Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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While the main crew on the shoot worked nights, Nichola and his special effects team
worked days, out of “Shed Six”, one of the warehouses on The Navigator’s South
Auckland production lot, where a number of models – such as the submarine and even a
full-size horse - were housed. An important part of the visual effects set-up was the
front projection room, where “various shots were merged, matted or combined with
three-dimensional ‘additions’ and re-photographed”. 795 Interestingly, many of the shots
of the moon and the water were not based on their natural sources, but were created in
the studio. The rationale behind this was that Ward had a great deal more control in the
studio. One example cited by Nichola is the way the images of the moon, a recurring
symbol in the film, were created.
The moon only comes out like Vincent wanted it (as a full moon) once a month.
On a three-month schedule, three cracks at the moon isn’t nearly enough. Also,
he wanted to get impossibly close. By having an artist Mike Worrall paint it, we
had the moon at our fingertips. And we could create interesting visual effects
around it as we needed. Nichola ‘sculpted’ three-dimensional clouds in front of
the painted moon and ‘choreographed’ their movements across its face. 796
It is relevant to draw parallels here between the privileging of studio over location sets
in German Expressionist film, for much the same reason – greater control. Fritz Lang’s
Siegfried (1924) with its enormous studio sets of a forest of carefully constructed trees
springs to mind as a comparison. Ward appears also to have relied largely on the kinds
of models and matte effects that Lang had employed, whereas later films such as the
Rings trilogy would shift the creation of effects from the camera to the computer.
The submarine shots were produced using a four-metre scale submarine but the
difficulty was trying to get the ‘sea’ foaming convincingly in miniature as the
submarine broke the surface of the water. Nichola says that the team “looked at a lot of
old movies and archival footage to see what we had to achieve, and then we
experimented”. Eventually, they found that a particular brand of dishwashing liquid
worked well in conjunction with spraying the surface of the water with CRC. The
795 Dowling, "In Search of the Effect," 10.
796 Dowling, "In Search of the Effect," 10.