Whalefall opens in theaters this Friday, October 16, and 20th Century Studios has been putting out new footage in the run up, including a fresh clip this week. The premise is about as hard a VFX brief as you can write: a diver gets swallowed whole by an 80 foot sperm whale and has to get out before his air runs out. ILM is doing the effects, with Guillaume Rocheron as production VFX supervisor.
Here’s the latest trailer, and what we know so far about how the whale was made.
Directed by Brian Duffield. Production VFX supervisor: Guillaume Rocheron. VFX producer: Annemarie Griggs. VFX by ILM and The Yard VFX.
About the film
The film is based on Daniel Kraus’s novel Whalefall, and Duffield and Kraus wrote the screenplay together. Austin Abrams plays Jay Gardiner, a young diver. Josh Brolin plays his father, Mitt, a hard nosed boat captain who runs whale watching trips. Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy and Emily Rudd co-star.
Duffield is a good fit for this. He wrote Underwater and directed No One Will Save You, a nearly wordless alien invasion film that leaned heavily on creature work and sound. Whalefall pushes the same idea further: one person, a tiny space, and very little to see.
The VFX team
Rocheron is a two time Oscar winner, for Life of Pi and 1917. Life of Pi is the obvious reference point here. It’s still one of the best examples of a CG animal sharing a cramped, wet space with a single actor and holding up in every shot.
A gimbal stomach and no dry for wet
Duffield told The Hollywood Reporter that the inside of the whale was a physical set. The stomach was built on a gimbal, with pistons and manipulators to squeeze and move it around Abrams. He called it “a very tight space,” and said it was dangerous even when Abrams was sitting still.
A few other things he shared:
- Abrams did about 95 percent of his own stunts, with stunt coordinator Shauna Duggins keeping him safe
- The rest relied on “great stitching with stunt performers and CG”
- The team “didn’t shoot anything dry for wet,” so the water you see was real water
- Every crew member told him the inside of the whale was the hardest thing they had ever shot
- The production talked to whale experts, though nobody has ever done an endoscopy on a sperm whale, so some of the anatomy had to be invented
Abrams also swam with real sperm whales to prepare. The studio’s first look video spends more time on his character and that preparation.
What to look for
The likely split is a practical stomach for anything Abrams touches, with CG taking over for the whale’s exterior, the swallow, and any shot that pulls back to show scale. That’s the same practical plus digital approach that worked on Life of Pi, flipped inside out.
When you see it, watch for:
- Where the gimbal set ends and the CG takes over in the wider stomach shots
- How the light behaves inside the whale, since there’s almost no natural source
- The swallow itself, which has to sell an animal the size of a bus closing on a person
- Whether the outside of the whale moves like a real sperm whale, which very few people have seen up close
We’ll cover the ILM breakdown once it’s out. For more trailers with heavy effects work, browse our Trailers category or the trailer archive.
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