ON A ROLL

SPECIAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR NEIL CORBOULD PUTS THE CAST IN A SPIN…

“i call it the world’s biggest washing machine”, says special effects supervisor Neil corbould. “we could probably do all of Budapest’s laundry in here!” responsible for designing and building the set for the film’s biggest set-piece, corbould and his team recreated the fuselage of a lockheed c-5 Galaxy on a huge rotating gimbal.

“it can rotate 360 degrees, and it can tilt backwards and forwards 10 degrees each way. it’s hydraulically driven by five 200-litre-per-minute pumps and more than a mile and a half of hydraulic hoses. it does six revolutions per minute. it weighs 85 tonnes and it’s the heaviest gimbal ever built. the rig was so big that we had to dig a pit in the concrete floor of the soundstage to bury some of it.”

taking five months to build, the finished set lets the camera crew strap themselves to anchor points inside the rotating tunnel while the actors (and a convoy full of soft foam replicas of Jeeps, humvees and tanks) roll around the padded insides. with the camera fixed, the result cheats the effects of zero gravity.

“this is the biggest film i’ve worked on, for sure. this sort of thing would normally take two years to build, but we’ve had seven months from start to finish. it’s similar to the rig used during the corridor sequence of Inception, but this is a lot bigger. My brother [Chris] actually did that one, so i had to outdo him. Mine’s bigger. and heavier. and better.” PB