SHARK NIGHT 3D Production Notes - Visual Hollywood

SHARK NIGHT 3D (2011)
PRODUCTION NOTES
Logue, who originally met Ellis through a mutual friend, says, “David’s a great guy. He’s very
talented and anything in the water is his domain. This has been a fun creative experience and it
was a pleasure to get to work with him.”
WHEN SHARKS ATTACK
The film’s other stars are the uncannily realistic sharks that anchor some of Shark Night 3-D’s
most heart-stopping scenes. Walt Conti and Edge Innovations, the Bay Area-based specialists
who have provided life-like sea creatures to the movies since the Free Willy films, created the
animatronic creatures that terrorize the cast.
“Walt and his company make the best animatronic sharks on this planet,” says production
designer Jaymes Hinkle. “Their movements are fluid and virtually identical to the way real
sharks move.”
Conti has studied his subjects extensively. “Sharks are incredible machines in real life,” Conti
says. “They usually swim slowly but when they snap, they have a lot of energy. We had to
capture that energy to make it believable.”
He and his team built multiple animatronic sharks to capture different elements of real sharks
and their movements. “Some were made for swimming gracefully and others were made to
attack,” he says. “By combining different versions of the sharks, we were able to create all kinds
of action. Some are computer controlled and we can carefully choreograph the jaws and head.
Others are much more free-form, so we can play with them, fly them like a model airplane,
really.”
The animatronics team focused on the film’s two most spectacular scenes: a desperate battle with
a hammerhead shark, which was shot half underwater and half topside, and the climactic
confrontation between Sara, Nick and a ravenous great white. “Our sharks ranged from 10 to 12
feet,” Conti says. “They weighed about 700 pounds. The great white had a 250- horsepower
engine behind him and was designed to attack very aggressively.”
The craftsmen who fabricated the sharks began with an original sculpture done in clay used to
make molds, Conti explains. They worked closely with marine biologists to build the most
authentic-looking sharks possible.
“We painted the skin and built the different parts, until all the elements came together to create
something that looks entirely natural,” he says. “It's the details like the pores and the texture of
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