American Cinematographer - February 2011 - 37

ased on the experiences of renowned underwater explorer Andrew Wight (Ghosts of the Abyss, Aliens of the Deep ), the new thriller Sanctum combines executive producer James Cameron’s fascination for underwater environs with the latest 3-D image-acquisition technology.In the Australian production, which was directed by Alister Grierson and shot by Jules O’Loughlin, ACS, things go from bad to worse for an expedition of cave divers, who are led by Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh). When a tornado causes a flash flood while they are exploring a cave, the divers are cut off from their original point of entry and forced to descend deep into the cave system to find another way out. After meeting as students at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, Grierson and O’Loughlin collaborated on the feature Kokoda, a harrowing account of the famous trek by Australian soldiers in New Guinea during World War II. Wight showed the movie to Cameron, who subsequently invited Grierson to New Zealand’s Stone Street Studios while he was working there on Avatar (AC Jan. ’10). “A few hours after Alister landed in Wellington, I received a call asking me to catch the next plane over,” recalls O’Loughlin. The pair spent almost a week with Cameron, discussing the logistical and creative concerns of shooting 3-Dand how best to tackle Sanctum. Principal photography for Sanctum took place over 60 days at the Warner Bros. Studios on Australia’s Gold Coast during the latter half of 2009. The production used two soundstages and, for underwater sequences filmed at night, the facility’s main outdoor water tank, which has a surface area of 12,915 square feet. During two months of prep, Grierson and O’Loughlin discussed how best to achieve a film aesthetic with 3-D technology. “It was very important for this movie to exude a kinetic, onscreen energy that would constantly drive the narrative forward,” says O’Loughlin.

“From the beginning, Alister and I wanted to use 3-D to immerse the audience in a world they’ve never seen before, a world they would respond to viscerally. The audience should feel that they’re inside these caves with our characters, but not to the point where it’s too uncomfortable. As soon as you physically strain an audience using 3-D, you’re in real danger of drawing them out of the picture.” O’Loughlin used three configurations of the Fusion 3-D system, which was teamed with Sony HDC-F950 cameras and Fujinon Premier HD 16x zoom lenses. The A camera was a topmounted beam splitter operated by Greg Gilbert that spent most of its time on a Lev Head at the end of a SuperTechno 50. The B camera used an under-slung beam splitter for Steadicam work (also done by Gilbert) and handheld work (operated by Ian Thorburn). The C camera was a sideby-side rig operated by Simon Christidis and used for underwater work; this rig was limited to an interocular (IO) of 63mm, whereas the other rigs allowed the IO to be reduced to 0.
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Unit photography by Jasin Boland, courtesy of Rogue Pictures. Photo on page 44 courtesy of the filmmakers.

Opposite: Cave divers find themselves on an increasingly dangerous expedition in the 3-D film Sanctum, shot by Jules O’Loughlin, ACS. This page, top: Group leader Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh, left), and his son, Josh (Rhys Wakefield), search for an escape route. Bottom: The pair climbs the Inverted Squeeze.

February 2011

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American Cinematographer - February 2011

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