The Making of Elevator Shaft

The vision & General info about project

First sequence to do is a concrete elevator shaft. In the beginning we looking for everything... from photos to film sequences and other stuff, finally we found suitable reference in Hollow Man movie. Of course we don't use physical models but CGI to visualize elevator shaft ride. CGI is good way when shoot by camera it's difficulty or not possible, from localization reason to hardware and equipment disadvantage.

References from Hollow Man

Elevator sequence in Hollow Man is amazing combination of pyrotechnic shots, miniatures and high speed photography is a combination of almost every kind of effects you can imagine. Sony Pictures Imageworks build six storey high elevator shaft in real scale, but this is six storeys not forty stories and every time is camera film looking up or down the construction must to be extended by six scale model with fully work elevator to simulate three hundred foot length elevator shaft.

Making of CG model

References from Hollow Man is very useful and help to create a base for modeling. Final model of elevator have almost 25k polygons without additional elements like shaft equipment.