Whalefall, hits cinemas this Friday. With so much build up around it’s release, did the hype match the film. It absolutely smashed it, with a fearless man vs nature rollercoaster encapsulating suspense and emotion throughout!
So lets explore the background to the story. It’s been one year since his father passed away, and Jay Gardiner (Austin Abrams) is returning home to Monterey, Calif., from college for the first time.
Hoping to locate his father’s [Josh Brolin] remains, Jay goes diving. However, this particular beach is known for its incredibly deep drop-off, and when Jay begins to scale the side of the trench, he encounters a giant squid fleeing from a massive sperm whale and, in a freak accident, is swallowed by the whale. While trapped inside its belly with only one hour of oxygen left, Jay comes to realise that the hard-earned lessons his father imparted may be the key to his escape.
“We pretty much considered every young actor in town between the ages of 18 and 27…anyone who felt creatively right came in and auditioned, which was literally hundreds of young men,” says producer Allan Mandelbaum. “We ultimately ended up testing a small number of them, and it was pretty clear once we narrowed our list down to our top three or so that Austin Abrams was the guy. From an acting standpoint, he was truly unmatched. He just had this incredible intensity from day one.”
Based on the book by Daniel Krause, Kraus’ explains the original inspiration for the story came from a viral video of two kayakers who nearly ended up in the mouth of a humpback whale. Krause explains he immediately became fascinated with the idea,wondering if it was indeed possible. “We’ve obviously seen it in religious stories, and have seen it done abstractly in things like ‘Pinocchio,’ but I wasn’t interested in that kind of approach because it has been done before,” explains Kraus. “I am a research fiend, and I became obsessed with the possibility of crafting a story in a realistic way that was 100% scientifically accurate.”
In order to realistically capture Austin Abrams’ character Jay inside the stomach of a sperm whale on screen, the filmmakers created a number of different sets to allow for multiple angles from which to film the actor. These sets were built on soundstages at CBS Radford Studios in Studio City, and included: an end-cap set, a side-entrance set, a second stomach set, a side stomach set, an esophagus set, and a larynx set.
In addition, they created a massive underwater tank set, which held 175,000 gallons of water and featured a 6-inch cement base. The set was 80-100 feet in length, weighed over 60 tons, and was used to film underwater sequences with the giant sperm whale, as well as the ocean ledge and floor. At 45 feet in diameter and 16 feet deep, the tank was built from scratch by special effects supervisor Mark Hawker (“Stranger Things”) and his team, who decided early on to construct the
enormous structure themselves as opposed to bringing in an outside company, and it took less than a month to construct.
