Terminator Salvation

The Post-War World

In Terminator Salvation, Judgment Day has come and gone. What civilization is left with is a world that’s dim and grim, with cities left in skeletal-like ruins.

To get the feel of devastation, Terminator Salvation’s director of photography Shane Hurlbut shot the film using an experimental film process. “We took an old film stock from Kodak and we let it sit in the sun too long to degrade some of its qualities,” explained McG. “Then we processed it in a way where we added more silver than you would traditionally add to a color film stock. And we went even further to manipulate that in the digital intermediate to give the film an otherworldly quality that gives you the impression that something’s just off with the way this world looks, which is in keeping with the mood of the entire picture.”

Shot on location in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for its vast desert, the film’s creators also spoke to futurists about what would happen with the flora and fauna if this type of war really occurred. “We wanted to get all of that detailing into our movie,” says costume designer Michael Wilkinson. “We asked, ‘If the bombs went off about 14 years ago and destroyed most of North America, what would be left? What would people scrounge and cobble together to survive, to fight?’
Along with fighting comes extensive gun battles, chase sequences and explosions, which, according to director McG, were done as authentically as possible. “We wanted to do everything in-camera,” he says. “When it was necessary to extend with CG, we did that, but we wanted to build everything, blow things up, and really crash the car. It was extraordinary to have the concussion of the explosion to add to the realism of the sequence. You see exhilaration in everyone’s eyes. You can feel their adrenaline rising. We aimed to keep it as safe as possible, but we definitely wanted to push things every step of the way, to create a movie that, at its core, is a war movie and captures the reality of that intense pressure.”

Adds visual effects supervisor (and second unit director) Charlie Gibson: “McG wanted real pyro events, explosions and actions at a one-to-one scale, not as miniatures or computer-generated. One spectacular explosion involves a helicopter crash into a river.

To make things look realistic, a 200-foot length of river was constructed in the middle of the desert, consisting of an 18-foot-deep tank that housed a scissor lift that moved the helicopter up and down and was rigged so the helicopter could crash in the water and ratchet over. This “riverbank” was also rigged with gas lines to generate a controlled burn, and a protective fire ring.

But as dangerous as these blasts and explosions were, it didn’t deter cast members from getting down and dirty and doing their own stunts. “It just got your adrenaline going,” Moon Bloodgood says. “There were some crazy stunts—we’d start running and then it would be dust and things exploding and I had no idea what was going to hit me. We would be laughing because we were so scared. But I loved it.” Sam Worthington agrees. “My character goes through the wringer,” he says. “He gets strung up, cut up, and blown up, which meant I also spent many a day getting strung up, cut up, and blown up,” he laughed. “So yeah, we got our bumps and bruises, but it’s Terminator, it’s not Pride and Prejudice!”

Toni-Marie Ippolito Uncategorized