Craig Gillespie on the Visual Language of The Finest Hours

Craig Gillespie is one of those filmmakers who can tackle any subject matter and really make it sing. Back in 2014, he directed Disney’s based-on-a-true-story sports drama Million Dollar Arm, which featured a winning performance by Jon Hamm and a huge amount of heart. And now he’s back with The Finest Hours, another tale based on a true story, but one that is very different from Million Dollar Arm.

In The Finest Hours, Chris Pine plays Bernard Webber, a Coast Guard first mate who, with a small crew, rescued the crew of the Pendleton, an oil tanker that cracked in half during a violent winter storm. The rescue is largely regarded as the most daring small boat rescue in the Coast Guard’s fabled history, and watching the film you get a sense of the kind of selfless heroism that makes such a rescue possible. Through cutting edge 3D visual effects, audiences are thrust into this life-or-death scenario with an unheard of level of visceral immersion and emotional realism.

We were able to chat with Gillespie about going from Million Dollar Arm to The Finest Hours, and how he created the incredible visuals, how he utilized 3D, and his different approaches to shooting on land and in the water. Caution: The first three rows might get wet.

How did you first become involved in the project?

I had just finished Million Dollar Arm, and Sean Bailey [President of production at Walt Disney Studios] sent this script over. It wasn’t on my radar at all, they didn’t really send it with any preamble. I just knew the log line, which was that it was about a daring sea rescue in the ‘50s. And it didn’t really seem like something I was dying to do. Then I read the script, and the restraint and the characters and that whole East Coast world, coupled with a story that was absolutely astounding, I called my agent the next morning and said, “I’ve got to do it.”

There were a couple of people who worked on the script after the version that got you so excited. What changed?

Well, a lot of what changed was stuff I worked on with [original screenwriter] Scott Silver and it had to do with Chris’ character. It was, How do we create this hero that people want to root for, that is the underdog? Chris was already attached to the movie and I loved the idea of Chris but then we wanted to figure out how to make that character interesting, because if we’re not invested in him, the movie won’t work.

What was the practicality of the movie like? Did you build the boat that Casey was on?

Michael Corenblith was the production designer on this and worked on Apollo 13, and we wanted that same attention to detail. He did all the schematics and stayed really true and faithful to that era. He built these sets that were 65 feet tall, all steel, built on a gimbal, with 10 feet of water. Just the physics of that, they were scratching their heads for about three weeks. And these were the effects guys who did all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. But they hadn’t dealt with this much weight before. Because once we put water into the equation, it got much more complicated. They had to devise a rocking system on the floor, because it was too much weight on the gimbal. So when you see them on top of that tanker, it’s a whole set, both sides. They could climb down the side of the tanker and get into the boat, with a wave pool going on.

What was your approach to 3D in the movie?

There are different ways to shoot 3D and a lot of time the inclination is to shoot with a very deep depth of field. But we go against the conventional wisdom and have a very shallow depth of field. It feels more immersive to me. The trickiest part was that we have the rain and the snow, because all this foreground rain is out of focus. But they did such an incredible job converting it to 3D that it just feels immersive.

You also have these incredible shots where the camera plunges under the water and comes up and does all of these amazing moves. What was it like coming up with all of that stuff?

Sean Bailey was really supportive on that stuff. Some of it we had devised. It was great to have that support. For instance there’s a scene in the bar, where we are shooting them and it’s choreographed with all of this water dumping on them. And that would be the shot. Then, once we built all of the assets of that boat and the space that they’re in, that’s when we realized we could do a helicopter shot and meet them as they come over the wave. That’s tricky—to go from all CGI to real actors with no cut. There was a lot of that stuff. It was really exciting to do. Water is probably the hardest thing for digital effects companies to do.

When they’re coming back from the rescue, there’s a scene that you shoot in super slow motion, using a Phantom camera that shoots 500 frames per second. Where did that come from?

Well, we were working on the script, and specifically on how they get back. There’s this massive build up on the way out and I felt strongly that we’ve been in action for an hour by the time they rescue the guys. The audience is going to be pretty saturated with that and exhausted by that. And at this point, we want to get into the emotional mindset of the guys and we’re not going to be able to top what we did. It was a great way to get into the mindset, and it’s almost hallucinogenic in a way because they’re suffering from hypothermia. That seemed to really resonate. So part of that is the euphoria and being in that hypothermic state of mind.

Chris said that the old fashioned nature of the story really appealed to him. Was that a draw for you?

As it progresses, there is absolutely an old-fashioned quality and I don’t mean that in a negative way. It fell naturally into that space. The way we’ve portrayed these characters, there’s an honesty to them and a simplicity in the way they lived their lives. And I felt like the camerawork should reflect that and it shouldn’t be fancy. So everything when they’re on land is locked off and very classical, and also because it’s representing the stability of land. Everything on the water, the camera is moving.

The Finest Hours is in 3D theaters now.