Monday December 11, 2000

'Vertical Limit": How'd They Do That?

The movie "Vertical Limit" brought an avalanche of box office cash over the weekend... sixteen million dollars of it! These days, it's easy enough for Hollywood to make fake snow and artificial mountains. But the director of this film pushed cast and crew to their vertical limit... shooting some scenes at 10,000 feet. EXTRA finds out how they did that.

It's a high adrenaline, emotionally charged, action adventure story with unbelievable feats created by the moviemakers that look all too real. In the movie, the actors appear to be the best mountain climbers in the world facing the impossible and cheating death. But, they're only actors, so how do they do it?

Chris O'Donnell says, "We spent about a month down in New Zealand before we started filming working with the climbers. There was enough time to familiarize ourselves with the equipment… the biggest trick is learning to trust your equipment."

Producer Lloyd Phillips realized the severity of filming in such isolated locations. He says, "Suddenly you realize, we got actors into situations where they don't normally go, we put them through real situations and it was amazing to see how they rose to the challenge."

Much of the movie was actually filmed at the top of treacherous mountain peaks, so how did they get the cast and crew to such remote locations? Bill Paxton says, "We were shooting at about nine or ten thousand feet. They would have to helicopter us all up there, all the equipment, and the outhouse and the whole deal."

And once in the lethal surroundings there were careful measures taken to protect anyone from injury or even death. How did they manage that? Ed Viesturs, expert mountain climber, says, "They took great care during the filming that they had a mountain safety crew there, they had people watching every one every minute of the day ensuring the safety of the cast and crew and there weren't any accidents."

And when it came to executing the breath taking stunts, the actors fell right into it. So with all the training and precautions, the final result is purely spectacular.