WE PLANNED TO shoot a fair amount
of underwater live-action sequences in
the ocean near New Zealand. We did
our research and picked a time of year
when the water was always clear. Of
course the water wasn’t clear, and the
two weeks we planned for shooting in
the ocean were compressed into one
day. So we built our own ocean.
We built two water tanks. One was
for surface scenes. It was shallow, with
depths from two and a half feet to ten
feet, and built like a trapezoid. One end
was built like an ininity pool, so CG
could be used to extend the water. A
trench in the middle can be rigged up
with equipment for stunts—like for,
say, a scene in which a boat gets over-
turned by an enormous shark. The
other tank was 187 feet around and
16 feet deep. We used it for the under-
water scenes. Unlike in the ocean,
where you have to igure out how to light
and shoot at depth, in a tank you can
control the conditions. The real limita-
tion is that you can’t pull back to a wide
shot in a tank. But since you’re already
using CG to mask the tank itself, you
can set the scene exactly as you want it.
The tanks took 12 weeks to build.A prehistoric monster
shark called a mega-
lodon, thought to
be extinct, attacks a
research vessel. Then
everyone else. Jason
Statham has to kill it and
save the world.Nearly all of them.THE SCENETHE PLOTBY
LORENZO
DI BONAVENTURA,
producerHOW TO BUILD A
THE MOVIETHE MEG
The tank used
for surface
scenes was 130
feet wide and
two and a half to
ten feet deep.A trench in the
middle of the
tank provided
room for equip-
ment for stunts.@PopularMechanics JULY/AUGUST _ 201 67