Bruce Almighty

Engineering a Miracle

One: Tomato juice as soup in prop bowl

The Bible says God parted the Red Sea for Moses, but for UniversalPictures' Bruce Almighty, director Tom Shadyac had a comicvariation of that miracle in mind. Among the 200-plus effects shots inthe new Jim Carrey film is a shot in which a supernaturally endowedCarrey parts miraculous waves inside a bowl of tomato soup.

“It's a really funny idea and it plays beautifully,”says visual effects supervisor Bill Taylor, whose Van Nuys, Calif.,studio Illusion Arts was tasked with engineering this minor miracle.“Our brief from the start was that this was a fantasy movie withphotorealistic effects. We explored doing this shot digitally, since wealso have simulated water in this film. But when a simulated liquid hasreally turbulent dynamics it's no small undertaking, and the cost isenormous. So we thought it was worth trying a mechanicalapproach.”

Two: Clear vertical divider keeps soup to one side.

The idea, first tested on a small scale on video, involved a riggedbowl filmed multiple times with a camera locked onto a tippingplatform. Universal's special effects supervisor Dave Kelsey built aprop bowl, Taylor explains, “that was easily twice the size of anormal soup bowl — about a foot and a half across. The bowl had aclear plastic vertical divider that was a little off-center so that abit more than half the bowl was filled with soup. Then there was asecond divider placed below the soup line about two-thirds of the wayover which provided sort of the edge of the ‘slope’ of thesoup. When the bowl was tipped to one side, a deep sort of V wascreated in the middle of the soup. The liquid always formed the slopingedge of the soup. The ‘flow over’ partition had a bull noseon it so that the soup flowed smoothly over it, and we could always getripples traveling over that edge.”

In fact, one of the reasons that an oversized bowl was required wasso that Taylor could get large enough ripples in the soup to sell thegag. “The effect actually worked in a normal size soup bowl, butI couldn't get enough texture on the surface. We wanted that feeling of‘big water’ — a lot of ripples — and a regularsize soup bowl just wasn't doing it. There's this lovely thing calledthe square cube law, which says when you make something double the sizeit gets eight times as heavy. So we knew that we couldn't go beyond adouble size bowl.” As it was, they eventually used about fiftygallons of tomato juice, and Taylor wonders “what the folks atthe supermarket thought as we trucked all that away.”

Three: Tipped prop bowl causes flow over.

The oversized bowl was mounted on a pivoting table about 4'×6'in dimension. “It was able to tilt through plus and minusforty-five degrees, as well as resume its normal position,” notesTaylor. “We were able to tip the bowl with the camera fixed tothe top of the rig, so the camera and the bowl moved together. Thecamera rig probably went 40 degrees on each side, so it was a total ofan 80-degree swing. Of course, as far as the camera was concerned, thebowl wasn't moving at all.”

Since the lights were also attached to this rig, Taylor says,“it was a little ungainly. Fortunately, a great number of lightsweren't required because there weren't many light sources in theoriginal scene. And because the shot is from Jim Carrey's point ofview, the camera was at some distance from the bowl, so we didn't needa lot of light to carry focus.”

Four: Right side flow over.

To move this rig, Taylor continues, “three husky guys gatheredaround it, and as the camera rolled they tipped the rig to one side.The soup bowl and its partitions, and a sort of wooden lip that hadbeen attached to the bowl, all rotated 180 degrees so we could film theleft side and then the right side without having to change the light.We certainly could have moved the table with hydraulics rather thanhave guys physically tipping it, but that would have taken a long time.Machines have all the power in the world, but touch and sensitivity areharder to come by. When you have something that people can movedirectly, you have this intimate, instant feedback. Our guys could moveit a little faster or slower as needed.”

Because the soup had to become agitated, the Illusion Arts crewassisted the effect by blowing air onto the surface. “Wedistributed the air through a plastic cone that divided the air into 30little individual air jets,” says Taylor. “We did notovercrank, although I think in the end we shot soup elements at30fps.” Throughout the entire process, Taylor monitored theshot's progress via a video tap.

Five: Final composite of soup parting, with rigging digitallyremoved

The finished shot consisted of a composite of a bowl filled withplacid soup, followed by frames showing the soup flowing to one sideand then the other. These elements were composited on Mac G4 computersusing Adobe After Effects. “It was basically a simple splitscreen,” says Taylor. (Illusion Arts also filmed hands againstgreen screen hands to give the director the option of having handshovering over the bowl. At press time it was not yet decided whetherthe hands would be included.)

By taking this mechanical approach, Taylor believes, “we got alook that was the closest to reality. It took some fiddling, but wefinally realized that we had to let gravity — and our airpressure — control the soup. Once we let nature take its course,everything worked. We literally made liquid go uphill!”

Tom Shadyac — Director
Dean Semler — DP

For Universal and Shady Acres Productions:
David Kelsey - Special Effects Supervisor
Hal Bigger, Doug Hubbard - Special Effects

For Illusion Arts:
Bill Taylor - Visual Effects Supervisor/Visual Effects DP
Syd Dutton - Co-Visual Effects Supervisor
Adam Kowalski - Camera Operator/Compositor
Lynn Ledgerwood - Special Rigging
David Williams - Compositor