Nolan wanted to bring in four or five thousand background to
fill the Linnahall for the intense IMAX opening sequence of the film
in which a group of armed men take over a concert and blow up a
portion of the interior. Again, no CG. No inflatable audience members.
Five thousand people. Each day. And a practical explosion.
Polley, Darrelmann and Hayslip immediately started digging into
permissions, health and safety standards and what it would take to
make the site suitable for filming.
The first thing they did was bring in air sampling specialists. Then
they brought in a team of engineers to explain how to refresh the
massive mechanical wall which lowers around the amphitheater.
They even brought in asbestos people. Happily, there was no
asbestos used in the construction, but they had used … horse hair.
"Yeah, it sounds crazy but they'd used horse hair for insulation,"
says Hayslip, "so then you have to get into gradations of like, what
type of horse hair? How spreadable is it? How bad is it? And then
you're down to how many parts per million if someone were to walk
across it or, in our case, what would happen if we were to blow it up?"
Meanwhile, the structural engineers were busy trying to assess
whether or not they could bring vehicles onto the rooftop that
eventually served as the setting for the film's first few moments.
The vans in the opening shots are sitting on the roof of what was
once an ice rink, so the engineers had to test point-loading and
figure out exactly where vehicles could be placed and how many of
the cast and crew could be up there at any given time.
"They delineated an area like, 'OK, you can bring vehicles up here,
but if they drive at 'x' axis, they have to be separated 'x' feet apart,"
says Hayslip, "and on the 'y' axis, they need to be separated 'y' feet
apart.'"
With all of that happening, Nolan and Crowley were onto the next
thing.
"The very day we found Linnahall, I turned to Kristofer," says
Crowley, "and asked, 'you don't happen to also have a piece of
highway we could shut down, do you?'"
"In fairness to every location person in the world,
you have to touch on logistics because we can all go
out and take a picture of something, but arranging
to actually get a location is what makes it happen.
Believe me, I would love to just scout … it's the best
part of the job, but there's more to it than that."
–SLM Janice Polley/LMGI
