Hunt for Red October 1990

Summary

Visual Effects Supervisor - Scott Squires Visual Effects Director of Photography - Patrick Sweeney The effects for this movie were originally being done at Richard Edlund's Boss films and nearly five months of miniature submarine construction was undertaken under the supervision of Greg Jein. The original methodology was to shoot all the models mounted on model movers with motion control and matte them into backgrounds shot separately. At some point during the testing phase, there was a falling out between the production and the visual effects facility over the look of the test shots and the entire project and the existing models were moved to ILM leaving them around three months to complete the 50 or so effects shots required to complete the movie. At ILM, due to the short deadline, it was decided to similarly shoot the models using motion control but for the most part in a smoke environment thus capturing the background at the same time. This was done to limit the amount of optical compositing that would otherwise be needed. The miniature submarine line up consisted of a 21 ft (6.4 m) and a 4 ft (1.2m) Red October model, a 9ft (2.7m) Kronolov sub, two 10ft (3m) dallas subs, a 2ft (0.6m) rescue submersible and a 6 ft (1.8m) torpedo. ILM then added an inbetween sized 11ft (3.3m) Red October, a bottom section of a 21ft Red October for some new shots that had been added and a 2ft (0,6m) torpedo. Most of the time the larger red October model was mounted on a rigid pylon which allowed for motorised pitch and yaw action and was framed out of shot. The other models in shot were generally hung from a wire rig, developed by Tad Krzanowski originally for Batteries not included and also used for some of the submersible shots in the Abyss. This consisted of a 12 wires running down to one of 4 points on the model, 3 wires to each of the 4 mount points. The wires were controlled by something like the swash plate of a helicopter and allowed for yaw and pitch motion of the model. ...