Journey to the Malta Studios (in the island of the same name) where huge tanks of water and avant -garde technology recreate storms, waves and seabed for spectacular sets. Like that of Jurassic World: La Rinascita, the new chapter of the cult saga, which returns with Scarlett Johansson protagonist and super realistic marine dinosaurs.
A few years after the start of coexistence, established on earth between men and dinosaurs, as told in Jurassic World: the domain, the Jurassic Park saga, which began in 1993, is ready to return with a new beginning. In Jurassic World: the rebirth, from 2 July at the cinema, a new expedition returns to Isla Nublar, the island where the cloning of prehistoric animals has begun, in an attempt to obtain the DNA from the three more gigantic and dangerous specimens still alive to develop a drug useful for humanity. If you think you have already seen everything, get ready to be amazed because the new chapter, directed by Gareth Edwards and played by Scarlett Johansson, Rupert Friend and Mahershala Ali, will propose something unpublished.
Spectacular action sequences at sea, in which the shipping boat is attacked by a mosasauroa 18 -meter -long marine reptile up to 30 tons. If the dinosaur will be made above all the digital effects, the production had, however, to find a safe place where you can turn the sequences with water and underwater with actors and stuntman. This is why she flew up to the Malta Studios, the island’s production studies, famous above all because Ridley Scott shot two chapters of Il Gladiatore, but where there are two of the largest outdoor pools for the cinema in Europe.
“To turn maritime scenes you cannot go to the open sea where there is not enough control over the tide”says the Head of Studios, “and our immense tanks offer enormous advantages, not only because being built on the coast allow to take shots in which the horizon line coincides with the real sea, but also because here we have a great experience in this regard”.
The first tank, which is able to contain 23 million liters of water, in fact it was built even back in 1964 “When the digital sea in computer graphics did not exist, and it was necessary to shoot everything live”, and after being used for the film State of alarm, he lived a moment of boom when several similar films were shot as a result of the shark in the seventies, such as the murderer. “After Blitz’s flask in the ocean in 1980, the business dropped, but returned to grow when Ridley Scott resumed Albatross here – beyond the storm in 1996”.
Getting around in a tub of this size logistically is not easy: «First of all, to fill it it takes 7 hours and 6 to empty it, so you have to be sure in advance what the weather will be, so as not to find yourself with the full pool and the bad time that blocks the shooting, even if here it almost never rains. Not to mention that we use sea water, so we must avoid taking it in the days when it is particularly rich in limestone rock that comes from the coast. In addition, depending on where the film is set, the production can want a different, more or less crystalline water color, and this requires careful planning: usually it starts with the clearer water possible and then it is slowly closing it, because making the opposite is very complicated ».
The work becomes even more difficult when you move to the other adjacent swimming pool, built more recently, capable of containing 44 million liters of water and to fill which it takes 15 hours (and 12 to empty it). «In these swimming pools we can simulate anything: storms, waves anomalous, and more, thanks to a series of devices including water towers, cannons, rain machines. And we can position models of ships of all kinds and times, making it seem that they are natural size. The most difficult part comes when you have to turn underwater shots: in this case you have to do tests to see how much visibility decreases as the water is cunned, because each production can have different needs about it. For example, we shot the TV series of Apple TV foundation here, and an alien base was recreated underwater that had to be visible already 5 meters, but also Last Breath, a thriller with Woody Harrelson, for which we created various underwater sequences and built a section of an oil platform “. Those who come to the Malta Studios know that there is everything you need for spectacular maritime sequences. “The only hitch is due every now and then to ships that pass to the horizon and force to stop the shooting for a while, or to the paparazzi boats that are settled to photograph the Hollywood stars and that we must send away”.
