Based on the popular book series, the film stories follow Percy Jackson (played by Logan Lerman) on his various quests and his wanting to understand and reunite with his father. We really ran poor Logan through the paces on this one and he never once complained. We dragged him, hung him from wires, ran him through fire and here, stretched him between two halves of a speeding taxi driven by a maniacal threesome that share a single eyeball. Obviously, a fantasy based story which opened up the possibility for great visuals. In fact, I would have loved to have gone a bit further and more dramatic with this film, but the studio needed to consider the age of their young audience and wanted a look that more favored the fantasy component and less the dramatic themes. Totally understandable when making a film of this nature for a large studio. The movie was Directed by Thor Fruedenthal. I had a great Vancouver crew including Gaffer Drew Davidson, Key Grip John Westerlaken, operator Peter Wilke and First AC Taylor Matheson. These guys helped me to no end and really keyed-in to what we were doing and made my life extremely easy with regard to camera, lighting and grip. All very creative guys with great work ethics. Here is Logan Lerman on his way to the chiropractor.
We separated two halves of a stationary taxi against green screen and married that with speeding back plates shot by Roger Vernon. The taxi sequence is involved, had a lot of dialogue and a sweeping sort of back-lashing camera movement. We also had fast moving lighting affects with a 360 array of mirrors that surrounded the car to add reference to the fact that the taxi was moving at a fictional hyper-speed. We used cabs cut-away in various forms to accommodate our fast sweeping cameras and gimbal that tended to toss the actors not unlike socks in a dryer.
Shelly Johnson, ASC 