Poseidon (2006)

Respected costume designer and frequent Petersen collaborator Erica Edell Phillips (The Perfect Storm, Outbreak, Air Force One and In the Line of Fire), is most proud of “the level of detail on Poseidon and its millions of moving parts.”

Leading a 45-member crew (her largest ever) with costume supervisor Bob Morgan (The Chronicles of Riddick), Phillips created wardrobe for the ship’s staff and crew, plus hundreds of New Year’s Eve party guests in formal attire, all coordinating with Petersen’s theme of timeless elegance in the ship’s design and décor. As shooting the action progressed, the clothing for each background actor had to be replaced with realistically aged duplicates. For the principals, that number increased exponentially.

“The survivors go through hellfire to get out of the ship,” Phillips explains. “They’re climbing and swimming, getting torn up and dirty along the way. We needed dozens of everything to accommodate two units shooting simultaneously. That meant that all of the clothing needed to be exactly duplicated at various levels of distress. A cache of pristine costumes was always on hand in case we needed to shoot anything that was earlier in the continuity.”

When the ballroom turns over everything goes flying, not just passengers but anything not nailed down – furniture, tableware and food. That meant the post-wave clothing would bear not only rips and bloodstains but marks from things like coffee, red wine and chocolate. “We weren’t sure how food stains would look on fabric,” recalls Morgan. “So we took pots of coffee, gallons of wine and cherry sauce, everything from the ship’s dinner menu, went down to the parking lot and threw it all at the clothes to see what would happen if you took a ballroom full of people having dinner and rolled it over. That was a fun day.” Once captured, many of the stains were recreated in acrylic paint to prevent fading underwater and to keep them looking wet.

Phillips’ team photographed, tagged and catalogued the multiple garments in various stages of deterioration daily. A studio parking lot was converted into a wardrobe holding area with two 60-by-40-foot tents. With round-the-clock filming, it was a constant stream of items being checked in and out, cleaned, touched up or replaced.

Supervising makeup, two-time Oscar nominee Edouard Henriques (The Cell, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World), faced similar creative and continuity challenges. After making hundreds of extras and stunt performers look like they had just been pummeled, burnt, drowned or electrocuted, Henriques’ team scrupulously kept track of every cut, bruise and smudge picked up by the principals along the way. When they pass through high water, what washes off? What fades, what dries, what spreads or changes color? Dirt might be partially cleansed during a quick plunge underwater and wounds that have partially scabbed over might begin to ooze again, all of which fell into Henriques’ purview.

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