"Our film isn’t about finding monsters or anything like that," adds Gregory L. McMurry, visual effects supervisor. "It’s about real science. But because the information on inner space isn’t as extensive as it is for outer space, we strove to create a reality that combines everything we could learn from science with a generous pinch of imaginative license."
To add a greater sense of reality to the film, Dr. Conrad Foster and Dr. Richard Terrile of JPL/Cal Tech were consulted on issues like the scale and size of things, how hot it gets in the core and what kind of material could conceivably withstand such a temperature. To create "Virgil," the subterranean ship, the designers went through a number of trial runs before hitting upon what everyone felt was right.
"A number of the designs were quite stunning," remembers producer David Foster, "but Jon Arniel felt they looked too much like 'Star Trek’ or 'Star Wars’ spaceships. So we thought, what is the most significant creature that bores through the earth, and when we came up with the earthworm, we knew we had it."
With the earthworm concept in mind, the next issue was deciding what, besides long and segmented, the craft would look like? Says Arniel of the creative process: It was a huge challenge to design and build a craft that could believably make it to the center of the earth. How could it bore its way through solid material? How could it propel itself forward? How would it steer? We took as our three guiding paradigms the earthworm, the rocket and the submarine, and Virgil was born from a combination of those three concepts.
Building a life-size ship because filmmakers decided it would be better than shooting from miniatures, production designer Philip Harrison went to work. A large sound stage with a traveling crane was rented and Harrison took to the task as one would build a boat, putting up frames and building from there. In the end, the finished product came in at an awe-inspiring 200 feet in length and 30 feet in height. Putting the vessel’s size into perspective, Jon Amiel says, "Imagine something the size of a 737 jet and the height of an Amtrak train and you’ll have the idea."
Although all of the moving exteriors of the ship were created in the computer. the interior had to be very real.
Instead of a futuristically sleek and shiny interior, we went for a look that was dark, earth-toned and brutally functionalist" says Amiel. The ship had to look as though it was thrown together in three months with no time for the comforts of interior design. If you've ever had the frightening experience of seeing the interior of an airplane without all of those comforting panels that make us feel as though we’re in a living room, what you'll see is miles of raw cable and pipe-work hitched together with plastic ties and duct tape. That’s the look we tried for in the interior of Virgil.
"This meant that filming was done in fairly tight quarters," points out special effects supervisor Garry Elmendorf. "And because of that, the set was built with removable sections to allow a camera and crew inside to shoot the action."
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