Rae was initially concerned that he might have proposed a more ambitious depiction of the temple destruction than could be realized within the budget.

BD: What was an example of that trust?

TR: Where the Temple splits during the earthquake. As far as I know, no one had done before quite what I proposed. It was just an off the cuff idea I threw out in a meeting, and then later said to myself, “Oh, crap, I hope we can work out all the particulars.” In theory, I knew that it would work — I just didn’t know if we would nail down all of the noodly technical details. For me, an aspect that is always missing in shots of buildings shaking and falling down is they just shake the camera and everybody reacts but there’s no perspective shift in the set and you don’t physically see things move... it doesn’t have the kinetic energy. So I thought, “What’s one of the ways that we could get something to move really fast?” What was done in order to get the shot is a rig was built carrying two cameras that were configured where one camera is shooting the right side of the set and the other is shooting the left. Then, taking a clue from traditional motion control, the rig would physically separate the cameras right and left by six feet and up and down by four feet. The perspective appeared to shift on the walls as they suddenly moved away from each other very quickly. Those two full frame spherical plates, in a pre-composite, were split screened together while retaining the center of the far end of the set in a constant “infinity” position. It became a very large 8K frame that we then down rezzed to 2K anamorphic. That pre-composite was essentially our “plate” from the set to which we added the miniature splitting floor in the center, a full scale greenscreen element of the jiggling tapestry, additional falling debris, rocks, dust, smoke and light beam elements.

BD: And they had faith that this was going to work?

TR: I mentioned before how cooperative the art department was and that I had asked for accommodations in the set that was built [in Italy]. They made a whole large section of stairs removable because I knew that we were going to need to put the camera rig right in the middle of the Temple door where the stairs were. As the main unit was off shooting other scenes, we set the rig up and tested it. Mel and everyone came by at the end of their day and I showed them what I was planning. [Visual effects line producer] Josh Logan had drawn lines on the floor to show where the fissure in the floor would appear and the stunt coordinator and I walked through our proposed blocking along with what the physical effects crew had rigged for us. Everyone seemed happy. So we got around to the day of what was kind of a big deal with stunts and physical effects and this camera rig and so forth. 1st Unit walked in with it all having been set up, rigged and rehearsed. An hour-and-a-half later, the shot was in the can. We got it on the first take. Steve McEveety then asked if I thought we should shoot lock-offs in case the moving cameras idea didn’t work? I confidently, or maybe foolishly, stated, “No, it’s going to work.” Two days later, after we got dailies, we quickly did a low-rez temp composite in my laptop, showing them the two plates stitched together. From that point, everyone seemed exceptionally confident in our collective abilities.

Rae had a personal attachment to making the nail-in-the-hand effect look convincing. He greenscreened the elements and personally composited the shot.

BD: Let’s talk about how you achieved the nail being driven into Jesus’ hand?

TR: The nail through the hand is an effect that I’ve wanted to do since I was a teenager. As I became aware of movies, I always felt that this effect had been cheated. I would be sitting in church while my father was preaching a sermon thinking, “You know, they’ve never gotten it right because I really want to see the nail go right into his hand — no cuts, no apologies, just all right there on camera”. And that was one of the first gags that Keith called me about. I looked at the storyboard and said, “Alright, you know, we could do this on set with a fake hand and really drive a nail into it, or shoot it as a greenscreen with a real hand and then shoot the hammer and nail element separately.” But since there was the desire to do it on set, we went through a bunch of tests. We tested the gag at Captive by filming it twice before we even went to Italy.

BD: And since it ultimately wasn’t realistic enough, you convinced them to let you come back here and shoot it as a greenscreen.

TR: It’s such an iconic image; Keith and I both felt that it had to be as invisible as we could possibly make it. I composited it myself because it was just too important to me personally and it was a shot I’d wanted to do for so many years.