The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 76

S27 THEENVELOPELOS ANGELES I A I 12 ANNIE AWARD NOMINATIONS Including BEST ANIMATED FEATURE AND BEST DIRECTOR Jennifer Yuh Nelson THE ANIMATED MOVIE OF THE YEAR THE MOSTANNIE NOMINATIONS FOR ANYFILM THIS YEAR Not just wall-to-wall animation, it is artistry of the highest order.A rich vision of ancient China with warlords, Zen masters, old grudges and just a dash of modern day a striking new level of -Betsy ANGELES TIMES S22 THEENVELOPELOS ANGELES TheEnvelope.com Co-producer, visual effects producer Tom Peitzman: Special mounts had to be made for the 65-millimeter Imax cameras, special safety had to be put in place, because in a building 800 meters tall 2,723 you run the risk of anything falling. Even all of us who are working inside the building, we all had to harness ourselves because the window was open. Being in a building that high, it almost gave you the sense you were in an airplane, watching Tom Cruise outside, actually doing it. Smrz: We spent hundreds of hours trying to figure out, how are we going to climb this glass and make it look real. In Prague, we had a section of the building brought over from Dubai and built it on stage.

We knew the temperature of the glass and where the sun was going to be on the day of our filming, and we put 50-foot-tall lights on a rheostat so we could adjust them so it was like the sun. Actor, producer Tom Cruise: We were dealing with a lot of issues not only the height issue but also the temperature issues and the winds. It can getso hot up there that it could burn me, so we had to really play with different kinds of rubber, different kinds of materials with the wardrobe. A sequence like this, with the amount of manpower and craftsmanship it takes and also, athletically, what it takes even for training as trying to figure how going to do it, pretty intense. And then the aesthetics, how going to look.

BRANDT Twenty-seven minutes door knock Ethan slips out the window. Smrz: We rehearsed in Prague and never re- hearsed in Dubai. We flew into Dubai and climbed the building. Kind of like a military operation, where gonna go in and rescue the hostages; never been there, they rehearse on a set, then they go in there. The only difference was, look down.

EXT. BURJ KHALIFA 119TH DAY Ethan steadies himself on the glass, and gets his first real feel for the gloves the only things keeping him from a two thou- sand foot plummet. Sound designer, sound re-recording mixer Gary Rydstrom: The sound of that scene hinges on the gloves wearing. You have to believe really going to hold him up on the outside of the building. The key we found that made it natural and believable was these thumps from an MRI machine.

They make these magnetic thumps, which gave it an electronic sound, a sense of power. Peitzman: The majority of the work we had to do was painting out rigging because Tom was really climbing the building. But there were so many very large cables on Tom, we would actually be replacing the building pieces individually instead of just painting out the cables. But with a mirrored-surface building, it created a reflections nightmare. We had helicopters in our shots, we had crew in our shots, we had all kinds of rigging.

There were many times where we would see six reflections of Tom. So if he has four cables on him, we have 24 cables we have to remove. EXT. BURJ KHALIFA 119TH FLOOR DAY Ethan climbs. Stops.

He turns to see a massive sand storm, sev- eral hundred feet high, racing toward the city. Special effects supervisor Mike Meinardus: Believe it or not, when you get to 147 floors, think it would be really windy, but it was completely, most of the time, still. So we made a special 120 mph wind machine, custom-built, that went on an arm that stuck out- side the window, to blow on his clothes and hair. Rydstrom: The scene is believable and tense, but also kind of funny. Tom char- acter gets frustrated by this failing glove a moment when the glove falls.

We tried to find the right combination of a whistling sound that would be realistic but be also, in my mind, an hommage to the classic Wile E. Coyote falling whistle. EXT. BURJ KHALIFA 130TH FLOOR DAY Ethan fumbles the laser cutter. As he tries to catch it, he inadvert- ently twists his right hand disengaging the glove.

And Ethan Peitzman: That was done on the building, 154 stories up. I remember wanting to do it countless times because he thought his timing right. got a lump in my throat the whole time doing it. Digitally we put in the CG beam and the glass and removed the rigging, but Tom doing it. literally falling two and a half stories.

Smrz: I can only imagine how sore he was. He never complained. He would hang up there for hours. He climbed, I want to say, five days in a row? As far as bruised ribs, just no way around it. EXT.

BURJ KHALIFA 130TH FLOOR Ethan charges out the window, dangling from a length of server cable, running down the side of the building. Peitzman: In one shot, looking up, running toward us, he jumps over the camera and then is running down away from us. It was done in camera with just a whole bunch of rig removal. never forget lying on the platform that he was running towards, right next to Brad Bird and Gregg Smrz, watching Tom running down directly at us, 60 stories above us. It was unbelievable.

Ethan runs along the side of the building in the opposite direction himself like a pendulum Ethan lets go arms outstretched, he reaches for the opening into the command Cruise: Some of the crew even go on the floor a room where the window had been taken just because of the height issue, it was too much for them. When swing- ing from the building, I have crosswinds, and, when you see the shot, see that actually flying. I had to figure out how to do that, on a single rope at that point and when Ileave the building and catch that wind, I am actually flying and trying to figure out how to move my feet like a rudder to move across the whole arc of the building. Smrz: I think it was 1,717 feet the said, nowhere to attach a cable. Ican send you out, but once out, coming back just as He was impacting the building pretty hard as it was.

Times staff writer Geoff Boucher contributed to this report. Cruise, from Photos by David James Paramount Pictures REALLY OUT THERE: Ca- bles securing Tom Cruise while climbing 130 stories were digi- tally erased..