…even, yep, in ‘Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus.’
My post yesterday about forced perspective miniatures, which was inspired by Rise of Skywalker production designer Kevin Jenkins’ miniature sandcrawler tweet, seemed to get a few people talking and reminiscing about the VFX technique.
Including director Jack Perez, who was behind 2009’s wacky Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus. He shared with me some images of a foreground miniature/foam rubber whale with which he employed forced perspective for an early scene in the film.
Here’s Perez’s note to me about how he used the effect:
In 2009, I wrote/directed Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus for SyFy (anonymously as “Ace Hannah”). Though loaded with low budget CGI, I convinced the producers to do a practical gag (always my preference) using an old fashioned foreground miniature for a scene where Debbie Gibson investigates a massacred whale washed up on Zuma Beach. The whale was a 2 foot long, foam rubber job.
I’ve been employing forced perspective since making Super-8 movies as a kid in the 70’s, and I gleefully pulled it out again for my giant monster web series, Fear Force Five in 2013.
And you can actually watch Perez’s breakdown of that forced perspective work in Fear Force Five, below.
