Enter ILM
During the earliest stages of planning on Master and Commander, Weir consulted with Stefen Fangmeier at ILM. “I met with Peter two-and-a-half years ago to prep the project when there was a first draft of the script. We did do a ballpark bid, but Fox decided to hook up Peter with Nathan and Asylum.” But as the production progressed, it became clear that another company must come in and take over some of the visual effects work for the film to be completed on schedule. “Brooke called me, and then I became involved again, because on this film they had expected to have 400 visual effects shots at most, but during production that figure grew to around 750, and it was obvious that Asylum couldn’t accommodate that kind of volume. We did approximately 330 shots in order to get this done within the timeframe that they wanted.”

Asylum shot the miniature of the ship by Weta against a blue screen, composited it into storm motion plates and incorporated rain and the telescope matte. This comprises the shot seen from Surprise’s POV of the enemy ship. Photos courtesy of Asy

While Asylum concentrated on the opening battle and storm, ILM worked on the final battle and numerous other sequences throughout the film. “We did do some very difficult shots in the opening battle, there’s one in the first broadside the Surprise gets, which shows a canon shot of mostly chains and small chunks of shrapnel raking over the deck of the Surprise, taking out the rigging and killing a lot of people. And we did this beautiful profile shot of the ships firing at one another, a classic, very painterly composition. But the final battle we did pretty much in its entirety.”

Different Approaches — a Seamless Result
Fangmeier used the same method of compositing various organically-sourced water elements, live action footage from the full-scale Surprise and the tank ship and the Weta miniatures, to create the grandeur of the ships on the high seas. But unlike McGuiness, he used digital water as well. “We did create CG water for some of the shots. The miniatures were sometimes shot with very dynamic camera moves based on the Animatic; you’d be on the bow of the boat and whip back around as the boat pushes into frame. There weren’t always water plates that were shot from those particular camera angles, so for those we had to create CG water. But essentially this was a big, big compositing show for us. I tend to do a lot of 3D work — on The Perfect Storm and Twister — and this was quite different, it was mostly compositing, with up to 100 elements to get the shots to work.”

Asylum used the Baja tank boat to create the Surprise’s battle with a Cape Horn storm. The effects company added the stormy weather elements. Photos courtesy of Asylum.

Working with Weir
Despite the differences in approach, Fangmeier points out that Weir’s perfectionism and persistent experimentation always aimed toward achieving a film that worked as an artistic whole. “Peter is a very organic director, very intuitive, he screened the film probably about 30 times while we were doing the effects, and he made editorial changes in the context of the whole film. The most important thing for him was how the film flowed. He is such a wonderful person to work for that you forgive him for changing his mind again and again. In other films you see spectacle shots — suddenly you have a huge shot, and you step back and say, wow, look at this shot. Yet those are shots that are conceived in a vacuum, and often times those shots pop you out of the film. After the film you say, that was a neat shot, rather than, that was a neat film. But Peter is a storyteller, and he insisted that the effects not draw attention to themselves.”

Henry Turner is a writer and award-winning filmmaker, whose Lovecraft-inspired horror feature, Wilbur Whateley, won top awards at the Chicago International Film Festival. His writing on film has appeared in Los Angeles Times, L’ecran Fantastique, Variety and many other publications. A longtime film festival executive, he has programmed for the Slamdance Film Festival, and currently heads FilmTraffick L.A.