The approach to visual effects in this film is basically old school.
We just try to do it all in camera.
Most of the movie is done practically.
Meaning, we could have just gone in the green screen room
and had Hercules fighting the boar.
But we went to a real location in the woods.
And then we just put in the boar.
All the creatures will be digital.
Everything else, if we can do it, should be practical.
Sets, costumes, the classic horse stunts.
I would push practical effects as much as I can
and obviously there is a limit to what we can do.
But I always want to offer it up and then John Bruno does his magic.
The Labors were shot practically, other than the creatures.
We realized on the scale of which we were doing these things
that those would have to be digital.
We had a Nemean Lion head on a pole
that we would say, "Look here."
They have blown me away.
The Nemean Lion that they created blew my mind.
For that, for visual effects, we built a set of teeth, basically, a jaw,
so that at the end sequence, the frame is just,
Hercules just grabs the lion's jaw and he's ripping it open.
So we just built a jaw so that Dwayne can hold and, you know,
puts all his hands in the right place.
The more complicated set was the 60 foot by 40 foot tank for the Hydra.
The creature was rigged in such a way by Neil Corbould,
there were seven heads, full size, and there were seven cables and lifts
that would yank them up out of the water.
We would just whip those out of the water,
so we get all those splashes and dripping off the heads all right.
And we just throw these around.
It gives something to look at and to smash and hit.
And then we added digital creatures to that
using the pouring water to enhance all that.
And then behind the 40 foot section of the tank was a blue screen.
Erymanthean Boar was shot in an area close enough that had forest.
But the trees there were not big enough,
so the Art Department built a tree for us.
It had to be big enough for him to run up.
Cut!
We did a big section of tree,
you know, three foot diameter tree
and we did a practical effect of a boar smash the side of it out
as Hercules jumps up in the air.
All the action was done by the stunt double,
who gets yanked up in the tree and then comes, slams down.
That was all in camera.
The only bit that wasn't practical was the boar coming through
which would all be CG.
We had this giant, full-size cut out of the boar,
so we can pose shots to.
And had seven guys run it through the scene.
It was 100 degrees, I remember, when we shot that scene.
They rolled out this, I think it was two inches thick of cotton material
that looked like snow.
And then they took a snow sprayer and they spray it on the trees
and they spray it on the ground and then they can just sweep it up.
It's a really good snow sequence shot in very hot weather.
Centaurs?
-You've actually seen them? -They have been seen.
Brett's idea of doing this was that it would be gritty and real,
and not mythological.
And so with the centaurs, how do we debunk this?
What we did, we sort of reverse engineered
the visual of a centaur, half man, half horse,
and how would somebody in that time,
how would they have mistaken a guy on a horse for a centaur.
Centaurs!
They're real.
And so I started designing things to show Brett
with a man riding very high up on the shoulders of a horse
and they're wearing some sort of dark camouflage
with the idea that at dawn, when the sun is behind you,
in silhouette you look like a centaur.
Rhesus' battle, we had some high views of 200 soldiers.
We had 200 of our Hercules troops,
and we had 190 Rhesus troops and 60 horses.
And we had to turn that into 3,000 of one
and 1,000 of the other.
As far as the weapons, we have practical arrows,
but no arrows were actually shot for safety purposes.
There were so many characters
and so many people shooting directly point blank at each other
that all arrows were basically digital.
Ingrid, she was such a sport.
Dimensionally, you have to realize what she's doing.
There's scenes in the movie where she pulls an arrow out of a quiver,
lines it up, puts her fingers around it and shoots somebody,
and then grabs another arrow that's not there.
It's funny, cause they're not shooting arrows, they're miming.
We always try and sneak some impacts in there,
but practically, for me, they always look better.
We have it going down on wire, so we know exactly where it's gonna go.
And then the other thing is, we've got the old fashioned pop up arrow.
They're still very effective for very quick cuts.
All the props existed, but existed in a bendable form.
And we had to make them solid and deadly-looking.
We had rubber-tipped everything.
And a lot of the time we were replacing that with metal,
steel-looking blades.
Contacts were digital.
When somebody stabs somebody or slices somebody,
we added all that digitally.
Even Hercules' club. He had the full size club,
and then when we got into the actual battles
and he had to hit somebody,
we had the short club.
So when someone comes into the shot,
he can swing it without hesitation.
And then we'd have to extend that.
Most of the swords and a lot of the spears were extended
because they were actually in combat and everybody was nervous.
We were more involved with the impacts of the weapons.
We made some wax axes up
that we could either fill with blood or with some dust or something.
So as they impact the person,
they shatter and they just give you an impact effect.
Like whip pans, you have a guy just throwing an axe
and the camera pans with that
and then second take is that you just do the impact.
The guy is running with the axe already in his back,
as you pan onto the guy, you say, "Now" and he falls down.
And it works. It's very effective.
Even if you go frame by frame, it's very hard to say it's not real.
So, Hercules basically has been taken down in this dungeon.
He's chained up to this huge pillar
with two chains around his wrists.
And action!
And then he eventually pulls the chains out of the ground.
For that we were making some breakaway floor sections
that breakaway gradually, so we need the thing shattering.
So that will be done with compressed air and dust.
We have a close up of the chains and the chains are flattening out.
They're supposed to be metal,
but our trickery is they're gonna be made out of
aluminum, rubber, plastic.
Unleash the wolves!
Hercules fights his way out of captivity fighting off three wolves.
I had three guys playing the three wolves
and they're being green screens.
They can grab a leg and grab an arm
so they get the right reactions on Hercules.
And then they got a couple of real wolves
that they can photograph doing stuff
and obviously then they do their trickery.
I know they have 60 people working on the wolves alone.
Trying to get the skeletal structure and the muscles
and the fur textures and lighting.
The climax of the movie takes place in the citadel at Hera's temple.
Hera is the nemesis theoretically,
the stepmother of Hercules who hates him.
So, the climax of course should be at the feet of Hera.
We discussed adding more fire pots being pushed over.
Trying to figure how to delay this action.
We were filling dishes full of fuel,
setting light to it and then we got these mechanical rigs,
hydraulic rigs that would just tip it up.
We'll have stunt people behind it
and then it will be this massive, 50-foot-wide flame
and that creates enough time for Hercules
to get the idea that he's gonna smash the massive statue down.
Jean Vincent Puzos loved the idea of, "I will build the entire thing,
build the full size statue of Hera,
and maybe we can push it over."
That got the "No."
We ended up building up to the knees of Hera.
And I remember this really fun discussion with Jean Vincent.
He goes, "Hercules could never... What you drew is impossible.
He cannot push this statue over with
this big block of stone that would be supporting it."
And we started talking about small female pillars.
A number of them that would be supporting the statue.
By hitting the first three out, it destabilizes the whole statue.
And then we take over with the hydraulic rig,
which then, the whole diskette pushes forward slowly,
all the statues start exploding which is all practical.
And then it sends the big statue above tumbling down
and it kills a lot of soldiers and Cotys' big finale.
We had green screens that went on,
they were hundreds of feet long, outside to the top,
extending around the whole palace area and the courtyard.
I mean, there is a certain amount of green screen.
You couldn't possibly not nowadays.
You have to have some CGI.
But there is as little as this is possible.
And we're doing it as much as for real as possible.
The use of visual effects
and for the practical special effects on set,
created a world that was identifiable to everyone.
As if someone took a camera back to the year 358 BC.
It's beautiful. I mean, it's breathtaking.
It worked out really well.
The blends of what's real, what's not real,
is really fantastic.
It was quite a fun experience.
I loved it. I loved the experience. I'll never forget it.
I'm proud of the movie.
We all became a family. We all had such a great time
experiencing and being in another country.
The crew there was so fantastic.
Some of the crew's already come and visited me here, which is fantastic.
Dwayne and all the actors in the movie are very proud of what they've done.
First time I saw it, I didn't see it with an audience.
I just watched it with a couple of close friends.
I try and remain neutral and try and remain balanced
when I watch a movie.
And I try not to be thrown by the size of my head,
because I got a really big head.
But I watched it and it delivered beyond my expectations.
I think there should be a Hercules film every decade.
It's an iconic story that needs to be told,
I think, for every generation.
And you say, "Hercules."
We get challenged every day,
we get knocked down, but we come back stronger.
That's what Hercules is based off of.
And in my opinion, that's what life is.
We get knocked down and we come back,
we come back stronger.
We're all Hercules in a way. We all become Hercules.
Your legend ends here.
Do I look afraid?
Hercules! Hercules!
Now there is the definitive Hercules for this generation.
And that's what I'm the most proud of.