The Special Effects of STEALTH !

In director Rob Cohen’s exciting action adventure, Stealth, U.S. Navy pilots Ben Gannon (Josh Lucas), Kara Wade (Jessica Biel) and Henry Purcell (Jamie Foxx) are part of a close-knit elite division of test pilots flying highly classified stealth fighter jets, referred to only as Talons. They’re the best of the best and they know it. Then their commanding officer Cpt. George Cummins (Sam Shepard) introduces the team to their new wingman — an artificial intelligence-based UCAV (Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle), nicknamed "EDI." When the creation has thoughts of his own, the three pilots struggle to bring an A.I. program under control, before it initiates the next world war.....

In order to fly both "EDI" and the Talons, Cohen needed a special gimbal, a device that allows an object – in this case a fighter jet – to incline at different angles in all directions. "In terms of our mechanical technology, we designed a gimbal the likes of which had not been seen before," he says. "It weighs about a 100 tons, has the ability to pull about five G’s and can work on a very wide range of motion." Cohen was aided in designing the gimbal by John Frazier, the film’s special effects expert.  "John is a master with the mechanical, in this case, hydraulic work," says Cohen. "He and a group of his engineers designed and built the gimbal in the U.S. then shipped it to Australia in pieces and re-built it there."

According to Frazier, his work on the movie was broken up into two segments – the physical explosions and the creations of the gimbal. "The gimbal was pretty much half the movie," he explains. "It was very complicated to design and build and it’s definitely one of a kind.  Normally gimbals just go up and down. This one has five different axes so it could execute the kind of turns that fighter jets really make. The design was further complicated by the fact that so many different departments had to be involved. We had Digital Domain who did all the background on the shots. Then the lighting department lit everything electronically so it was all in sync. We also coordinated with the cable cam, a camera on a cable that’s totally computer controlled. Each of them had to be in operation before the gimbal could be turned on. In all, it took about 17 computer screens to control the gimbal."

Frazier is excited by the ground-breaking work done with the gimbal in Stealth. "It was the most complex and rewarding work I’ve ever been involved with.  I think it will be a long time before a movie of this magnitude comes along again where they’ll be able to use this type of technology."
 
To add even more realism, Cohen had actual fighter pilots "fly" the aircraft by remote control once they were attached to the gimbal, in order to make the movement of the jets more realistic. Says Cohen:  "These guys know how to really fly. So we would talk to them about what altitude we were at, the terrain we were flying over, the different air currents, cloud patterns and the time of day and then they’d sit at the remote controls attached to the gimbal and fly." More than 800 visual effects shots were also planned out to enhance the special and ‘gimbal’ effects.

Frazier promises spectacular explosions in Stealth, "each bigger than the other. In any Rob Cohen picture, you know there are going to be big bangs and that it’s going to be a total thrill ride. But Stealth is something else again." Stealth actually begins with a huge explosion in a cave. Frazier was also called upon to simulate a big fuel-air explosion over North Korea that took place at a "safe spot" in Sydney’s Blue Mountains, as well as simulate a nuclear cloud in China. "We had to drill into the mountain where we were shooting to create the cave," says Frazier, "so that the explosion looked like it was coming from the depths of a cave, rather than just laying flat on the surface. We even put in vent holes to show how deep the caves are into the mountain." 

But perhaps the biggest explosion in the film — or in any film for that matter —occurs when "EDI" blasts its way out of a hangar in Alaska. "Though the sequence is set in Alaska, we shot it in Sydney in a place called Schofields, about a two hour drive northwest of the city. There was an abandoned private aerodrome out there that we completely rebuilt.  When ‘EDI’ blasts out of the hangar Rob didn’t just want to blow the doors off. He wanted to show the magnitude and power of these missiles. So when we designed the explosion, we made it so that everything would roll.

The fuel rolls, the cars roll and the stunt men roll. They were all timed sequentially to roll into the various cameras.  We used about 500 gallons of gasoline in that shot, probably 400 gallons more than the norm.  We took the real hangar doors down and replaced them with balsa-wood so the stuntmen wouldn’t get hurt. The cars were all rigged to flip, but they were also rigged to a cable ramp. So, as the car flipped, the cable would then pull it tumbling towards the camera.  Everything was on cable, so we knew where every car was going. In total it took about four months to plan it out, because with a sequence as big and complicated as this one you can’t leave anything to chance."

I'm very curious how all this effects will look on the big screen. I saw the trailer in cinemas and it looked like a fantastic thrill. The movie comes to cinemas July 29th and i definitely will check it out. Such cool SFX just don't are the same when watching a DVD.

Source: Sony