You do n’t have to live in Scotland to cognize the legend of the Loch Ness monster – the story has fascinated the world for years , since St. Columba recorded the first document sighting of the mysterious puppet in A.D. 565 . And even though the celebrated pic bring out in the 1930s were debunked as a put-on , people have clump to Loch Ness ever since , trust to get a glimpse of the " pee horse " nicknamed Nessie .
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Scots touristry could get another hike with the Christmas Day exit of " The Water Horse : Legend of the Deep . " The movie , based on the record by British children ’s author Dick King - Smith , is the story of Angus , a male child who get a line a strange egg on the shores of Loch Ness . It ’s directed by Jay Russell ( " Ladder 49 , " " My Dog Skip " ) from a screenplay by Robert Nelson Jacobs and stars Emily Watson , Ben Chaplin and 13 - yr - old Alex Etel ( " meg " ) as Angus . The film – specifically " Crusoe , " thewaterhorse himself – place a unique challenge for the originative squad at Weta Digital , the New Zealand visual outcome business firm known for its body of work on the " Lord of the Rings " motion picture and " King Kong . "
Director Jay Russell first read " The Water Horse " most seven years ago and was enchanted by it . " I ’d just fetch up ' My Dog Skip , ' which had a similar musical theme involving a relationship with an animal and tiddler duringWorld War II , " he say . He get King - Smith ’s blessing to exchange the narrative ’s perspective from a small fry ’s point of view to that of an older mankind remember his boyhood .
But Russell put the idea aside and made " Tuck Everlasting " ( 2002 ) and " Ladder 49 " ( 2004 ) instead . " With the engineering where it was at the time and the cost of that technology , we could n’t get it made then , " he says . " Technology needed to catch up . It did , and it permit us to do things I envision without it costing $ 300 million . "
Preparation helped saved time and money , too , notes Russell : " I was very specific about what I require so we did n’t scourge a peck of resource . We put every penny into the movie . "
In this clause , we ’ll detail Crusoe ’s development from concept to screen , outline the other logistical and technical challenge the film maker faced , and get perceptiveness into Loch Ness mythology from one of the Prime Minister expert on the depicted object .
Creating Crusoe
Most of the close to 600 effects shots in " The Water Horse " are of Crusoe – a considerable challenge because the creature had to produce rather rapidly from infant to adult . " We ’d done large - scale animate being effects , but we ’d never dealt with a character that change so much . We had to produce many versions of the case and make certain they were all related to each other , " says animation supervisory program Richard Frances - Moore of Weta Digital .
Before Weta Digital come to the project , director Jay Russell make grow each of Crusoe ’s stages with artist Matt Codd . " We decided early on that we want him to have elements of other animals , but no finical creature specifically , " he say . " If you look at a ending - up of the adult Crusoe ’s face , you ’ll see knight in it , and there ’s a bit ofdinosaur , but if you look closely there are all kinds of other thing give way on . There ’s a act of adog ’s typeface in there , around theeyethere ’s a fleck of bird of Jove . The little antler thing we took from a picture of a giraffe . We incorporated elements of unlike animals into Crusoe so that he would have this rum familiarity , even though you ’ve never see it before . "
The beast ’s newly brood first embodiment was based on a baby doll – bony , scrawny , slimed and more freaky than cute , consort to Frances - Moore . " The translucency , the indistinctness , the crease and bags – we ’d lie with to have had that on Gollum [ from the " Lord of the Rings " trilogy ] , but it was n’t feasible at the sentence , " he says .
Crusoe ’s second stage was call " the pup " because of its friendly , playful inquisitiveness – a combination of heel and seal . Next came the " awkward stripling " and then the full adult adaptation .
To make Crusoe , Weta fashionedmaquettes(3 - five hundred carving ) establish on Codd ’s renderings . " With both the infant and the adult , the initial sculptures looked right smart too reptilian , " Russell says . " We add more flesh in the face , around the buttock … The puppy creature ’s font was looking too much like a lamb and too cutesy . We had to add more angles , so it look like something that could live underwater . "
Next , the 3 - D mannikin were read socomputerrenderings could provide a blueprint for skeleton andmusclestructure . From there , the animators could watch scale and the limitation of the character ’s motility . Visual burden supervisor Joe Letteri remembers when puppy Crusoe need to match into a bathtub . " Once we put him in the bath and see how much way he needed to be able to flop around , we had to scale him down a little bit , " he says . " At the sizing we thought he was live to be , he could n’t be as playful . "
The Weta team observed animate being behaviour to make Crusoe ’s movements . " Even though this is a fanciful character , we wanted it to appear that it could be a real puppet that could exist , " says Frances - Moore . " We also made sure that through the different stages we were thinking about what was going on under the skin of the character , where he was coming from … specially in coition to Angus . That observe the character consistent throughout even as it ’s changing . "
Animation Difficulties
Crusoe ’s forcible design and movement would n’t have been effective without a consistent personality . " The idea of Crusoe being hungry all the prison term was something we played with because it allowed us to motivate him . It helped explain why he was always getting into trouble , " says visual effects executive program Joe Letteri . But the designers did n’t want to humanise the creature too much
– otherwise , the consultation might pass judgment Crusoe like a homo .
It was a delicate Libra the Scales , and change were made even in postproduction . " We made adjustments in themusclesaround hiseyesand the backtalk so we could get those expressions that advise a personality , " says theater director Jay Russell . " We were tweaking that almost right up until the day we finished the film . "
Crusoe ’s vocalization is a combination of real animate being sounds compile by auditory sensation designer David Whitehead , who show animal sounds at a menagerie . " The babe sound is a terrierdog , tweaked around and sped up , " says Russell . " Once we had the pallette of sounds , we manipulated them to conform to the personality of the scene . "
Pre - visual image living , a proficiency that has supervene upon storyboarding on many pic , helped the movie maker diagram the action and develop Crusoe ’s personality . This was particularly of import when Crusoe had to interact with his environment – likewater , his bulldog nemesis Churchill , and , of form , young Angus Og . It was the biggest challenge aside from Crusoe ’s physical phylogenesis . Meanwhile , stand - ins were devised so the doer had something with which to interact . Alex Etel , who dally Angus , pretend with siliconpuppets– and sometimes a lawn tennis lump on a control stick . Etel and the English bulldog both had digital doubles , too .
The plastic film ’s many water supply scenes were a minute tough for Etel , who tookscubalessons and was submerged in an 8 - foot - deep , 4 - million - liter army tank for a good circumstances of motion-picture photography . fritter in the tank , which was part surrounded by a 24 - footblue screen , posed a whole Modern set of challenge and headache . First up was the issue of how to make a stand - in for Crusoe .
" We had what ended up being a rather clunky apparatus , " Russell enounce . " You remember those mechanical bull from ' Urban Cowboy ' ? We built one of those in blue , shape like the tool , and put it on a track underneath the water . But [ when ] we … started to rend it , the retarding force and weight of the water was so much that it depend like the boy was on a ocean turtle , it was so irksome . It was a complete tragedy . "
Then , success . The crew take the head from the bull contraption and seize it to aJet Skipainted blue , with a driver in a blue wet cause . This provided the motion and spatter needed for the scenes , which permit Weta Digital to enhance the actual water with digital piddle .
" The water was a huge challenge … We ’d done water before , but not like this , " says Weta ’s Richard Frances - Moore . The designers also drop a good amount of time produce digital Moon for nighttime water scenes .
Filming Locations
The majority of " The Water Horse " was shot in New Zealand for its proximity to Weta , its picture industry base and experient crew . The born setting were also groovy substitutes for 1940s Scotland . The yield spent five and a half weeks in the area around Queenstown , New Zealand , whose lack of modern houses and roads made it idealistic for a period movie .
" When the clouds come in over the mountains , it could be Scotland , " sound out animation supervisor Richard Frances - Moore . " The only thing miss is that in Scotland , there are old wall and buildings everywhere , so it was worthful to actually go to Scotland to get the representation of the years of the landscape painting . "
" There was no way of life I was die to make a movie about the Loch Ness monster and not shoot at least part of it in Scotland , " say Russell . visit Loch Ness for the first time during scouting , he was struck by the masses of tourists stare at and snap the lake . He soon found himself " desire that this blamed affair would come out of thewater . It ’s that desire in all of us that there ’s something out there beyond our imagination that we ca n’t explicate . "
Queenstown ’s Lake Wakatipu , experience antecedently in the " Lord of the Rings " movies , was the New Zealand twofold for Loch Ness . " We did n’t have any cover , but we never stopped for the weather , " Russell say . " We were improbably prosperous . We had these 70- to 80 - mile - an - hour tip every other day , but the gang was so used to it . "
Russell , who remained in New Zealand during postproduction to work nearly with Weta , say that his first extensive visual effects film wo n’t be his last – as long as he can work with Weta again . He ’s not that keen , however , to direct a " Water Horse " subsequence . " I feel I ’ve done it , " he says . " I ’ve made the celluloid I want to make . "
For more information about " The Water Horse " and the Loch Ness Monster , check out the nexus on the next page .
