"Nowadays, people don't want computer generated imagery to look real. They want it to look 'cool'. I was going for real," says Kwapis.
Glasshammer were asked to build the giant working models of the tri-pod nicknamed Fred, Wilma, and Bam Bam "It's pretty amazing that they came all the way down to New Zealand to use a pretty small model-making company to produce these whales, and we were very fortunate to be involved," says Buckingham, in a typically modest manner.
"There was a lot of trust, but I'm sure there were a few sweaty palms waiting up in Alaska."
They weren't the only ones feeling a little apprehensive as the filming of Big Miracle on location in Alaska presented a fresh challenge for Buckingham and his team. The story follows the rescue efforts to save the whales from a remote ice hole. Because the rescuers - including Drew Barrymore as a Greenpeace activist - bond with the whales, the robots needed to look realistic emerging from the water and interacting with humans.
They also needed be filmed from below the ice, swimming around and interacting with each other.
"We've now made a number of whales and creatures that can be submerged and articulated under the water, but the biggest challenge with this project was actually making something that wouldn't start breaking up, and where the hydraulics would still work in minus 20C, which was about the temperature when we were up there."
Buckingham spent a long time researching materials that could withstand the arctic elements and working through the engineering involved. The three robots weigh about 750kg each, (a live adult grey whale comes in at hefty 150 tonnes), but they don't float, so hydraulic rigs and cranes are required to move them around in the water.
"All the hydrostatic parts, the engines that actually pump the oil, they all had to be heated, and the whales were made out of a specialist urethane that could stand very low temperatures. But of course even after you make the robot, and get it all going down here, and you test them in the pool, you still don't know what's really going to happen until you get it up to Alaska and get it in that really cold water and get going."
This kind of gamble is the nature of the business for Glasshammer FX, which also provides models for advertising and television. Fortunately, on this particular shoot everything went perfectly, says Buckingham.
It took them four months to research and study the whales (they spent a good deal of time watching archive video footage of the event from 1988), create 3D renderings, and then build the life-size robots, before shipping them north (which takes another four weeks) for the nine-week shoot in Anchorage - the team of six from Glasshammer were also flown in to operate the robots.
As well as Barrymore the film stars John Krasinski (The Office) as an Alaskan news reporter who discovers the trapped whales.
The story has political overtones, with both the US and Soviet Russia involved, along with oil companies, and the local Inupiat people - but this trio of whales eventually bring people together, overcoming their respective agendas to help these vulnerable creatures.
"It's one of those stories where you just don't really believe that everything about it can be true, but it is," Barrymore explains. "It's about people with fundamental differences that were able to put them aside to work together for a second."
- TimeOut / additional reporting Michele Manelis
