``Dante's Peak'' How was the powerful disaster scene created in an era when CG was underdeveloped? (Part 2)

Mountain collapse and pyroclastic flow scene

Harry and his friends find a truck and cross over the lava flow to the bottom, but they find it in ruins, with the residents and the National Guard already evacuated. Harry takes an ELF (extremely low frequency transmitter) from a room rented by the research staff (which saves their lives). However, at that moment, a huge explosion occurs that causes the mountain to collapse. Then, a pyroclastic flow occurs, approaching Harry and his friends as they flee in a truck.

For the shot of the mountaintop exploding, four 2.7m-tall miniatures, including a spare, were prepared and set up in the desert of Palmdale, Los Angeles County, each representing just the top of Dante 'Dante's Peak. A total of 17 air cannons were prepared, and 5 of them were used at the same time. The nozzle of this air cannon is filled with the aforementioned Driller's Mud to create a plume of smoke.

The Fireball motor was also filled with small amounts of napalm (a combination of gasoline and black powder) and bits of mortar, designed to add the red color of lava. If this amount is too large, it will look like something out of a 1960s volcano movie, so the trick is to make the gray plume glow slightly red.

Since the timing of each device's detonation is slightly different, the time difference is calculated to make it appear that everything happens at the same time, and this is shot at high speed at 500 frames per second. The volcanic smoke soared to a height of 45 meters, and the volcanologists supervising the project also gave their approval.

For the scene where a pyroclastic flow approaches the truck Harry and his friends are riding in, a 1/7th scale miniature town set was built inside a hangar at Van Nuys Airport. The background is a green screen and was shot using a MILO motion control camera manufactured by Mark Roberts Motion Control. The pyroclastic flow approaching from behind was planned to be depicted using CG, and development had progressed to some extent, but it was canceled as the rendering was deemed too slow to meet the deadline. Instead, like the eruption, the method of blowing out Driller's Mud with an air cannon was chosen here as well, and filmed using motion control. Harry and his friends' escape truck was a composite of 1/12th scale radio-controlled models photographed on the same camera trajectory.

The scene that follows, where a town is destroyed by a shockwave, is truly spectacular, with miniature buildings literally blown to pieces as the pyroclastic flow arrives. Nowadays, this can be easily expressed using CG, but breaking a model into such small pieces is extremely difficult. Many of the miniature production companies that were active in America at the time are now out of business, and even if you were looking for similar images, it would be difficult to reproduce them.

* Click here for the first part

[References]

Cinefex, No.69, March 1997

Cinefex, No.71, September 1997

[DVD] Dante's Peak Deluxe Edition

Text: Takayuki Oguchi

In 1982, he became the director of Japan's first CG production, JCGL. After working as the head designer for the IMAX Dome 3D video "Universe 2 ~Sound of the Sun~" at the Fujitsu Pavilion at EXPO'90, he became a freelance video creator. Won an Emmy Award for the NHK special ``Life: A 4 Billion Year Distant Journey'' (1994). He is also a video journalist specializing in VFX, CG, 3D movies, art animation, exhibition videos, etc., and has contributed numerous articles to film magazines, theater pamphlets, the web, etc. In addition to being a visiting professor at Digital Hollywood University, he is also a part-time lecturer at Waseda University's Faculty of Science and Technology, Joshibi University of Art and Design, Tokyo University of the Arts Graduate School of Animation, and Japan Electronics College.

Watch now

View work information

(c) Photofest / Getty Images