As principal photography commenced in May of 1997, Engle took charge of bringing the inanimate creature to life. The birth would be difficult. Engle, an Oscar-winner for Independence Day, was a veteran of Emmerich's German sci-fi film Moon 44, and the director's first American productions: Universal Soldier and the breakout hit Star Gate. After nine years working alongside Emmerich, he could anticipate what the director wanted. It didn't take Engle long to realize that although Godzilla has the same number of effects shots as ID4 (nearly 400), the monster pic was going to be much tougher going: "Creating this living, breathing creature was far more complicated than making the spaceships and destroyed cityscapes for Independence Day."
The greatest challenge: size. Godzilla ranges from 180' to 200' tall, depending on the shot. "Jurassic Park had one big advantage," says Engle, "the T-Rex was actually built life size, 1:1, and could interact with the actors on-set. At best, we could only shoot Godzilla at 1/6 scale against greenscreen and then integrate him with the live-action."
That meant Engle was forced to shoot endless empty background plates, shots to which the gargantuan beast would be added later, a marked contrast to ID4, where Engle's work didn't really begin until production wrapped. This time, Engle found himself dividing his time between production and post-, which were happening on both coasts simultaneously: "That was the ugly part. Wednesday evenings after shooting in New York, I would jump a plane to L.A., work Thursday and Friday shooting miniatures at the Hughes airport hangar, then fly back to New York on Friday night, and shoot there on Saturday and Sunday! Not only was it a seven-day week, in New York 1st unit would be shooting during the day, second unit shooting at night, and they wanted me to be every place. I'd get four hours sleep a night. It was pretty exhausting."
On Godzilla, Engle also had to concern himself much more with on-set interaction between the lizard, the environment and the actors than he dealt with between aliens and humans in ID4. At sea, prior to reaching New York, Godzilla finds a Japanese floating fish factory makes a tasty snack. While the exterior shots of the Kobayashi Maru were accomplished using a 30' miniature shot high-speed in the same Actin, California water tank where the Titanic went down, the interior was shot in-studio as Godzilla's giant claws rip through the hull like a can-opener tearing through a sardine tin. The claws were created full size by Tatopoulos Designs Inc., then mounted on a hydraulic rig and operated by mechanical effects supervisor Clay Pinney (Toys, ID4). "These four gigantic 7' long toenails rip a hole through the hull, which was made of thin sheetmetal, then water comes rushing in," Engle gleefully recalls. "Patrick Tatopoulos' creature shop also provided a 1/6 scale hydraulically driven tail, which was a very violent piece of mechanics. We used that for the wide shot of the tail whacking the ship's bridge, which was a miniature filled with stuntmen we shot in front of greenscreen getting yanked backwards."
Once the King hit New York, Engle used all kinds of full-scale tricks to simulate the destruction in Godzilla's wake, including smashing several real fishing boats onto CFX's parking lot. In the movie, they litter New York's financial district. "Godzilla emerges from NY harbor and rampages down Wall Street with all these ships tangled around his body," Engle grins. "Every so often, a boat comes loose and just drops!"
To simulate the impact of Godzilla on New York traffic, Engle had Joe Viskocil drop five ton weights on genuine taxicabs ("much cheaper than using a miniature," Engle observes), and crashed cars into large green barrels configured like Godzilla's foot, later replaced with a CG element. "We had originally intended to have a 1/6 scale foot but when Patrick came up with a price tag for that, we figured we could do a lot of CG for that money."
Even so, Tatopoulos Designs Inc. supplied some half dozen latex rubber, fiberglass and metal lifesize pieces of Godzilla, which the actors shooting in New York and Los Angeles interacted with, including the inside of the big lizard's jaws and a bizarre 10' x 6' section between two of Godzilla's toes. "That was for a gag where Hank Azaria, who plays a TV news cameraman, is too fascinated by Godzilla to run away as this massive foot comes down, smashing cabs right where the cameraman was standing," Engle grins. "Then the foot lifts up again and we reveal that Hank was standing exactly between two toes and he's okay."
Besides the various full-scale pieces, Tatopoulos' creature shop also sculpted and finished a fully hydraulic 1/6 scale upper torso and head for close-ups, and a 1/24 scale man-in-a-suit costume for wider shots of the monster stomping around New York. These Godzillas interacted with corresponding scale miniature sets, stomping cityscapes just like the original monster and his progeny had for decades on the Toho lot. Only this time, Godzilla wasn't allowed to wreak destruction on most of the model city, which consisted of 1/24 scale buildings, veterans of The 5th Element and The Hudsucker Proxy, rented from Digital Domain. Consequently, any damage would have to be created in post-. "Although we were really careful not to have Godzilla just clumsily bang into buildings, he still left his mark on them, so we shot separate falling debris elements in front of greenscreen to simulate that," Engle relates. "We actually invented a term for it: we called it GMR, for Godzilla Movement Result."
Of course, not every miniature was so fortunate. Emmerich and Devlin earmarked several key New York landmarks for Godzilla demolition, including the world famous Flatiron and Chrysler, which were built and engineered as "weak-knee" models by Hunter/Gretzner. But it was Cinebar, a company best known for building setpieces for Las Vegas attractions, who delivered over 100 models, ranging from the 30' Kobayashi Maru ship to a 1/6 scale replica of the Brooklyn Bridge. Demolition of same was attributed to Godzilla, but accomplished by Joe Viskocil, who took home an Oscar for destroying most of the world's landmarks in ID4 (see sidebar). These miniatures were shot at high speed, with and without corresponding scale Godzillas, by another ID4 vet, miniature effects cinematographer Anna Foerster. The queen of undercranking shot between 48 fps and 72 fps on the 1/6 scale mechanical monster and environs, but hit the really high framerates, anywhere between 200 fps and 360 fps, on the 1/24 scale man-in-a-suit and buildings.
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