Waterworld

Many different stories have been circulated about the making of the movie WATERWORLD. Here are the facts:

- The runway at Kona airport was indeed lengthened, but while the project was hastened for the benefit of the movie, it had already been approved to allow Hawaiian Airlines land their 747s on Kona.

- The weather conditions weren't too serious: it is true that three days were lost due to hurricane warnings, and one morning's work was cancelled because of tidal wave warnings that led to the evacuation of the studio from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m., but shooting still continued in the sugar hangar inside of which numerous sets had been built.

- The cost. Every week, a meeting was held to keep track of the budget and to establish the expenditures for the upcoming week. As far as the departments that actually contributed to the making of the movie (Special Effects, Art, Construction, Costumes, Trimaran, Marine, etc.), the Special Effects and the Marine units were the only two to go largely beyond their initial budgets. Concerning Special Effects, this was essentially due to the scenes filmed on and around the atoll, which were much more complicated than expected. The case of the Marine department is a bit different: one coordinator was replaced by another, and their methods were radically different from the one another's regarding both technical areas (choice of boats, weather information gathering, implementation of special effects, etc.) and in human relations (working with the stars, the producers, contact with the locals, respecting the chain of command, etc.) This had the effect of considerably raising the costs (buying boats without negotiating prices, hirings and firings, etc.) Finally, what was probably the producer's biggest error: a more serious study of the work site on Kawaihae would have solved a great many of the problems ahead of time.

- In Hawaiian, Kawaihae means "crazy winds", and on some mornings, the wind rushed down the valley at more than 60 knots, rendering impossible all operations on the water. I had spent a lot of time with the meteorologists at both the Franco-Canadian Weather Observatory and the Waimea Weather Center in order to forecast the arrival of these high winds, and also to establish how long they would last, so I was naturally designated the contact person with production, and with only a few misses, helped organize for the maximum use of the time on the water.

- The Big Island is not a place with a strong industrial presence, on the contrary, very little material was available locally. Everything had to be brought in, either from Honolulu, or more often, from Los Angeles. The transportation costs, considering the geography of the film, were enormous.

- Filming on water, even under ideal conditions, is extremely difficult. Filming on the waters off of Hawaii even moreso. However, it must be said that the colors (especially that of the water) would not have given the same impression if the movie had been filmed in a studio tank.

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