Production Companies New Line Cinema, Hard Eight Pictures, Kumar Mobiliengesellschaft mbH & Co. Projekt Nr. 1 KG, Matinee Pictures, Practical Pictures, Zide-Perry Productions
From the pre-visualization, filmmakers determined which scenes would be shot on the real coaster; which would take place in the replica coaster against green screen; and which would be CGI. The replica coaster also came with a very specific list of performance capabilities. “The challenge of this one was that we effectively had to create six separate gimbals for each of the cars,” says special effects coordinator Rory Cutler. “The important thing was to try and create a synchronous movement between the six cars in the roller coaster chain and do it in a way that would be convincing.”
Most gimbals are fairly straightforward in that they have to position a boat or an airplane, which is usually three dimensions of movement. “Our system had to be able to move in the same three dimensions but on each car, and in proper symmetry to one another,” Cutler continues. “What we ended up with was essentially two very large steel structural towers that suspended the six coaster cars as a chain between them, with each joint of the cars being a hydraulically driven set of couplers that would allow us to generate the angles between the cars.” The six-car coaster rig was 50 feet long, necessitating a green screen that covered the walls, floor and ceiling of nearly an entire sound stage.
There are several shots in which the characters who have survived the first part of the crash are flipped completely upside down. “To do that our gimble, in addition to having joints between the cars, had one massive rotating system that allowed us to take the whole chain of cars and rotate them over 180 degrees,” Cutler explains.
“We wanted to use as much live-action and work with our key talent as much as possible in order to capture the visceral reactions that help build the tension,” says Ariel Shaw. “We needed to make sure that the effects of gravity were true to life – that hair and muscles were being pulled in the right direction.”
It made for an interesting experience for the actors. “We were hanging upside-down 20 feet off the ground,” Mary Elizabeth Winstead recounts. “We’re screaming and crying because we’re about to fall to our deaths and we’re trying to hold ourselves in the car. The stunt coordinator let the harnesses go just enough so that it would look like we were really holding our own weight, and it really felt like we were…so just being in the moment I was really freaked out. I was fighting to hold on with my legs and my knees. The first time we did it I really wasn’t acting!”
Winstead and Ryan Merriman did virtually all of their own stunt work. “Ryan has a natural flair for movement, and he’s a good athlete,” says stunt coordinator JJ Makaro. “In one scene, we had him take a fall and then blew a fireball at him as he was getting up. We played that one really close, and Ryan was totally up for it.”
The film has its fair share of thrills, chills and gore - but it’s not all blood, guts and dismemberment. “When we had our script read-through with the actors, I was surprised at how legitimately funny the script was,” says producer Craig Perry. “The characters are well-drawn and the situations have that distinctly Morgan and Wong dark, twisted humor.”
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