One of the only movies this summer that’s not a sequel or remake is Into the Storm. It’s that and Tammy. Storm is a natural disaster action movie about a town hit by tornadoes. A team of scientists is chasing the tornadoes to study them, with their tornado proof vehicle, the Titus. A team of YouTube daredevils is chasing them for the thrill, and a high school time capsule is caught in between.
We spoke with director Steven Quale about Into the Storm. Quale was James Cameron’s second unit director on Titanic and Avatar, also doing visual effects supervision for the latter. He directed the documentary Aliens of the Deep, and went off on his own to direct Final Destination 5. Some SPOILERS for specific scenes of Into the Storm follow, because we discuss how Quale achieved the film’s spectacle.
Related: CraveOnline Goes ‘Into the Storm’ with Oculus Rift
CraveOnline: I understand you wanted to capture the spirit and the format of storm chaser videos, but when you do that as a feature length movie we call that Found Footage. How did you approach the genre trappings you inherited as a feature film, and stay true to the storm chaser videos?
Steven Quale: My conceit was that the storm chasers are professional video documentary filmmakers, so they have the technique of knowing how to do stable camera and get good shots, so we filmed it in a Found Footage aspect but we toned down the shakiness and the uncertainty that the operators would have, and tried to make it feel real, like a professional documentary crew member would be making. That was a hybrid approach so that some of our other characters like Donnie, who is a wannabe filmmaker and in an AV club, also is a good camera operator. It was just basically that conceit because what I didn’t want to do was have it so shaky that it was distracting and you couldn’t see the spectacle of the tornado. And frankly, sometimes on the large screen, it can be too much. It might work for a low budget horror film. For this genre, I thought it needed to be a little more polished.
Thank you. Found Footage doesn’t mean it has to be shaky. That’s just what a lot of them have ended up doing, but I don’t think there’s anything in the format that requires shaking it.
Or also the idea, the other thing is often a Found Footage movie only has one or two cameras, so it’s very limiting in the coverage. You have very long takes with that, so here I figured in our day and age, everybody has cameras. Everybody has a cell phone, so the more cameras, the more ability you can have from different angles to justify what’s going on. Particularly if you have multiple storm chasers who are all documentary camera operators, now suddenly you can have more of your normal coverage of what a film would have, you’d think that these documentary filmmakers would be doing just that because they know that they’re filming to be able to cut it for a show eventually. So you can justify the style that you’re doing by then.
Is there a different structure to these natural disasters than the creative disasters of a Final Destination movie?
Yes, I think the big difference here is it is this unpredictable mother nature, and it’s not an enemy per se. It’s just a force and you’re trying to avoid it where the Final Destination movies had sort of a supernatural fate that is actually actively seeking out people. This tornado is a monster but it’s not self-aware. It’s just a random thing of nature, so it’s more of the awe and spectacle and almost you have a respect for it because it’s so powerful, you just are trying to survive.
Is the Titus a real device?
The Titus was a prop vehicle that was built in Detroit with a company named Kustom Kreations, and it was based on a pickup truck. It was a prop so it didn’t really work, but it was designed to be an actual storm chasing vehicle that could withstand the forces and the pressures of the tornado and thus it had the outriggers that would hydraulically shoot into the ground and hold it to prevent it from getting sucked up by a tornado. So we had all the physical attributes that would be required for a vehicle like that, but it wasn’t based on an actual vehicle, even though there are several tornado vehicles that are similar to that. We didn’t copy one specific one. We kind of made our own version of that.
I was going to say, that’s a good idea. Someone should really invent a vehicle that can lock into the ground for tornado study.
Well, I think there’s a couple of storm chasers out there that have a hybrid version of that, that have hydraulic rams but not quite to the extent that we have. Mainly these storm chasers don’t have the money or the resources to really build something like that with all the R&D and costs involved.
Did you create actual hail that could actually rain down on the set?
Yes, we didn’t actually create hail per se, but we had a bunch of ice that we threw down through these air movers. They’re like air cannons that shoot the ice straight up in the air and then it falls down and looks like hail. One of my big pet peeves in previous movies with hail is they just took crushed ice and dropped it. Having been in real hail storms, I’m aware that hail is a bunch of spheres. It’s round. It’s not jagged edges, so we did some research and they found a company that makes custom ice cubes that are perfect spheres that are designed for high end restaurants for drinks. So we were able to buy these ice cube and use them as our foreground element for all of the hail coming in. The only problem is they were a dollar a piece. So we went through thousands and thousands of dollars of ice cubes that are perfectly spherical in order to make the hail feel natural and real.
And that’s a big area and a long scene.
We basically had three takes at it and then we ran out of ice. So I rehearsed it very thoroughly several times and then we did one take, second take, third take and that’s it, guys. We hope we got something.
Is the flaming tornado something that could actually happen?
Yes, in fact the fire tornado sequence was based on a real phenomenon, and there’s a video of it on YouTube. There’s two different fire tornado sequences on YouTube. One that’s in a lake that there’s some fuel on the lake, and then a tornado came and created these vortices that looked just like ours. And there was another one in Australia that occurred as a bush fire and forest fire. And then the winds were so strong that they had the vortices rotating as well, so we based our fire tornado sequence on the real video footage of those two real events, and then added the unpredictability of the rope tornado spinning around left and right and had them hit the area where the fire has already occurred, and suck that fire up and create the fire tornado.
Did your visual effects company relish the chance to create that?
Digital Domain was the one that did that entire fire tornado sequence. They loved it and they are one of the few vendors that really specialize in doing the simulations of natural phenomena like smoke and fire and all that. Now a lot of facilities can do a pretty good job on that, but they really got the photorealism of what the fire looks like and the interactive lighting. So I’m really proud of how that sequence turned out. All the sequences, but that one specifically, my expectations were met in all aspects.
Did you rip up the high school hallway practically?
Interestingly enough, the high school hallway originally was supposed to be a practical set that we spent lots of time, energy and money with special cables and we were going to rip the whole ceiling off. When we attempted to do it, it failed. One of the cables snapped and the ceiling went down and fell on everybody instead of ripping off. Fortunately we had stunt people in the area where it fell, so we had to then rip all of that practical ceiling off, put green screen on and then do that whole sequence digitally with a digital version of the ceiling ripping off and wind machines blowing on them.
So that was kind of an unfortunate setback that we had whereas other sequences, like the downtown sequence where the tornado destroys the building and they’re running towards the Titus. There’s a red pickup truck that falls right next to Richard Armitage. That was all done practically, for real, as far as the pickup truck falling and crashing into the ground and Richard being very close to it. Other shots are digital and augmentation, so I think it was the combination of the two that really helped sell the reality of the film by having all the foreground wind and the foreground rain be real and practical on the actors. And then the background trees and the background clouds and the background shots of the tornados, those are digital. We just combine all that together.
When the ceiling collapsed, were all the stuntmen and women okay?
Yeah, nobody got injured at all. There was one minor injury but it wasn’t like it fell down on top of them. It fell down in front of them. It was just the trailing edge of it, and it was a lightweight, suspended ceiling so it wasn’t like a real heavy ceiling either, but just sometimes these things don’t always happen according to plan, so you always have to have as much safety involved and have your stunt people, rely on your technicians so that they can try to make it as safe as possible when you do those sorts of stunts.
Then was the old mill practical at all?
The old mill was all digital. That entire collapse of that building was all done in the computer. We had a real mill that we found. It’s one of those rare things where you’re scouting for locations in the greater Detroit area and we came across an old abandoned building. The sun happened to be shining in, you could see the shards of light coming through from the ceiling that was partially broken. I said, “This is perfect. We don’t have to do anything to it.” Literally, we shot that environment just the way it was. As a result of that, we had to then make a digital matched version of that for when it actually collapsed and all the parts of it came down.
Was it fun to set up and production design the aftermath scenes, like the tricycle embedded in the SUV?
Yes, and all of that was based on real reference photos. There was a tricycle that was embedded in somebody’s house. It was just such a surreal image to see that that I thought we have to incorporate that in our film because that’s what happens with the force of these winds and the tornados. David Sandefur and the production design team did a wonderful job of creating the aftermath. One of the problems is how do you create the aftermath of a tornado which is very random, where it may destroy one building and keep another building completely upright?
So we finally came up with the idea if we went to a housing development that was brand new construction, where some houses weren’t built yet, we could then make that unbuilt house into a destroyed house and then make it all seem like it was a neighborhood that got hit by the tornado. That worked out really well for us because otherwise it would’ve been too expensive to try to build all these houses and partially damaged houses in one neighborhood, or digitally paint out houses and put in damage. So it was a smart idea to get what we needed from that.
The final montage of the film has a distinct shot of the American flag. I hadn’t necessarily thought of it as a patriotic movie before, but was that really important to you to get in there?
I thought it just told everybody what they were doing and trying to hold to it. It’s more for the fact that their town got destroyed and somebody put a flag up to kind of say, “Hey, we’re still here. We’re still alive and we’re going to continue.” So yes, I think it’s a sensibility of the midwesterners and they roll up their sleeves and they persevere and are able to overcome these tragedies, but’s not only even just midwesterners. It’s kind of a universal theme for anybody in the world who’s been knocked down and given a severe blow. You want to rally around and try to regroup and live life. Maybe it’s even a life lesson that you can realize maybe the important things that you thought were important before something like this happened completely changed now. You realize all these petty things I was worried about are insignificant next to the fact of being alive and being healthy and having your loved ones and family. So maybe that flag is a little bit representative of that as well.
So maybe less patriotic and more human.
Yeah, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with patriotic aspects as well but I think for me, at least, it’s a universal thing and probably it’s both actually.
What are you doing next?
I have got a number of projects in development actually, so nothing specific, but it’s really exciting and hopefully it’s not anything to do with water or rain.
Would it be another original like Into the Storm or maybe another property like Final Destination?
It depends on the script and how I react to it. I don’t seek certain things in advance. I look at the material, I develop material myself and whatever at that moment I feel most passionate for and I have the ability to do, I will pursue that. I am open to anything but it’s always fun to do something original as opposed to coming in on something that already has certain motifs and procedures already in place.
Was Into the Storm even more ambitious than FInal Destination 5 as your second feature?
Oh, much more so because we were trying to do something that a huge tentpole movie would be doing for way less money than what they get. At the same time, experimented with techniques that sometimes are pretty radical, that a movie of that size might not normally let you do. Since this is first person narrative, that’s a pretty bold thing. It’s probably the most expensive Found Footage, first person narrative movie ever made.
Does Hollywood see you as a director now?
I think so. I definitely have lots of meetings and lots of studio executives. They’re all very impressed with my past work. I’ve got this unique hybrid of having so much history working on these really big movies as a second unit director and visual effects supervisor. It’s sort of an additional skill set that not every director has.
Are you still in touch with James Cameron?
Oh, all the time. Jim’s a good friend of mine and we always keep in touch. In fact, I showed him this movie and he loved it. He gave me a couple pointers and it’s always great to be able to show films to your friends and talk about them and get praise from them.
What’s an example of one of his suggestions?
Well, the movie has the character Trey who is the younger son who has the knife in it. Then when the dad is trying to get the older man out of the seat belt, Trey gives him the switchblade knife. Then he says, “You shouldn’t have this knife” and Richard Armitage takes the knife back from him. That was how it was in the original film, and then Jim said, “You know what would be great is if at the end of the film, Richard gives the knife back to the son as kind of a symbol of saying, ‘You’re a man now. I trust you. You experienced this whole ordeal and you lived through it, and we bonded together. So this is your symbol of becoming a man.’ And he hands it back to him.” It’s just a little touch there, nonverbal, but yet tiny little things make a big difference.
So it was character advice, not technical.
Yes, exactly.
Do you know who’s doing your job on the Avatar sequels?
I have no idea! Maybe Jim Cameron himself!
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
