To enable filmmakers to incorporate the specially created Brides—a unique blend of live-action and motion-capture filming, completed with digital effects—into the attack scenes, an intricate Cablecam system was built high above the set, with wires stretched from 10 feet above ground to more than several hundred feet in the air. This system allowed a rigged camera to rocket and whip at high speeds over the set, with the cameras providing the Brides’ points-of-view as they swoop over the village, terrorizing its inhabitants.
Ducsay explains, “We thought it was very important to have the viewpoint of the Brides, so the Cablecam got used a great deal in the sequence. It couldn’t be about a camera on a miniature model set. It’s a very elaborate sequence—the Brides create a lot of destruction. There are an enormous number of physical effects, because they fly through some of the buildings. We also used about 300 extras. One of the Brides reaches for Van Helsing and picks up a cow by mistake and throws the poor animal up into the second floor. But be assured that cow was made of pixels, not beef.”
The camera supports were not the only rigging strung over the village. Wires for use in the choreographed wireworks sequences were also present above cast and crewmembers’ heads. Numerous stunts were also incorporated into the scene, including Jackman and Beckinsale flying 50 feet in the air.
One of the proudest moments for stunt coordinator R.A. Rondell was “seeing #1 and #2—Hugh and Kate—on the call sheet, doing their own stunts suspended high in the air.” He continues, “We had scenes with 10 or 15 guys flying in one shot, getting picked up and flung into buildings by the pygmy bats. On the set, we see the people flying along with special effects blowing things off of railings and knocking over carts—so that when the bat is dropped in, you’ll see it pick up the person while its wings turn over a cart. It’s a combined effort between the special effects, the digital effects and the actors. Allen [Daviau] painted a beautiful picture full of layers, even dropping in shadows for the creatures flying by.”
“Hugh and I had a great deal of fun, dangling in the air together,” comments Kate Beckinsale. “He’s so irrepressibly good-natured. It was like we got to play together in this enormous playground…not every grownup gets to do that for a job.”
To achieve the detailed flights of the Brides, Sommers had Anaya, Colloca and Maran in studio filming in harnesses before a blue screen for two weeks and says, “We were whipping them around the soundstage, 16 to 18 feet in the air, being spun and thrown and catapulted, all the while blasting air at them to keep their hair flying all around. They were such troupers.”
One unexpected development further complicated the already complex shoot— sunny skies. The cast and crew were blessed/cursed with unseasonably high amounts of sunshine, uncharacteristic for Prague in February. The called-for gray skies and roiling clouds rarely made their calltime during the three week shooting period, and production scheduled and re-scheduled in hopes of a climatic downturn…to no avail. In the end, many of the mean skies in the attack sequences would have to be supplied by the digital cousin of Mother Nature. Despite the sunny weather, however, the temperature continued to hover around 0° Celsius—freezing, thawing and then re-freezing the muddy ground.
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