Creating twisters for Twisters

As a film enthusiast who has long been fascinated by the intricacies of special effects and visual design, I find the behind-the-scenes creation of the tornadoes in Twisters to be nothing short of awe-inspiring. The commitment to realism and authenticity that went into bringing these natural disasters to life on the silver screen is truly impressive.

In the movie “Twister,” all the tornadoes depicted were based on real-life tornadoes and were brought to life on screen through a blend of real-world special effects and computer-generated imagery. How exactly did they manage to create these twisters for the film?

In the movie “Twisters,” there are six distinct tornado events depicted, but over ten tornadoes were created for the film due to some tornadoes having siblings or spawning additional ones. The filmmakers drew upon an extensive collection of resources, including authentic footage of super-cell clouds and real tornadoes captured specifically for the production by storm-chaser Sean Casey. According to executive producer Thomas Hayslip, “Sean Casey’s work brought an extra dimension of authenticity to the film.” An accomplished storm tracker and visual documentarian, Sean was hired to locate storms and record as much real footage using various cameras and drones. The raw footage served as a foundation for the special effects team to build upon, resulting in more convincing and lifelike tornadoes. It’s generally more effective to begin with genuine elements and enhance them rather than creating everything from scratch.

The final tornado in the film was influenced by three distinct tornados: 1) a wedge-shaped twister, broader than it was tall, which passed through Kansas in 2023, filmed by the storm chasers hired for the production, 2) a tornado that touched down in the actual El Reno in 2013 and transformed into a fierce, multi-vortex twister, with wind speeds reaching 306 miles per hour and at one point, a base of 2.6 miles wide, and 3) a tornado that hit Mayfield, Kentucky, in December 2021, resulting in the deaths of 76 people. A haunting, sad photo taken from within a movie theater in Mayfield shows how the tornado had obliterated the screen wall, exposing the devastated town outside. This image served as a profound inspiration for the production team; we aimed to create a film that paid homage to all the emotions and meanings embodied in this photograph.

Scott R. Fisher, who has won two Oscars® and an Emmy for his exceptional special effects work on films like Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” and “Tenet,” as well as the series “The Book of Boba Fett,” was responsible for generating and crafting the practical tornado effects – such as wind, rain, hail, and debris – during the filming of the movie.

Producing high-impact wind was his first and highest priority with Twisters. “We wanted to maximize that as much as possible,” Fisher says. “We got as many Hollywood wind-producing machines as possible. But we also wanted to ratchet it up a bit, so we purchased two jet engines to generate more powerful effects for scenes where we’re destroying sets or blowing debris around. We ran the conventional fans at three-quarter throttle, about 70 miles per hour. With the jet engines, we situated them further away from the sets and ran them at 170-to-180 miles per hour.”
In addition to dump tanks (including a 10,000-gallon behemoth for one catastrophic sequence), high-pressure pneumatic water cannons were used to generate water effects. “We used those on the actors,” Fisher says. “We could aim those more carefully so we just miss them or hit them at their feet.”
The bullet-like hail in Twisters was created using polyacrylamide, a rubbery water-soluble polymer that resembles ice, but it’s softer, so it doesn’t hurt as much as ice does when it hits flesh. Additionally, about 15 tons of real ice were used as hail on the exterior vehicle work. “Luckily for us, the actors were game for everything we quite literally threw at them, whether it was dropping a soda machine from a crane or tree leaves moving at 100 miles per hour,” Fisher says. “We pushed the limits to create crazy-violent tornado moments and they were total troopers.”

Ben Snow, a respected veteran in the film industry and former ILM colleague, took on the significant responsibility of creating the tornadoes for “Twisters.” His career began at ILM during the production of the 1996 film. Similar to production designer Patrick Sullivan, who kick-started his Hollywood journey with “Twister,” Snow’s nearly three decades long tenure started there. Throughout his impressive career, he has received four Oscar nominations for his work on “Pearl Harbor,” “Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones,” “Iron Man,” and “Iron Man 2.”

….And that’s how they went about creating twisters for Twisters!

2024-07-24 02:23

Read More