Titanic... Behind The Scenes

Have you ever wondered how the Titanic was made? Today I will discuss the challenges the cast and crew had to go through in order to achieve this wonderful film. To begin with, the films' budget is $200 million and it gained $2.187 billion dollars at the box office. The film is 195 minutes long or 3 hours and 15 minutes long. Titanic was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning 11 of those 14. 

Photo credited to Google

So how they started the beginning of the film and the shots of the ship underwater was by creating a smaller version of the Titanic to best of the crews knowledge of how the ship looked like. They rehearsed how they were going to shoot the scenes of the inside of the Titanic. They had to find a way to use the technology that they had at that time  (1997) because they went two miles down into the ocean and the pressure of the water is what made everything critical. The first sunken ship scenes in the film are the actual Titanic and nobody had done that before. Of course they did create several sets to film some of the things that couldn't come out perfectly clear. They photographed several parts of the actual Titanic and took it as an inspiration to build other sets and props for the movie and they tried to make as realistic as possible. 

Photo credited to Google

The crew did use a lot of CGI for many of the scenes. Some examples are the moving water, the sailing ship, the people walking in the boats, and the ship sinking. The literally built the Titanic ship to its' full size and width, however, they only built half of it. Building a set and prop this big costs a lot of money and time. So they did do some of the filming on the ship to give it a more realistic feel to what was happening but the majority of the film uses a really small model of the ship. For instance, the scene where Leonardo DiCaprio screams "I'm the king of the world" was filmed in a separate set that was a green model of the ships nose and with green screen on the back. Then they placed Leo on the animated version of the small Titanic model, added some , and some birds in the sky, and voila there is that wonderful scene. On a separate side, Cameron had the crew built realistic sets of what it was like inside the ship. The beautiful staircase where Jack stretches out his hand to Rose was built by hand. The walls, the ceiling, the pictures and ornaments in the back, every little detail was built by hand and put there to honor the real one. In the dining room the cutlery had to be searched for because it had to have the right design, the glass ware had to be authentic of that era, the tableware and the carpet was all authentic. For the sinking scenes, Cameron had the big titanic ship prop actually sink. That was devastating! Such a wonderful and big ship and they just sunk it. for several of the scenes they created different sets of the sinking ship that could tilt and make the people fall off. 

                                                         

Photo credited to Google

The last thing that took a lot of work was the costume. It was all about research research research and more research! The costume designer had to look and buy for authentic 1912 attire for both men and women. They searched from the underwear, to the stockings, to the garter, and jewelry. They acquired an entire collection that belonged to one woman from that time. Every woman from the film including the extras in the back where given a beautiful dress from that time, of course, that meant that every woman had to wear a corset. They actually had a backstage corset users resting chair for the women because the corset of that time was very restricting therefore they needed help. 

Fast & Furious 7... Behind The Scenes

Photo credited to Google

So we all know about this amazing movie franchise that people always look forward to watching through the years. We definitely know about the big and exaggerated stunts the movie takes on so that is what I will discuss today. How do they do all that? Is it CGI? 

GIF credited to Google

We are going to start with the car stunts. I have never in my life seen so many beautiful cars get destroyed over and over again. The first scene I will mention is the famous cars falling out of the airplanes scene. I will dare to say that the director James Wan is crazy and brilliant. As you can see from the GIF, the director had stunt actors throw themselves before the car fell out of the plane and after the car fell out of the plane in order to film the front and back of the cars. Some of the stunt actors had to hold on the car while it's falling in order to film a close shot of the car, give the car's point of view as it's falling from the plane, and then had to push himself away from the flying car in order to get the wide shot.They did have a helicopter filming around to record everything from the sky's point of view. They did have the challenge of how they were going to land a car in a road on a mountain and still keep driving after it has landed. Well, they literally threw several cars in order to test how they managed themselves on air. If they close the cars' windows the car would at some point stabilize itself and stopped moving all over the place. For the landing they had this crane pull the car as high as it could, I think it was about 200 feet up in the air and release the car to slide down a wire and as it got at about 12 feet close to the ground the car was released to be driven. All this was actually done in the mountains so that's pretty impressive. 

Photo Credited to Google

This next scene is about the car flying from one building to another and then to another. Of course the cars didn't fly out of such a big and tall building but it did fly out of a 40 feet tall building, which in my opinion it is still impressive. The building from where they fly out are real the are in the city of Abu Dhabi and the director basically photo shopped the car scene with the scenery of Abu Dhabi. The did recreate some of the inside of these buildings in order to film the action scenes. Once again the challenge was to create a beautiful and "controlled" landing from the flying car. So they created a 3 foot high and 120 feet long runway so the car had enough time to speed up and create the landing. 

Snow White... Behind The Scenes

Since I have been talking about animation I am going to talk about the first animated movie made. It is Walt Disney's Snow White. Disney's animation project started in 1935 when he dreamed of making the first animated movie and it made its first appearance to the public in 1937. In the first sketches of Snow White she had more of a resemblance to Betty Boop with big black curly hair, round eyes, and tiny waist but Walt Disney thought she looked to cartoon-like. He wanted her to look more human and realistic.

Photo credited to Google

Disney sent all of his artists back to school in order to bring this movie which was first of its kind. He set up a school of action analysis where all of the animators studied every piece of human movement to create convincing animation.The process begins with placing and laying out the script of the film in comic book form. They drew a total of 24 separate drawings for every second in the film. Each drawing had to be slightly different than the other so when they flipped through the pages consecutively it would look as though the character was moving. Just imagine 24 drawings per second! The film is 1 hr 28 mins, therefore, they had to draw a total of 126, 720 drawings!!!

750 artists used more than 500 miles of paper to make a total of 2 million drawing and sketches. Walt Disney literally invested all of his money and savings into this film making it vital for the film to be successful. It was because Disney went on to win an Oscar. In this photo Shirley Temple is presenting Walt Disney with an Oscar and 7 little Oscars.

Photo credited to Google

These two women are the ones that gave Snow White voice and image. The one on the top is Marjorie Celeste Belcher, she was the one that was hired to do all the movements for Snow White. The animators had her dance and they studied the way she moved and captured in drawing. How she danced was exactly the same on the film. The one on the bottom is Adriana Caselotti. Her role was vital because she was what was going to heard by everyone. Over 150 girls auditioned to be the voice of Snow White, but Disney wanted a more young and girlish voice. Adriana, who happened to be listening to one of her father's conversation with Snow White's casting director on another phone, started singing in a girl's voice and she was cast. At the time she was 20 years old. 

Photo credited to Google (Marjorie)

Photo credited to Google (Adriana)

Finding Nemo... Behind The Scenes

                                            Photo Credited to Google

Today, we will move unto one of my favorite Disney movies, Finding Nemo. The film went on to earn a total of $936,743,251 worldwide. The inspiration for the movie began for several moments in the directors life. He chose a clownfish because he saw them in a National Geographic magazine. He remembered that as a boy he would like to go to the dentist to see the pretty fish tank. He also says, that when he took a walk in the park with his son he was very over protective and didn't quite enjoy the moment as much. Sounds familiar? 

To start off this project, the executive producer told every person that was going to work in the Nemo project that they had to get certified in scuba diving and go underwater to observe these animals natural habitat.Sometimes, Bob Peterson (the co-writer of the story) would drive for 6 hours all the way to Los Angeles and would throw out and discuss different ideas with another team member. One of those ideas is the famous initiation scene inside the fish tank. 

The first step to bring the characters about is the sketching and it starts with the art directors. They needed so much scientific input in order to capture what a real fish looks like. The hardest part of their job is to make a believable real-looking animated fish. For example, a real fish has their eyes on the side of their head not in front like Nemo, or Dory or any other character in the movie, also fish don't talk, or blink, or give off any emotion so the art directors had to find a way to do so. Next, they have to give the sculptor a 2D drawing so they can make into 3D. The directors start to give their feedback on it and model it correctly before giving it off to the animators. For the animators, the process is very meticulous. They have to be very aware of how the fish swims, what fins it moves, and finally how to give it human characteristics. The director talks to the animators and would make them think like actors. The scene where Dory didn't want to be left by Marlin came by the animator surrounding himself by things that would remind him of the people he loved and imagined they were going to leave in order to achieve that desperate and sad expression Dory has. 

Art director sketch

Sculptors' results

Animation 

The entire crew worked on Finding Nemo for 3 and a half years!!! That is a very long time to work on a project. Based on the interviews I saw, the first screening of the film is always the one that had the crew on a nervous breakdown in part because of course they want success but imagine working on something so hard for almost 4 years and for it to flop. However, the first two screening Finding Nemo had was the best Pixar animation had during that time. 

The Avengers... Behind The Scenes

Today we are going for a more fantasy like movie. This time I will be talking about the Avengers! We all know about this movie's great special effects and action scenes but what exactly do the actors have to do in order to achieve the great superheroes on camera?

First off, the majority of the movie is filmed in green screen. The crew does create some realistic scenery for the actors to use like in this photo where Black Widow is riding a Chitauri (alien) she is riding a replica of what the alien ship looks like in the movie and an actor in a CGI costume and Hawkeye shooting his arrows from a very tall skyscraper when in reality he is shooting from the replica of the skyscraper that is only 3 feet tall. These green and blue screens are represent different parts of New York, buildings, streets, or the city in general.

Photo credited to Google

Second, the movie uses CGI in order to achieve anything from lightning coming out of Thor's hammer to the Hulk coming to life. The Hulk for example is basically Mark Ruffalo in a CGI suit just making expressions and moving very exaggerated for the camera in order to achieve the Hulk going on a rampage. The actors have to sometimes pretend to fight something that is not there. Imagine that! They have to do their action scenes basically alone. Of course, there are times where just like Ruffalo there are people dressed in CGI suits in order to help the actor. Usually those people are the stunt people.

Photo credited to Google

Lastly, the actors have to practice practice practice! What I mean about practice is that the actors have to specialize themselves in some form of marital art in order to do their famous fighting scenes. It's not always that the actor has a stunt double to do all their scenes. Jeremy Renner specializes in four different fighting styles to achieve his action roles. Scarlett Johansson specialized in Wushu Style to get a lean physique while learning how to fight. She actually trained for months in order to get Black Widow to where she is now. For fight scenes Robert Downey Jr. isn't in the Iron Man suit, most of the time it is a stunt double. Chris Hemsworth just focused on his muscle build rather than fight since what he does is mostly with Thor's hammer. Mark Ruffalo luckily doesn't have to do much because the Hulk does all the action scenes and for that there is CGI. This photo is Jeremy Renner practicing a fight scenes with stunt people.

GIF credited to Google