One of Poseidon’s powerful set pieces is the implosion of the grand ballroom.
Suspended upside-down below the waterline but still airtight after the wave’s initial impact, the ballroom serves as a haven for those who remain behind with the captain when Dylan and his group start their climb. But eventually the water pressure proves too much and water bursts in through the windows, flooding the room in seconds.
It was not a scene that anyone wanted to shoot twice.
For Frazier, stacking cargo containers loaded with water wasn’t going to be enough. With 15 feet of clearance behind the set, he says, “We used 10 eight-foot diameter culvert pipes, the kind you see in highway construction. We stood them up, built special chutes for them with trap doors that locked right into the windows. The windows were quarter-inch tempered glass, which enabled them to bow out a little bit with some of the water behind them. Then on command we dumped the whole thing, about 90,000 gallons. The weight of it broke the glass and kept on coming and it ended up being a great look on camera because it’s the real thing.”
To fully capture the action, 2nd Unit director of photography Mark Vargo followed John Seale’s example and set up “five cameras on each axis, some wide, some tight, so that when you cut from one to the other it gives the illusion of both sides of the ship coming in.” After experimenting with Seale on frame speeds for the two-second sequence, they went with 40-speed for the main cameras and set additional cameras at speeds from 60 to 90 and 120, ensuring a range of editing options.
Regardless of all the planning, there were no guarantees. “No one knew what that mass of water would look like, let alone do,” declares Vargo. “I had cameras tied off. My key grip built a cage that could have sustained a car running into it. We had a tracking shot from above, two inside panning and one behind a glass window so that at full force it’s actually submerged.” Camera operators worked in wet suits and goggles, with stunt people ready to pull them to safety. “We even had an ambulance standing by. It was like a NASA launch.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the ship a different kind of drama plays out as the survivors face a near-vertical climb through a narrow air conditioning duct, their only passage to the next level. “Within the structure of this larger disaster they have to crawl through this eight-minute sequence of almost pure claustrophobic tension,” says Wolfgang Petersen. “It’s hard to navigate or even move and they don’t know what they will find at the other end.”
It is here that Mia Maestro’s character, Elena, reveals her extreme claustrophobia – a fear so intense it would force her to turn back if not for the tough-love persuasion of Nelson and Dylan who remain with her at the end of the single-file line. Together they talk her through it, inch by agonizing inch, while unbeknownst to them a new problem develops up ahead: the duct’s exit is blocked by a grate. Their only chance for survival is for young Jimmy to fit his small fingers through the slots in the grate to turn the four screws, as water rises rapidly from below. Says Kurt Russell, “The people at the top are controlling the destiny of the people at the bottom, who are not even fully aware what the problem is or how bad it is, and everything comes down to this 9-year-old boy being able to keep his wits about him and try to open a grate. Everyone stops moving. It’s an excruciating scene.”
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