Creating and working in the inverted world of post-wave Poseidon presented unique challenges across all disciplines, from production design to stunts and effects, construction, cinematography, lighting, set decoration and props.
Sets were designed simultaneously in both right-side-up and upside-down versions to maintain continuity and to ensure that, as Sandell says, “nothing could exist in the normal version if it could not be subsequently executed upside down.” What would realistically be nailed down on an ocean liner (heavy equipment, piano, refrigerators) and how long would that hold? Where are the basic supports and safety issues? What is climb-able? Everything was considered, right down to airborne poker chips and cutlery when rooms get tossed.
In some ways, the production team had to think like Poseidon survivors. As Henderson recalls the process, “You would imagine how things might work, then put yourself through the paces mentally or with the model only to discover that it couldn’t work that way because the stairs are backwards now, that first step is much higher or that door won’t open inward. So you think ‘how are we going to deal with this,’ and you search for an alternative.”
What began with brainstorming, sketches and storyboards finally required physical models. “Although Wolfgang is one of the few directors I’ve worked with who can read a blueprint,” says Sandell, “ultimately you need to see it in three dimensions.”
Details were further refined when the final sets were tested with tilt angles and water. To mechanically roll sets from one side to the other, they were built atop hydraulically operated two-axel platform gimbals that tilt at various degrees. Says Frazier, “We can move them fore and aft, side to side, or you can do a ‘pitch and yaw’ like a ship on the open sea.” With sets, water, furnishings and cast, weight is an issue. Frazier’s team needed accurate totals upfront so as “not to have surprises later. One of our gimbals itself is 3,000 pounds of Ibeam steel and 150 feet long. You don’t want to hear at the last minute that the set is going to weigh 50,000 more pounds than you expected.” The massive machinery required equally massive support, in one case a brand new concrete floor 20 feet wide and 12 feet deep. The set representing the ship’s bridge was so large it could not be rotated 180 degrees in one piece inside a soundstage without scraping the ceiling so it was built and filmed in two sections, each atop its own gimbal.
Frazier found the best way to hold large amounts of water over sets to be flooded on cue was to fill and stack seagoing cargo containers, each holding about 15,000 gallons.
Poseidon’s action re-classified a large variety of objects from being set decoration (immobile, while the ship is upright) to becoming props when propelled into the air as the ship turns over. Potential projectiles from furniture to tableware and cell phones were genuine in close-ups and then switched for duplicate versions in rubber, balsa wood and breakaway glass. A sentiment shared by many of the cast and crew was the general disorientation of working in an upside-down environment for extended periods. Sandell likened it to “stepping inside an Escher drawing, constantly having to get your bearings. It could be very unnerving.”
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