Hydraulx got The Fog job as a result of its strong reputation for organic effects. All The Fog images courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

Way back in 1980, horror legend John Carpenter created the creepy, horror classic The Fog using a natural occurrence as his villain rather than a human slasher on a killing bender. The movie revolved around a mysterious fog enveloping the denizens of a northern California fishing town, which in actuality covered up the arrival of some vengeful ghosts looking for revenge. Back then, Carpenter only had dry ice and wind machines on hand to make his menacing fog, but flash forward 25 years to the new remake (opening Oct. 14) of his classic by director Rupert Wainwright, and suddenly there’s a whole new dimension to that wicked fog, thanks to the visual effects of Hydraulx, the Santa Monica-based visual effects house.

The Fog effects were developed and supervised by Chris Watts and the owners of Hydraulx, Greg Strause and Colin Strause, who share credit designer titles for the film. While Watts was on assignment for a new film, Greg Strause details how the company and vfx team handled the challenges of updating this next generation of fog. “We heard about the project through Gloria Borders at Revolution, since she’s in charge of visual effects over there,” he details about their initial involvement. “A bunch of companies were bidding for it and I think we got it because of our approach, and it also didn’t hurt that the weather effects we did on The Day After Tomorrow lent themselves to the effects needed for The Fog.”

After they won the bid, Strause says they took a surprising stance on using Carpenter’s version for reference. “My brother and I played an interesting game with that. He watched the original and I didn’t… so I could have a set of clean eyes. My brother and I work so closely on this kind of stuff, so it was good that one of us was an independent observer. The original Fog was made back in 1980, back in the days of doing opticals and in-camera effects and whatnot. We had to bring value to the movie in terms of how to make the fog scarier. Audiences are more sophisticated so we had to step it up a few notches to make it true to the whole idea of doing a remake, which is taking it a few steps further.”

Hydraulx’ Greg Strause (left) didn’t watch the original film while brother Colin did. One of them kept a pair of “clean eyes” and remained an independent observer.

Strause says the fog in this version was a mix of practical fog and all-CG creations made by the Hydraulx team. “For the contained shots, like the fog going down the hallway of the character Andy’s (Cole Heppell) house, there is a lot of in-camera fog shots as elements and the final composite would have a hero CG element with a bunch of atmospheric fog that was done in-camera. The practical team went through a whole R&D process of exploring all the different kinds of in-camera smoke generators and dry ice, just to see what we could come up with. So, there are shots where 90% of the fog was done in-camera and other shots that were 100% CG. It really just depended on the practical realities on set, because when it’s really windy you can’t control the fog. It was done on location in Vancouver and it was spring weather, which means there is a lot of consideration there that further complicated the physical production. Anytime that happened, though, CG was able to step in and save the day.”

Since Wainwright was looking to create a much more interactive fog for his film, Strause says they had to develop a very dynamic set of fogs to take on certain roles for specific scenes. “Our initial discussions with Rupert Wainwright had us dividing the fog up into different types, because, in different parts of the movie, the fog is achieving things. We ended up with four different types, but in the design process we went through 15 to 20 different looks. We had funny little names for them in-house. The ‘mother-ship’ fog very much resembled an approaching fog bank or storm. It was very big and imposing. We wanted a lot of scope to it and it was The Day After Tomorrow inspired size, where you go: ‘Holy shit! That thing is coming at us is huge!’ It’s not moving too fast but there is no way to stop it. It gives the horror movie sense of impending doom.