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So Harlin cast LL Cool J as Preacher and came up with a different part for Jackson. But Jackson turned it down, “because my agent didn’t like it or the part wasn’t big enough or something,” the Oscar-nominated actor said in DVD commentary. In the original script, there were two men in the kitchen Harlin initially thought Jackson would play Preacher, the head chef. Jackson was originally offered a different role in Deep Blue Sea. It gave us an idea of the awesome power of these creatures and how careful we had to be in terms of the cast and crew being close to them, and how the computer program had to have failsafe procedures so nobody got hurt.” 5. “All these 2x4s flying away like matchsticks. “ was sitting in room and just as we were getting the computer programming finished, all of a sudden it leapt up went through the ceiling,” he said. Harlin recounted one of those times in the DVD commentary. The gills moved and it had a mind of its own sometimes.”
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I would walk up to it slowly and touch it and they said it felt like a real shark. “When they first brought into the lab we were all in awe of the size of this machine,” Jackson said.
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The effect was quite realistic: “The first time I saw one of those animatronic sharks, I thought it was a real one,” Stellan Skarsgård, who played Jim Whitlock, said in a special feature created for the DVD. They built 4.5 sharks: Three 15-foot makos, which played the first gen sharks and 1.5 generation-two sharks, which represented that first generation’s 26-foot-long progeny. The remote-controlled machines had 1000hp engines, weighed 8000 pounds, and swam on their own, without the use of external wires or apparatus, at up to 30mph. To get the job done, the team watched video of real makos swimming frame by frame, then borrowed equipment and technology that’s typically used in 747s and built the sharks as self-contained units. As far as I know, we're the first animatronics team to totally mimic the multifaceted jaw of the shark.” Also, sharks' jaws actually float in their skulls, giving them a specific kind of motion. So probably our biggest challenge was replicating that speed and energy for those lunges. In that way, most of the time, sharks are somewhat lethargic. “They're always cruising kind of slowly, then they snap and just go with this incredible burst of energy. “The number one thing about capturing sharks is getting their energy,” Conti said in the film’s production notes.
#THE DEEP BLUE SHARK FREE#
The special effects team, headed by Walt Conti-who built Willy in Free Willy and the snakes in Anaconda-spent eight months on the animatronic sharks. We know what they look like, so our sharks had to be totally convincing.” We’ve seen sharks on the Discovery Channel. "This time you’re going to really see them.
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#THE DEEP BLUE SHARK MOVIE#
“My whole approach to this movie was, no more hiding sharks,” Harlin said in DVD special features.
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The animatronic sharks in Deep Blue Sea were really believable.ĭeep Blue Sea’s filmmakers created its monstrous makos with a combination of visual effects and animatronic sharks. In real life, shortfin mako sharks reach 10 feet on average (although specimens as large as 12 feet have been caught), and longfin makos reach as long as 13.7 feet. "The problem with approaching a shark movie," Kennedy told the Los Angeles Times, "is how do you do it without repeating Jaws?" Kennedy said that in order to “do Spielberg one better,” Harlin made Deep Blue Sea’s makos 26 feet long. Deep Blue Sea director Renny Harlin made tweaks to the sharks to take on Jaws. It was so terrifying that I don't want to remember it." 3. Then this guy yanks the breather off me and the water's churning with blood and guts and stuff. Jane later recounted the experience for Entertainment Weekly : "The first day, I was in a cage, but the next day, they swam me 30 feet down. Thomas Jane, who played shark wrangler Carter, was not thrilled: “I’ve been scared of sharks all my life, ever since I saw Jaws," Jane said in a DVD special feature. But after the shoot at Baja wrapped, director Renny Harlin insisted that the cast head to the Bahamas to shoot with real sharks. There, the cast worked with animatronic sharks and used their imaginations to sub in for CG sharks that would be filled in later. Most of Deep Blue Sea was shot at Baja Studios in Mexico, where the team constructed sets above the massive tanks that James Cameron built to make Titanic.
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