everyone dressed for a fine evening, with the version next door, the same room upside down with everything smashed to pieces. Let’s say it tapped into that little bit of anarchy and boyish fun we have inside, of making everything kaput.”
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