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"The
sea and the people who sail it are an endless source of mystery
and fascination," observes renowned producer Joel Silver, who
along with his Dark Castle Entertainment partner Robert Zemeckis
originated HBO's classic late-night-fright series Tales of the Crypt
and produced the hit feature films House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen
Ghosts. "Similarly, ghost stories are perennially captivating,
but there has never been a satisfying marriage of the two. Ghost
Ship appeals to the dark side of our nature that loves the thrill
of being scared, that craves that adrenaline rush, and it also fuels
our enduring curiosity about the mysterious and the unexplained."
Indeed,
Ghost Ship combines breathtaking high seas action with a sinister
supernatural story set aboard the Antonia Graza, an errant luxury
liner thought lost for more than 40 years. "With Thirteen Ghosts,
we put a twist on the conventional haunted house narrative and heightened
the tension by setting the film in a structure made almost entirely
of glass," Silver explains. "In Ghost Ship, the structure
in question is a derelict cruise liner that was reported missing
in 1962 and is recovered by an ambitious salvage team. Not only
does the audience take a harrowing journey through this haunted
vessel with our heroes, but they experience the same terrifying
claustrophobia as the characters because escape is not an option.
They're out in the middle of the ocean where there's nowhere to
run and no place to hide."
Add
a cargo hold containing a fortune in unmarked gold bullion and eerie
visions of the doomed ship's original passengers and crew...and
the stakes are raised to chilling depths for a land-starved cast
of characters whose judgment is increasingly clouded by temptation.
Informed
by legends like that of the Marie Celeste - described in the film
as a twin-masted brigantine that departed Charleston, South Carolina
bound for London only to be discovered 59 days later, abandoned
and sailing off the coast of Tripoli with no one at the helm, no
sign of distress and its cargo intact - Ghost Ship delves into thematic
territory explored in both House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts:
the effect of greed on ordinary people thrust into extraordinary
circumstances.
"In
Ghost Ship, House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts, the characters
are ultimately undone by their own desire for some form of material
gain," Silver notes. "In one sense they're the victims
of the evil they encounter, but at the same time, it's their own
avarice that conjures up that evil and empowers it to destroy them."
When
the salvage team aboard the Arctic Warrior recovers the hulking
remains of the once-magnificent Antonia Graza, they appear to have
hit a potential jackpot. If they can repair and tow her back to
shore, the ship could bring in the biggest payday they've ever seen.
Although the crew had been headed for Anchorage after six months
at sea, the possibilities are too rich to ignore...especially when
they discover that the ship holds a priceless secret.
"This
small group of people finds enough gold to change their lives a
hundred times over," muses Ron Eldard, who plays cynical salvage
technician Dodge. "Put under this kind of pressure, people
reveal their true selves: Who are you really? And what really matters
to you?"
What
the crew finds is that they are no less susceptible to the lure
of ill-gotten gold than the ship's original inhabitants seem to
have been. But will they meet with the same nightmarish fate?
Salvaging
is tricky business and extremely dangerous work; damage to sunken
or abandoned vessels is repaired via underwater welding and construction,
often executed in rough waters and usually in the freezing cold.
The
crew onboard the tugboat Arctic Warrior has been sailing together
for years, hunting down ocean-going vessels lost or abandoned at
sea and raising them from the dead in the hopes of returning the
craft to its owners, or claiming lucrative salvage rights. It takes
a collaborative effort to succeed, and each crewmember has their
own specialty that makes them integral to the operation.
Salvage
team leader Maureen Epps is "the heart and backbone of the
crew," according to Ghost Ship director Steve Beck, who also
helmed Dark Castle's successful 2001 Halloween release Thirteen
Ghosts. "Epps is strong as a hurricane. She co-exists well
with the guys because she's forced them to understand that she's
their equal, if not their leader. They accept this fact completely
and she's able to push them to whatever limits are necessary to
carry out their operations."
In
casting this crucial role, the filmmakers needed to find an actress
who could convincingly embody the crew's tough yet compassionate
leader. They found everything they hoped for and more in Julianna
Margulies, best known for her Emmy-winning role as Nurse Carol Hathaway
on the celebrated television series ER. "Julianna has tremendous
strength and intelligence, as well as the empathy that the role
requires," says Silver. "At the end of the day, you know
she can hold her own on a salvage tug, under water or in the face
of an otherworldly evil."
"Epps
is the crew's Jack-of-all-trades," Margulies describes. "She's
second in command on the Arctic Warrior and part owner of the salvage
business, as well as a diver and navigator. Her nature is to jump
into something when she probably shouldn't and take on the challenge
of making it work. Unlike the others, she doesn't have much of a
family, which is why the boat has become her life. She spends days
at sea and it's rough and dirty and smelly out there, but she really
loves it."
Epps'
partner in the salvage operation and the commander of the Arctic
Warrior crew is Captain Sean Murphy, played by internationally acclaimed
actor Gabriel Byrne. "The audience has got to have immediate
faith in Murphy - he's been at sea his whole life, he knows all
its lore and he's seen things the others haven't seen," says
Silver. "Gabriel Byrne exudes a strong sense of authority and
the confidence that comes from a life rich with experience."
"I
always had Gabriel in mind for Murphy," Beck admits. "He
has that intensity that the role demands, and a genuine sense of
sorrow in his eyes that brought increased depth to the character."
According
to Byrne, Murphy is "somewhat cynical and jaded - a man who
has become a little bit tired of life. He's a seafaring man who's
addicted to travel and restless in the way that many sailors are.
In the early days it was sailors who created history by pushing
the limits of the known world further and further. The impermanence
is very attractive to them - I find people who live like that quite
fascinating. In fact, I'm a bit like that myself."
Byrne
was also drawn to the film by his appreciation for the Dark Castle
genre. "I enjoy spooky films that are eerie and a little unsettling,"
he reveals. "I also thought that the central idea of this film
was very intriguing: the notion of a haunted ship that brings out
the worst in people."
For
the pivotal role of Jack Ferriman, the pilot who spots the Antonia
Graza floating in the Bering Sea and conspires with the Arctic Warrior
crew to claim her, the filmmakers cast Desmond Harrington, who has
appeared in the films We Were Soldiers and Riding in Cars with Boys.
"Ferriman
is a fairly reclusive guy," Harrington says. "He flies
weather patrol in very remote areas and he's a bit timid in regards
to interacting with people. So when he suddenly finds himself out
at sea with this incredibly tough salvage crew, it's quite a shock
for him. But at the same time, they intrigue him - particularly
Epps."
Epps
has another admirer aboard the Arctic Warrior. Dodge, played by
Ron Eldard, is "somewhat of a joker," says Beck, "but
he's harboring serious feelings for her. He's there to give the
story humor and edge and Ron does all of that and more."
"Dodge
is just one of guys," comments Eldard. "He's pretty easy-going,
but he's always watching Epps' back. While some of the crewmembers
are being visited by these apparitions, Dodge is only concentrating
on trying to get the ship working again - he's not aware of the
supernatural goings-on."
Isaiah
Washington was drafted to play Greer, the tugboat's First Officer
and by far the most straight-laced member of the team. "Greer
is a gentleman who's searching for his place in the sun," says
Washington. "He's at that point where he wants to strike out
on his own, but while he's there on the boat he knows he has to
toe the line. He gets caught up with a very mysterious character
on the ship, which takes him in a different direction than the rest
of the crew."
New
Zealand actor Karl Urban and Australian actor Alex Dimitriades were
cast as crewmembers Munder and Santos. "Santos is the tug's
engineer," says Beck. "He can fix anything onboard the
boat - with the exception of his somewhat combative relationship
with Captain Murphy.
"Munder
is the crewmember whose technical skills are most valued aboard
the boat," Beck continues. "He's a bit of a genius at
the mechanical aspects of life, but he dresses like a slob, eats
like a slob, acts like a slob - he's pretty much a slob, period."
"Munder's
a really laidback guy but he's very good at his job," comments
Urban. "He's a marine engineer and his area of expertise is
the structure of the ship and how to repair and salvage. I was attracted
to that contrast of him being quite a slacker yet also being so
capable with his work."
Rounding
out the principal cast is Australian actress Emily Browning as Katie,
the ghost of a young girl who may be the key to unlocking the mystery
of the Antonia Graza. "Katie is really a very sweet girl,"
says Browning, who had to perfect an English accent for the role.
"She's completely innocent but at the same time she wants to
take revenge on the people who hurt her. She's been hoping someone
would come onto the ship to be her friend, so when Epps arrives
she's very excited - they develop a real friendship."
"Emily
did an amazing job," Beck enthuses. "She gave Katie a
real complexity. Although her motivation is ostensibly to help the
crew escape, she's not just a little girl caught up in a ghost story
- underneath it all, Katie is looking to take her revenge."
In
characteristically sinister Dark Castle style, Ghost Ship is rife
with tension from beginning to end. At its core, the film is a haunted
house story set on the open sea, and the production design for the
Antonia Graza sets needed to invoke an appropriately unsettling
atmosphere.
"These
characters are not simply trapped in a dangerous situation that
they have to escape from," Silver emphasizes. "They're
literally in the middle of nowhere. There's no help coming and there's
no way to escape. The sets are crucial in creating an extremely
menacing, foreboding sense of being trapped not only on the ship,
but in the vastness of the ocean."
Early
on, the filmmakers made the decision not to film onboard an actual
ship. "The temptation was always to shoot on the real thing,"
Beck says. "We actually visited a few of them, but every time
we thought, 'How are we ever going to get a dolly through this alley?
Or down this hallway?' When you're shooting you often have to punch
through a wall in order to get the shot you need, and on a steel
ship that's impossible. We knew the real thing would be far too
limiting."
Instead,
they decided to build a ship of their own. Finding a production
designer who could rise to this unique challenge was key. "Our
production designer, Grace Walker, built some truly incredible sets,"
says Silver. "We first see this majestic ocean liner in all
its glory, then we see it after it has been sitting derelict in
the ocean for forty years, and it's believable in both of its incarnations.
It's an amazing transformation."
Walker,
whose credits include Queen of the Damned and The Island of Dr.
Moreau, says that constructing the various parts of an ocean liner
was an enormous undertaking. "I've never been asked to build
a ship before - it was very interesting! Among the sets we built
were a life-size foredeck and bow, an engine room and an elaborate
ballroom."
The
Antonia Graza's bridge was one of the director's favorite set pieces.
"I think it is atmospheric, very bizarre and creepy - it has
the air of a graveyard," says Beck. "I was thrilled with
the entire design work."
Walker
also enjoyed creating the ship's opulent ballroom. "All the
ocean liners of the day had fantastic ballrooms that were extraordinary
in their detail - they employed Italian designers to transform their
ships into works of art. We modeled ours on the Andrea Doria, which
was one of the great Italian liners of the 1950s. The design was
just magnificent, and we had a good deal of reference books that
we were able to draw from."
Parts
of the sets were actually used out on the open seas, so it was imperative
that the design met certain criteria. "We enlisted the assistance
of naval architects," says Walker, "to help us with the
design of the ship's hull, to make sure we got the shape right and
that it would be seaworthy."
The
ship's sizeable foredeck had to be built out on location. "It
was a full scale replica, so it wouldn't have fit into a studio,"
Walker explains. "It also needed to have sky backgrounds surrounding
it, so we built it on a hill to achieve the desired effect."
Another
major challenge that Walker and company faced was ensuring that
the Graza's engine room set could endure being repeatedly flooded
with water for days on end. "We built the engine room in a
water tank on one of the stages. I had some concerns about the amount
of water that it needed to withstand, but in the end it held up
very well."
To
accommodate the movie's 40-year time span, the Antonia Graza had
to be built to look as it would have in its glamorous heyday, then
be aged into its present state of total decay. This process - which
is often much more time-consuming than creating the illusion of
a new and pristine set piece - required an art department crew of
over 250 people working round the clock to age the sets.
According
to Gabriel Byrne, Walker's sets "are the most impressive that
I've ever worked on. A work of brilliance when you consider they
built an entire ship."
"They
really did an amazing job," agrees Julianna Margulies. "When
you spend twelve hours a day on a cold, damp, dark, smoky set it
does have a very spooky effect. It really puts you in the moment."
Visual
effects, including CGI and the use of miniatures, played a large
part in the creation of Ghost Ship. "We had to create an immense
ocean liner and a big tugboat with a macho personality all its own,"
says producer Gilbert Adler. "We felt the best way to retain
the scope of the film in the special effects shots would be through
the use of miniatures. Of course, our 'miniature' ocean liner was
in fact about thirty-five feet long and weighed several tons."
"I
personally think miniatures photograph much better than CGI,"
Beck says. "You have more control over the texture and the
detail."
Visual
effects supervisor Dale Duguid had a litany of reasons not to create
an entirely computer-generated ocean liner. "The Antonia Graza
is very complex," he explains. "In both its brand-new
and thoroughly disintegrated conditions it's immensely detailed,
and the geometry required to replicate something like that in a
3D CGI model would be enormous. Then there's the complexity of creating
a realistic-looking ocean. So we decided that to create a convincing
boat and achieve the rich texture that Steve really wanted, it would
be far better to use a miniature ship on a real ocean."
The
film's effects were created through the combined effort of multiple
3D CGI teams, a compositing team, a motion control team and all
of the miniature builders. Duguid stresses the importance of collaboration
in the creation of a credible illusion. "When all of these
elements come together, the end result is that anyone watching the
film won't notice the majority of the special effects at all."
The
various spirits inhabiting the Antonia Graza have quite an impact
on their mortal visitors and the filmmakers went to great pains
to give them the impression of corporeality. "Ghosts should
always be as shockingly realistic as possible," asserts Beck,
"because that's when they have the most power. The minute you
introduce an effect on top of that I think the beast essentially
loses its fangs."
"All
of our ghost effects are derived from physical props or actors,"
Duguid adds. "Their grace and beauty is a result of how we
took that live action footage and effected it. We wanted to give
the ghosts a greasy, transitional quality. Things of the real world
are generally solid and warm and rich, but things from the ghost
world are bled of color saturation and their presence is temporal
- they're there, then you blink and they're gone. It's that kind
of dynamic and movement that we wanted to evoke."
Prosthetic
designer Jason Baird and special effects makeup artist Howard Berger
were on board to provide the blood and gore that gives the film
some of its shock value. Beck values the team's ability to "induce
those instantaneous frights at the appropriate moments. They both
have a great understanding of what I call the 'sticky red' medium."
"We
certainly had our work cut out for us," Berger says. "There's
a pretty good body count, which required lots of major make-up effects
and blood and guts."
"We
also had to make dummies of some of the characters," says Baird,
"such as a full-size waterproof replica of Captain Murphy to
use whenever there was an effect that Gabriel Byrne couldn't do
himself."
The
considerable amount of visual effects in Ghost Ship also meant a
good deal of "green-screen" work for the actors. In this
technique, an actor is filmed in front of a pure green background.
In post-production the green areas are removed and replaced with
a background scene photographed at another time, giving the realistic
illusion that the actor is actually "in" that scene. While
convincing to audiences, this method presents a unique challenge
to the actors.
"My
green-screen work was the most exciting aspect of the project for
me," recalls Isaiah Washington, "because it really drives
home this art form called acting. You have nothing there in front
of you to work off of and there are a lot of technical things you
have to abide by - everything has to be pinpointed, which forces
you to be even more focused. It was a huge challenge for me to work
in that way, but Steve was very clear on what he wanted and I trusted
him completely."
The
filmmakers found the perfect shooting location for Ghost Ship at
the Warner Roadshow Studios on Australia's Gold Coast. "I had
an excellent experience making all three Matrix films in Australia,"
Silver recalls. "The country is very diverse and conducive
to film production, and Australian crews are some of the best that
you'll find in the world. It's a great place to shoot a movie."
"This
production required us to be out on the water for quite some time,"
Adler adds, "so it made a lot of sense to film in a place that
had those facilities. The Gold Coast was ideal - we were able to
film out on the water with relative ease, and in very good conditions."
Since
the bulk of Ghost Ship takes place out at sea and beneath the surface,
the actors took on the additional challenge of performing stunts
in and under water. "I really had to get into shape to play
Epps and I trained throughout filming on top of the fourteen-hour
workdays," says Margulies, who enjoyed the physical challenges
the role afforded her. "There was a lot of underwater work
that involved scuba diving - luckily I was already a fully qualified
scuba diver. I did have an amazing stunt double and I was in awe
of what she was able to do. At one point when we were out filming
in the water they had to put the shark nets out because apparently
several sharks had been seen in the area."
Unlike
his co-star, Byrne didn't relish the stunt work. "To be honest,"
he admits, "I really don't like stunts at all because I've
had some bad experiences in the past; being lit on fire and thrown
into the water, things of that nature. But it turned out to be a
very good shoot and the crew was just incredible. I really loved
Australia - I'm very keen to work there again."
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