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most spectacular things in the film. As I was
researching this, I found that it’s an absolutely
true phenomenon, and it looks almost exactly
like we depict it with our digital simulation.
So now we have four different, unique
tornadoes throughout the film, and as each
tornado comes, it gives the audience something
new and unexpected to deal with. Then, the
difficult part was how do you create all that and
do it in a photorealistic manner? We wanted
it to be absolutely real. So we took all our
reference footage and showed it to the visual
effects companies. These are probably some of
the most difficult visual effects to accomplish
because everybody knows what clouds look
like, and everybody knows what trees look like
blowing in the wind. This is not a science fiction
movie where you can create your own universe
to have a unique particle effect and special rays
that cause destruction. We had to create these
tornadoes and these digital cloud formations
that looked exactly like the real tornadoes.
The big challenge was trying to use the
artistic and the scientific methods, and having
those two meld together so that the effects
companies could deliver digitally what I wanted.
All of the effects companies did a fantastic job
getting there.
We did a hybrid approach, a combination of
the practical special effects and digital effects
integrated throughout the film, and it worked
flawlessly.
The actors did an amazing job, having to
always be running around with rain and debris
hitting them. It also added so much realism to
the film because all that stuff flying around was
real and we augmented it with digital rain and
debris.
You shot the movie using
a variety of cameras, from
SteadiCams to security
cameras and iPhones.
What did you want to
achieve using this shooting
technique?
Interestingly enough, my
take on this was that we
have cameras and point-
of-view shots that would
traditionally be considered
part of a ‘found footage’
movie. But I didn’t want
that to be distracting for
the audience; I didn’t want
it to get in the way of
the storytelling. So we used lots
of different cameras, and we had an amazing
camera operator in Peter Rosenfeld.
The irony of this film is that the entire movie
was shot handheld. We didn’t have camera
dollies or cranes or any of those techniques that
you’d normally use in a movie. But the audience
doesn’t notice. About halfway into it, you forget
about the cameras and the ‘found footage’
aspect; it just becomes a movie. And we did
that intentionally.
The biggest nightmare was trying to keep the
cameras dry with all the rain pouring in, but the
camera department did a wonderful job.
Can you talk about theTitus, the ultimate
storm-chasing vehicle seen in the film?
The Titus was a vehicle designed by David
Sandefur, our production designer, which drew
inspiration from an M1 Abrams tank. He’s really
into cars and worked with a group of artists
and designers and came up with this concept
of the hydraulic outrigge
that deploy anchors to s
ground and so forth.
Fortunately, since we
filming in Michigan, we
a specialised auto comp
Kustom Creations, that
prototypes and concept
for Detroit, and they we
build the Titus for us. It
pickup truck, and then heavily modified. All we
had was the chassis of a pickup truck, and they
built the entire vehicle on top of that and did a
wonderful job. It is almost a little mini-character
in and of itself when you’re trying to deal with
all the storms in this movie.
Richard Armitage with SarahWayne Callies
Richard Armitage and
SarahWayne Callies on set
with director Steven Quale