(tense dramatic music)
- We're about to break down the Hell Crab sequence,
from Love and Monsters.
- Oh my God.
We're going to die.
(crab bellowing)
- Love and Monsters takes place in a version of the future,
where monsters have taken over the world.
(electricity buzzing)
(crab burbling)
- If you're reading the script,
and you come up to the scene
where the giant crab goes on the rampage,
and you think, how would you achieve this?
What would it look like?
How are you going to get that effect,
without the crab actually being there?
- A lot of people would probably be surprised
how practical a lot of these, the effects were executed.
We did have a giant inflatable Hell Crab,
as a reference,
which was unbelievable.
- The first time we inflated this guy on the beach,
he became the favorite crew member on the entire show.
- You want some?
(body thumps)
(upbeat rousing music)
- I remember being in one of the meetings,
where they were saying,
the crab basically chips into the sand,
right in front of Dylan,
and this fountain of sand comes up, and knocks him over.
And it was like, okay, how are we going to do that?
The answer, more or less,
was we're going to load a air cannon with sand,
and point it at him,
and that, that should do the trick.
Dylan was an absolute trooper.
I think we did three takes,
where he was just getting cannoned in the face
with about 20 pounds of sand.
I'm sure he's still picking sand out of his hair,
and his ears, to this day.
- Whenever we were shooting or rolling,
you know, nothing's there.
So we've just got effects going off in the sands,
of where it's supposed to be stepping,
and, or what it's knocking over.
(outhouse explodes)
- Okay, wow.
- The outhouse being smashed
is definitely one of our excavator moments.
- When the Hell Crab knocks over the,
like, the outhouse kind of thing, I dive.
And then in a separate shot,
they lock it off in the same frame,
and then they knock over the thing,
and they blend the shots in together,
and it looks like it just like, comes right over my head,
which is awesome.
- We shot multiple passes.
We did Dylan's pass first,
running past the toilet and diving,
and then remove the actor,
brought in the excavator, which was dressed in blue.
And then at full speed rotation,
at full extension on the arm,
we just wiped out the outhouse.
We added a bit of debris in post,
just to help marry the crab into the scene.
Most of that is the practical destruction of the outhouse,
and yeah, Dylan diving out of the way.
(screams)
(crab bellowing)
For Dylan being dragged by his foot,
that was more or less what we did.
It was a stunt rig with a forklift,
and they tied a cable to his leg,
and they just started pulling him along through the sand.
There are a lot of wires on Dylan,
little tag wires spinning him around
and making sure he hits his marks in the air.
Dylan was just like, yep, cool.
Tie it to my foot.
Drag me along.
He's always really enthusiastic.
(distorted screams)
(crab crashes)
- Oh, shit.
- The charging scene was hard,
because it was ultimately a timing thing.
There was a lot going on, but not a lot in the frame.
Keeping the camera man on top of where the crap would be,
what direction the crab would go
when he starts flipping over,
how high he goes,
keeping Dylan's timing with the jousting stick,
if you like, as it flips over.
One of the things we had also,
was an interactive shadow that had to play on Dylan.
So with the timing of him hitting the crab,
being knocked back, and him swinging the pole over,
we had crew members swinging a massive shade sail
over him as well, to block the sun,
which would represent the crab shadow
as it passed over him for the top shot.
- It's fun to kind of use your imagination,
and just be able to create what's going to be there.
(dramatic music)
(people screaming)
(buildings exploding)
- The wire pool gag,
where there was a crane at the top of the cliff,
with massive weights attached to it,
and then basically on action,
the weights were released,
and the cable just snatched that small greenhouse up,
and basically flung it about 60 feet into the air.
- Boy?
(sand rustling)
Boy, hey,
(dog woofing)
(crab snarling)
- Let's move it.
- Go. Now, now, now.
(dog woofing)
I'm sorry I yelled at you!
- The dogs who played Boy in the movie,
I believe their names were Hero and Dodge, were amazing.
And probably, yeah, two of the best trained dogs
I've ever run across.
For this shot, in particular,
was a camera mounted on a quad bike,
nice and low,
leaning off the back of the bike,
being right above the camera lens,
was Zelie, the dog trainer, calling the dog.
And she would lean out to one side,
and lean out to the other,
and that's how you get him doing the little dodging.
It was one of those things.
The shot was so perfect.
I think we did two takes, and had it.
(crab snarling)
His primary design is a crab,
but there's all these little nuances.
A six pack ring stuck on his head,
one of his legs has the crab trap
that he was in when he mutated and grew out of it,
so it's all sort of busted open
and twisted around one of his legs.
There's dozens of little tiny details all over him.
(swelling romantic music)
(crab rattling)
The most complex shot in the sequence,
was where the Hell Crab basically,
confronts Dylan and Jessica just after he's been freed,
because he needed to come up and still be threatening.
And it was just keeping track of all these emotional beats
through the entire scene that allowed you,
just to very slowly pull the audience along with you,
trying to get them to feel what you needed them to feel,
to make, basically, the entire movie pay off.
That was the most difficult,
and also the most rewarding shot to get right in the film.
You'll have to watch the movie,
to find out what happens next.
- I've loved this movie since the day that I first read it.
It's amazing when it comes anywhere close to,
like, what you imagined.
- Huh. That was awesome.
I feel like Tom Cruise.