Pacific Rim: Designing Destruction Effects Exclusive

(piano music)

[Narrator] The drift, two pilots melding memories

with the body of a machine.

Going into Makos' flashback was really a fun opportunity

because it's the only time we ever spent any real time

and really see clearly one of these memories.

(lasers shooting)

(explosions)

One of the things I loved about that scene though,

is that it's all told completely subjectively

from Makos point of view, so she felt like the monster

was looking at her and coming after her,

which may not have been really what happened,

but that's how she remembers it.

Working from this idea of the memory being subjective,

how does that manifest itself?

One of the first questions is, well how big is this monster?

So we kind of cheated the monster to be a little larger

than the nominal 250 feet that we're doing elsewhere

in the film.

Can't quite fit into the roadway that we're on

and the monsters kind of shoulder through big buildings.

Another important aspect of the design of the sequence

is just visibility.

The ash wasn't originally as dense as it was.

It was kind of like a thin snow falling.

We ended up making that somewhat denser.

We wanted to make for a dramatic reveal of the creature.

She hides in the alley and she puts her hands over ears.

Then the sound goes muffled and you just catch

these glimpses down the alleyway where this massive

battle going on but you don't really see it happening.

You just see the feet going back and forth

and cars flying and all of this is happening off camera.

Seeing the finished product on something

that you've worked on so intimately, it's an odd experience.

On one hand it's really wonderful and exciting to see

with final sound mix and music and color timed

and everything together.

That's great because it just elevates everything a bit.

On the other hand, I've seen every shot a thousand times.

I've had long discussions about the things

that are working and aren't working

and what the comprises were that I made

to make that work.

It took me a little while to kind of develop

some emotional distance from.

I found that it usually takes about four or five years.

About five years later I can look at something

and be a lot more objective about it

and just not have that big flood of memories

and I can enjoy the film for what it is.