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Hey, remember that scene in There Will Be Blood when they hit a gas pocket causing a
geyser of oil to erupt and then catch fire? I love how crazy and intense that scene is.
It’s pretty much the centerpiece of the movie, so how did they do it? Well, that’s
exactly what we’re gonna talk about on this episode of Making Film…
Let me set the scene…
We begin in 1956 with James Dean’s third and last leading role as Jett in George Stevens’
film Giant, following a poor handyman who is left a small piece of land on the property
of Bick, a well-to-do man and his new wife, Leslie, whom Jett is in love with. The husband,
Bick, tries to buy back that piece of his family’s land, but Jett refuses and makes
it his home. One day Jett notices oil seeping out of a footprint on his land and soon after,
this happens:
Looks sort of familiar, right? Well, Giant
is one of Paul Thomas Anderson’s favorite films, and like The Treasure of the Sierra
Madre, it served as an inspiration while making There Will Be Blood.
Who’s not civilized?
Fast-forward to around fifty years later, during the pre-production on There Will Be
Blood. Anderson was having trouble finding a shooting location that he liked. It had
to look like Bakersfield, California in the early 1900s, but there was a problem— the
actual oil boom had fundamentally changed the landscape of California. Producer Joanne
Sellar said, “you can’t find old California in California anymore” (Entertainment Weekly).
PTA: We were desperate to shoot the film in California.
I live in California and it’s a California story, but I can honestly tell
you, we drove over every inch of that state looking for the right place to film and we
couldn’t find what California looked like back then in California anymore. There was
either oil derricks, or there was Burger King sign or a freeway or it was owned-- the Bureau
of Land Management, and that would have been impossible, so, after searching forever, we
ended up getting, just opening it up to other states, New Mexico, even Nevada, Colorado,
wherever it would be, Mexico, just to find the right thing. The right thing was what
Bakersfield would have looked like before the discovery of oil. And there was a certain--
there was something very specific about the landscape and how it looked.
Anderson was sent some photos of a ranch in
a town in Texas called Marfa and it was perfect. Not only did it have all of the rocks, sand,
dust, and hills they were looking for, it had its own private train line that they could
use for the film (Reel Pieces).
Anderson thought that the location was amazing and, as if he needed any more of a reason
to shoot there, Anderson was told that this was actually the same town that Giant was
filmed in.
They went to Marfa to look around, but when they got there, they heard that Joel and Ethan
Coen AKA "the Coen Brothers” were also scouting locations in Marfa
for No Country For Old Men (Ponsoldt).
Anderson said, "I remember we had come down for a scout, and they were
down for a scout, and I opened the door at the motel and saw Ethan [Coen]. I said, 'This
town is not big enough for the both of us!' Because literally, it wasn‘t. And they had
very intelligently heard about us and snapped up all the motel rooms, those sneaky bastards.
They were only there for a week, and we were in preproduction so it worked out fine for
everybody. But it was kind of hilarious” (Ponsoldt).
You might also remember that the favorites
to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards that year were There Will Be Blood
and No Country For Old Men.
No Country for Old Men. Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen, producers.
One of the things that makes There Will Be
Blood such an amazing movie is this scene where Daniel Plainview’s derrick strikes
oil on the Sunday Ranch.
In an interview, Anderson said that they didn’t storyboard the film, but it appears that they
may have just storyboarded this scene. These storyboards by Kevin MacCarthy were found
in the post by Cinephilia & Beyond.
Here, we can see a breakdown of the complex first sequence of shots from HW being blown
off the roof to Daniel rescuing him. I love the part here where it says, “How
close can we get?” Looks pretty close. And it looks like they modified the timing a bit
because we can see here, that they were going to have the geyser ignite in the background
of the shot of Daniel carrying HW away from the derrick.
One of the things I really love about this scene is the powerful and unique score by
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, which is why this episode’s bonus material is a short
6 and a half minute video on the process of creating the music for There Will Be Blood
and why this scene actually helped disqualify Greenwood from the Best Original Score Oscar.
It’s yours for just a dollar and free for 5 dollar patrons. You’ll find the link in
the description and at the end of the video. Production designer Jack Fisk designed an
80-foot tall oil derrick that was constructed and set up to spew out fake oil made from
[quote] “the stuff they put in chocolate milkshakes at McDonalds,” which seems to
give yet another meaning to “I drink your milkshake” (Entertainment Weekly).
The oil was made from [quote] "food-grade
methyl cellulose, caramel color and various dyes,” but they used a couple different
ratios for different effects (Variety). Special Effects Supervisor Steve Cremin said, “You
can take the same substance that looks perfect in a pool… but when you squirt it out of
a tube, it may take on a brownish tinge. We had to adjust viscosity and color… We had
a manufacturer in Santa Fe Springs (Calif.) mix up 200-gallon containers, concentrated…
Those were transferred to tanks up to 21,000 gallons. We made up to 53,000 gallons at a
time.” (Variety). They combined the concentrated mix with a lot of water. Many of the actors
had to be drenched with the fake oil, so it had to be able to
"wash out of costumes” (Variety).
Considering that the derrick would eventually catch fire in the scene, one idea was to make
a derrick out of steel and cover it in a veneer that would burn away and then they could just
replace the veneer and shoot more takes (Oil Derrick Ablaze). This would have taken more
time and money and Anderson said about the wooden derrick they had, ‘Let’s just light
it up and go for it” (Oil Derrick Ablaze).
Of course this means that they would really just have one shot at what is arguably the
biggest moment in the film—it is the moment that Daniel’s gamble of going to the Sunday
ranch finally pays off, but it will cost him his son’s hearing and eventually their relationship.
Daniel Day-Lewis said, "I don’t know how many times the burning of that bloody rig
was put on the schedule. We all thought we should do something else first because there
was only one derrick and that was the centerpiece of our world that Jack Fisk had built for us.
In a way, part of it was that we didn’t want to lose it as well. We knew that we’d
feel the absence of that beautiful thing when it was gone, but more than that it was a big
risk. This was a big story to tell, the schedule was 60 days which is not nothing but it’s
not a long shoot either to tell that story. So, it was relentless and there was so much
to do every day” (Blood for Oil).
While doing pyrotechnic tests for when the derrick goes up in flames, the production
ended up creating a large plume of smoke that managed to ruin some of the shots that the
Coen Brothers were trying to get during the same time, causing them to wrap for the day (Mental Floss).
Perhaps a little accidental revenge for booking all the motel rooms.
They positioned a number of cameras around
the derrick including four “controlled by operators,” several in more dangerous areas—
some in areas that would be too hot for the crew to operate as well as one “in a fire
box at the base of the derrick” and one “in a crash box to capture the derrick’s
collapse" (Blood for Oil).
Special-effects supervisor Steve Cremin already had some experience with this kind of effect—
he was the one who made the flaming oil wells in Jarhead and apparently, they were so good
that ILM (aka Industrial Light and Magic) used those flaming wells as reference points
for computer-generated fire effects on other movies (Oil Derrick Ablaze).
Hey, you ever see that movie Giant?
You’ve seen the movie Giant. James Dean, man! ‘My well came in, Bick.’
My well came in, Bick.
According to cinematographer Robert Elswit,
the one instance of the derrick fire that was computer generated, which was done by ILM,
was the “initial explosion at the top of the derrick” (Blood for Oil). Other than
that, all of the fire was real. I believe he is referring to the moment the oil ignites,
but it all looks real to me.
Maybe he’s referring to the oil breaking through the top of the derrick. I could see
the debris being computer-generated.
They used a mixture of “petroleum products, diesel fuel, and gasoline” to create the
flames and they would simply modify the ratios of these three ingredients to create different
effects (Oil Derrick Ablaze). For instance, when the derrick was on fire during the day,
they used a ratio that created more smoke, but since smoke is hard to see at night, for
those shots they used a mixture that made less smoke and brighter flames (Oil Derrick Ablaze).
That’s good.
Cremin said, “We made our own jet nozzle to shoot the juice through. The pumps we used
were hard to find: high-pressure petroleum-transfer pumps that do a huge volume at huge pressure.
They were powered by hydraulic motors, which eliminated the danger of creating sparks anywhere
near the fluid. Using an electric pump with metallic parts can throw sparks all over the
place, and the impellers aren’t explosion-proof, so you’re taking a heck of a chance with
that kind of setup. All our power was remotely activated” (Oil Derrick Ablaze).
Even with such a complex system for the effect,
there was another big problem—according to environmental regulations, they had to
make sure that none of the flammable fuel could touch the ground, meaning that, if actual
fuel was shooting out of the derrick, it had to be on fire (Oil Derrick Ablaze).
Cremin said, "Before we shot anything, we
had to test the whole area to verify the levels of petroleum in the soil. Once we’d finished
the stunt, we had to pull soil samples within a 150-foot radius [of the fuel jet] to prove
we hadn’t added petroleum to the soil” (Oil Derrick Ablaze).
Cremin goes on to say, “Because the flames had to ignite on camera, we first ran simulated
oil, a water-based non-toxic product that was okay to drop on the ground. That ran through
one pump for a certain amount of time, and then we’d inject the other pump and safely
follow the water with fuel we could ignite… We had four igniters in case any of them failed.
They included electronic coils, propane poppers, pyrotechnics and, as our fourth backup, road
flares below the deck. If anything shot out of the nozzle and didn’t get lit, it had
to go through the flares before it hit the ground” (Oil Derrick Ablaze).
In an earlier scene, HW discovers oil seeping
out of the ground and notifies Daniel who tests it by dipping a stick into the oil and
lighting it on fire.
That’s earthquake oil, set loose.
Now, you’ll notice that this is actually touching the ground. Well, first they dug
a hole and insulated a small amount of flammable liquid from the ground, but on top of that,
they surrounded the flammable black liquid with non-flammable black liquid, to make sure
that the Daniel Day-Lewis didn’t accidentally burn himself (Blood for Oil). Cremin said
that it was [quote] “tricky to get the two liquids to look the same” (Blood for Oil).
The original shooting plan was to start the
fire, put it out, and then the next day they would light it on fire again for the night
shots with more camera operators (Blood for Oil). Elswit said, “For the first night,
we had designed several long shots that would take Plainview from his tented outdoor office
to the derrick, where he would cut the ropes and allow it to fall over… We were also
planning to shoot another angle of Plainview from the top [of the derrick] that would carry
him to another camera. That was as far as we were supposed to go on night one before
putting out the flames. Then, on the second night, we were going to shoot a number of
other angles to suggest different points of view, including a more controlled view of
the fire from over the actors’ shoulders” (Blood for Oil).
However, Steve Cremin said that it might not
be possible to put out the fire once it started and he was right. Elswit continues, "The derrick
had been treated, but it had been sitting in the hot sun for months, so it was as dry
as tinder. Once Steve and his guys started the fire, they couldn’t completely extinguish
the top part of the derrick, which was still smoldering. They were afraid it might collapse
on its own, so we had to keep going and stage the collapse on the same night. As a result,
we ended up not shooting a lot of angles we’d planned to get. It was frustrating, and I
was very angry at the time, but Paul is happy with the sequence. The matching became an
issue, though — is it magic hour or is it night? Is the sky blue or black? How do we
make all of these shots fit together? We didn’t have a lot of time to finish that sequence,
so we couldn’t be as careful about what we did and when” (Blood for Oil).
They were worried that, if the top continued
to smolder overnight, the derrick might collapse without them capturing it on film. It also
didn’t help that the day they shot it happened to be particularly windy (Oil Derrick Ablaze).
You can see the flames and smoke being blown to one side. So, they kept going to make sure
they filmed the collapse. Day-Lewis said, "And there was no going back if we’d got
the burning of the derrick wrong – we’d have been absolutely shagged. We had a good
guy named Steve Cremin, who is strangely an ex-tennis pro, and he really just did everything
right, thank God" (Indie London).
You can feel this in the scene itself. Every time I see it, I tense up seeing this guy
try to whack the stake out of the ground and he keeps missing. I imagine that it wasn’t
planned because method-acting Daniel Day-Lewis seems to improvise running up to help and
nearly gets whacked with the sledge hammer.
Cremin explains what those moments were like, saying, "We let the derrick burn for as long
as we could before we had to pull it down. The crew kept filming while Paul let the actors
try different things; he’s a bit of a renegade, and he wanted to play it out to the bitter
end. I was standing behind him while the derrick was crackling and popping, and he kept looking
back at me to make sure it was okay to keep going. Finally, I said, ‘It’s time. If
we don’t drop it, it’s going to drop on its own.’ He wanted to try one more scene
that took about two minutes, and I was sure we were going to lose the derrick. But he
finally said, ‘Okay, drop it.’ We had the derrick hooked up to a crane with a couple
of cables that allowed us to pull a weak-knee out from under it.
It dropped like a dream” (Oil Derrick Ablaze).
Paul Thomas Anderson IS a bit of a renegade considering that, for the night shots, he
wanted the actual flames coming from the oil derrick’s flame jet to illuminate the faces
of the actors during the reaction shots. Usually, a reaction shot of an actor looking at fire
would have simulated lights or a couple of small controlled flames just off camera, but
this was not the case for this scene (Blood for Oil). They used Cremin’s big flame jet
and in some cases, [quote] “flamethrower-like devices” (Blood for Oil). Using this intensity
of flames meant that the crew had to wear “flame-resistant suits” but the actors
merely had their costumes “flameproofed," so the [quote] “grimaces on the actors’
faces are genuine" (Blood for Oil).
Elswit said, “I could have lit those reverses completely artificially, but Paul often doesn’t
trust that kind of approach. He said, ‘Oh, no, it will be a lot better if we just set
something on fire.’ So when you look at that scene, the color on the actors’ faces
is the color of burning gasoline!” (Blood for Oil).
According to Elswit, “the closest actors
were about 120 feet from the fire,” which was still extremely hot and his crew sometimes
got within 60 feet of the flames for short amounts of time (Blood for Oil).
It’s amazing how they bring together all
of the characters and locations around this giant oil blaze. It sort of reminds me of
this scene in The Bridge on the River Kwai where Shears is conversing in the infirmary
while Nicholson and his men stand at attention in the background.
There're certain advantages to being on the sick list.
Director David Lean could have easily framed the scene without seeing the men in the background,
but I really appreciate when filmmakers do things the hard way because it really adds
to the overall scope of the movie. Imagine Alec Guinness standing out in the heat while
they film this dialogue scene over and over.
The scene ends when Plainview’s men wheel several barrels of dynamite into the flaming derrick.
This was a real practice for extinguishing burning oil geysers—the exploding dynamite
actually sucks all of the oxygen out of the area, allowing the flames to suffocate (AMC).
Despite the film being about oil, There Will Be Blood was a “carbon neutral movie,”
meaning that [quote] “[f]or every dollar they spent on energy, they invested another
dollar in sustainable energy projects” (AMC).
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