Adrift director doesn’t mind filming on ocean

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This article was published 01/06/2018 (3002 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a truism of moviemaking that if you want to maximize the stress of the filmmaking experience, you should go to sea.

Some of the most stressful films ever made have involved big bodies of water, including Jaws, Titanic and The Abyss.

But the prospect didn’t put off Icelandic film director Baltasar Kormákur, who shot much of the survival drama Adrift primarily on location around Fiji, with a few weeks on stage in New Zealand.

The film tells the true story of Tami Oldham, who was just 23 years old in 1983 when she and fiancé Richard Sharp took an offer to sail a 13-metre yacht from Fiji to San Diego. Three weeks into the voyage, the couple was hit with a category 4 hurricane, the trip became a gruelling, 41-day battle for survival.

The ocean scenes were filmed by Kormákur over 49 days.

Kormákur, who shot the 2015 survival drama Everest under conditions that required actors to endure the same hardships as hardcore mountain climbers, felt no hesitation in deciding to shoot the bulk of the film on open ocean.

“I happen to like the ocean,” he says in a phone interview. “I was a sailor when I was younger. I feel at ease in the ocean.

“And water in the tank doesn’t look anything like the sea, you know?” he says.

“To create the whole film in that environment wasn’t interesting to me.”

Hence the process put additional responsibility on actors Shailene Woodley and Sam Clafin, who play Oldham and Sharp.

“The actors get more real and more connected,” Kormákur says. “It helps and informs their performances.

“We spent almost as much time on the ocean as the real people did, and it’s done to prepare them physically and mentally.

“And we pretty much shot in sequence as much as possible, because among other things, they start to lose weight,” he says.

If the weather changed, the shooting schedule could change, too, to accommodate the weather, he says.

“What I had done with the actors and the crew was to prepare them for anything,” he says.

“You bow your head to Mother Nature and take what she gives you.”

Adrift is now playing at Kildonan Place, McGillivray, Polo Park, St. Vital and Towne cinemas.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing