Underworld star heads to Antarctica in Whiteout

Monday, September 7, 2009

Underworld star heads to Antarctica in Whiteout

Whiteout uses the extreme cold of Antarctica to put a twist on the mystery thriller genre. U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) discovers a murder at the end of her last tour at a South Pole research station. If it's hard to find clues in the blizzard, imagine trying to hit your mark on the set.

"In terms of being challenging, coming out of the trailer that very first day, I really was worried I wasn't going to be able to speak at all, or say a line ever," Beckinsale said at a press conference on Aug. 28 in Beverly Hills, Calif. "My whole throat closed on that first breath. Luckily, Gabriel [Macht] told me to keep my passages open. Aside from that, the cold was really great. It was probably worse in the studio with the heat. Trying to stop [co-star] Columbus [Short] from sweating was the biggest challenge there."

Macht plays U.N. investigator Robert Pryce, joining the investigation with Stetko. He's also out in the snow in heavy winter gear, which is fine for exteriors, not so much under studio lights. "The challenges that we came up against were when we shot in the studio," Macht said during the press conference. "We were in 80-degree weather, in late spring/early summer, and we were having to wear extreme weather gear. It was probably the hottest set I've ever been on, so I was sweating bullets and probably lost 35 pounds by the end of the movie."

Manitoba, Canada, doubled for the South Pole. Don't make light of shooting in Canada. The actors had to be just as prepared for freezing temperatures when they shot outside. Beckinsale recalled the frightening safety manual.

"When we arrived, they put a thick telephone directory under our hotel room doors the night before we started shooting," she said. "That said, 'These are all the different ways it's possible to die here: of being too cold or of being too hot, if you keep your clothes on too long, when you go inside, or if you've ever had an alcoholic drink, or if you breathe in a westerly direction.' We all panicked. The most I remember was putting on and taking off 15 layers of clothes about 70 times a day. When we first went out, all the men had beards full of ice that I thought were makeup department tests, but it wasn't. It was real. And my hair froze into a point just from breathing on it. I thought, 'Well, I'm from England, I'll know how to handle the cold,' and it wasn't anything like that."

All bundled up, Macht toughed out the cold just fine. "My experience in Manitoba was that it was definitely freezing, and the environment was as close to the [Antarctic] environment as I would think is possible," he said. "But we were in extreme weather and I wasn't that cold. The stuff they got us to wear was very warm. I was fine, and I expected it to be a lot worse."

Producer Joel Silver chose Manitoba for its harsh conditions, but they weren't so harsh that he could not control it. Having learned his lesson from shooting in real snow back on Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Silver utilized modern-day visual effects to enhance location footage. Even creating the whiteouts, where fierce snow blocks visibility beyond a few feet, required digital trickery.

"Some of the way that we did the whiteouts couldn't have been done except for the CGI today," Silver said during the press conference. "You couldn't shoot in that situation. You couldn't possibly shoot in an environment like that. We were able to make it where you can actually see the people, but you sense that you really can't see anything else. With this, we did have some harsh environments, but a lot of that was created in a way that you could believe what you were seeing. There was verisimilitude. We did augment a lot of the climate and weather with visual effects, which makes it harsher than it really was. It was cold, and we were shooting on a frozen lake bed, [but] it wasn't treacherous. The ice was many, many feet deep."
Whiteout opens Sept. 11.

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Enjoy The Prologue From My Upcoming Book.. "Strolok"............by R.Goldberg

"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR RACE WAS TARGETED FOR EXTINCTION?"

The Sun is a powerful force in our Universe. It brings us light, warmth and a promise of a galaxy beyond the stars. Often we associate massive flashes of light with the reflection of our Sun's light bouncing off of another surface.

This is not always the case though, especially if you believe that we are truly not alone in the Universe. When we witness things that we can't readily explain we sometimes turn our heads and shrug our shoulders in a display of apathy.

A display such as this occurred on Friday January 29, 1982 at the Crater Lake National Park just outside of Chemult, Oregon. The snow had been falling steadily for a period of four days. The winds had been whisking about at 40 miles per hour.
Then there was one of those unnatural flashes of light. This created an eerie silence as a lanky boy, just nine years old, seemed to appear from out of that flash. If he had walked to this point there would have been a distinct trail in the newly fallen snow.
There was no trail and as a matter of fact the only tracks in the snow were the ones that outlined his feet where he was standing.

He began to trudge through the snow wearing what could only be described as dark brown long johns. He seemed dazed yet, at the same time, very clear about the direction that he was travelling. This boy with no identity or name seemed to be on a mission that would take him to places he had never been before.
His main goal was to reach Chemult, Oregon and he had no intention of stopping until he accomplished this. As strange as it seems the extreme cold seemed to have little or no effect on him at all.

Why Chemult? What was so special about this town located at an elevation of 4,758 feet above sea level in a frozen winter wilderness in Oregon?

The town of Chemult was first opened to the local traffic in 1926 and here in 1982, with its population of only 241, offered little in the way of comfort for a nine year old boy who was all alone. This journey, although prompted by something deep inside of him, did not provide a feeling of comfort and yet he had hoped that he would at least experience a feeling of accomplishment once he reached the town.

The wind was getting stronger and he noticed a small piece of yellow paper tattered and torn from whipping about in the snow. He only stopped long enough to
pick up this paper..........it read:

.....With the winter season here there was a lot of fun to have. Travelling miles of open trails on snow mobiles skiing or simply hiking, but there are dangers of doing so. Please remember safety first. Do not travel alone and be sure someone knows where you are and where you are going before travelling our trails, and please read the safety rules and codes of ethics before hiking the trails...

Nightfall was near and he had already walked 38 of the 40 miles needed to reach Chemult. He was just off of Route 97 when he spotted an old barn just about 200 feet NE of his present location. Making his way to the barn he went in and found it to be totally deserted, it was a perfect place to rest for the night.

Morning had arrived and once awake the boy started to look around the barn in the daylight light to see if there was anything that was lying in the barn that he could use to assist him on his trek.

Over in the far corner of the barn he found an old metal locked box that had long been forgotten. It was all rusted out and the key was nowhere to be found. After several failed attempts to open the box the young boy closed his eyes, sat back on his tired limbs and placed the palm of his right hand on top of the box. All of a sudden a dull red glow appeared from his right palm and the box lid flew open. Strangely enough once the red glow disappeared all that remained was a faint thin black outline where the outside of the red mark had appeared on his palm. Inside of the box he found several items all of which were unfamiliar to him and it was obvious that they had been there
for a very long time.

The contents included a tattered passport with the picture missing, a pocket knife, a compass, an antique pocket watch with a broken crystal, a time-worn souvenir porcelain coffee mug with the words; "Atlanta, Georgia, The Peach State, A Perfect Place to Live", on it and a frayed map of the Metro Atlanta Area It was difficult to make out the name on the passport but with a couple of light brushes with his fingers he saw the name Jason Tredmore. This is now who this boy would become.

Sci-Fi Blast

Monday, September 7, 2009