What do you do when you need an ocean but you’re in landlocked Hungary? Why you build one of course!
Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is set on the West Coast of the United States. This is the side the Pacific Ocean borders. However, filming took place in landlocked Hungary. With a need for water, yet surrounded by nothing but land, the CGI team had to get creative.
The genius team, led by Gerd Nefzer, “built an ocean” in just 8 weeks. To get an inside scoop about how this was done, Adam Savage visited the set as part of a report for Tested. They used Europe’s second largest water reservoir, filled with one million gallons. From this reservoir, the team pumped H2O through the various machines and gizmos they created. They built water canons, dump tanks, and massive slides that could dump 5 tons of water at a time.
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Oceans are not sedentary, they are wild and moving. This is important to know because it is essential to keep the water scenes realistic. So, the team needed to generate waves, wind, and rain. They used the massive slides and dump tanks to achieve this. This created turbulence in the water which gave them the ocean effect they desired. The team also shot water canons at the actors during filming to create even more violent water behavior. The CGI team demonstrated such amazing creative capability. The viewers would never know that filming took place in a fake ocean! To get a more detailed look at how this all came together, check out the video below!
If you liked this article, check out more behind the scenes details here: WATCH: The Making of Blade Runner 2049 is a Must See
