Making of “Shutter Island” (Movie)

From Oscar(R)-winning director Martin Scorsese, and based on the best-selling thriller by Dennis Lehane, comes Shutter Island, a tale of haunting mystery and psychological suspense that unfolds entirely on a fortress-like island housing a hospital for the criminally insane.

The year is 1954, at the height of the Cold War, when U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (three-time Academy Award(R) nominee Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are summoned to Shutter Island to investigate the implausible disappearance of a brilliant multiple murderess from a locked room within the impenetrable Ashecliffe Hospital. Surrounded by probing psychiatrists and dangerously psychopathic patients on the remote, windswept isle, they arrive into an eerie, volatile atmosphere that suggests nothing is quite what it seems.

With a hurricane bearing down on them, the investigation moves rapidly. Yet, as the storm escalates, the suspicions and mysteries multiply each more thrilling and terrifying than the next. There are hints and rumors of dark conspiracies, sordid medical experiments, repressive mind control, secret wards, perhaps even a hint of the supernatural, but elusive proof. Moving in the shadows of a hospital haunted by the terrible deeds of its slippery inhabitants and the unknown agendas of its equally ingenious doctors, Teddy begins to sense that the deeper he pursues the investigation the more he will be forced to confront some of his most profound and devastating fears. And he realizes that he may never leave

Paramount Pictures Presents A Phoenix Pictures Production in Association with Sikelia Productions and Appian Way, A Martin Scorsese Picture, Shutter Island, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson and Max von Sydow. The film is directed by Martin Scorsese from a screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis based on the novel by Dennis Lehane. The producers are Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Bradley J. Fischer and Martin Scorsese. The executive producers are Chris Brigham, Laeta Kalogridis, Dennis Lehane, Gianni Nunnari and Louis Phillips. The director of photography is Robert Richardson, ASC. The production designer is Dante Ferretti. The film is edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, A.C.E. The costume designer is Sandy Powell. The visual effects supervisor is Rob Legato. The co-producers are Joseph Reidy, Emma Tillinger and Amy Herman. The music supervisor is Robbie Robertson.

As soon as U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule arrive on Shutter Island, they are thrust into a strikingly Gothic atmosphere that mirrors the terror and anxiety they feel within. With calamitous weather, howling winds and driving rain ratcheting up the urgency of their investigation, they are confronted with a disorienting realm of imposing brick buildings, elongated corridors, claustrophobic cells and craggy, water-logged surroundings.

To fuse this starkly impressionistic world out of chillingly real locations, Martin Scorsese needed extraordinarily detailed design work from his artistic crew. The director turned to many of his loyal, longtime collaborators to tackle this creative task, among them the award-winning quartet of director of photography Robert Richardson, production designer Dante Ferretti, costume designer Sandy Powell and editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

The task of evoking the film’s panoply of visual moods, from mystery and confusion to fury and panic, both physical and psychological, fell to director of photography Richardson, a regular Scorsese collaborator who has won Oscars(R) for his work on The Aviator and for Oliver Stone’s JFK. Richardson used the camera creatively, sinuously, expressionistically to forge the sensation of moving through a spiraling fog of unanswered questions and lingering uncertainty. He and Scorsese garnered inspiration from a whole library’s worth of classic films, not only from the previously mentioned features, but also from the camera movement and lighting of Roman Polanski’s groundbreaking studies in abject horror, Repulsion, Cul-de-sac and Rosemary’s Baby.

Later, Oscar(R)-winning visual effects supervisor Rob Legato (Titanic, Apollo 13, The Aviator) and visual effects producer/post production supervisor Ron Ames (The Departed) would create further magic by scattering dramatic clouds and skyscapes into sunnier shots and intensifying the film’s shades of grey with digital nuances. “They helped to create the very special look of the cliffs, the water, the cave, the sky, and this also became part of the creation of a state of mind, says Scorsese. “It was a major challenge all very, very well-thought-out shot by shot.

Weather is central to the atmosphere of many a Gothic horror thriller, but in Shutter Island it becomes not only an expression of the film’s psychological volatility, but another unpredictable and dangerous character, turning on a dime from a silvery haze to a killer Class 5 hurricane pelting the island with ferocious rain and wind. The task of forging subtle, moment-by-moment changes in the weather fell to special effects coordinator R. Bruce Steinheimer, who helped weave together such elements as bone-soaking, sideways rain and gale-force gusts that uproot trees. Steinheimer previously collaborated with Scorsese on Gangs of New York and The Aviator, so he dove into the task knowing there would be a demand for absolute authenticity. He and special effects supervisor Rick Thompson searched for technical solutions to producing a palpable sense of natural forces at work.

“For the rain, we ended up using four overhead rain-bars, two of which were 100 feet long and held up by huge cranes, to produce rain that covered an area measuring 140 by 60 feet, explains Thompson. “We also used what we call Spiders, square rain-bars that put down rain in a pattern of 80 by 80 feet, but the real challenge was that, since Marty’s camera positions and his camera moves are so inventive, we had to be equally creative in positioning the rain-bars and the cranes.

Recalls DiCaprio: “If there wasn’t a crane dropping water on you then it was guys with fire hoses or a giant fan blowing air into your face.

But the result was that it ended up feeling very real to us. It added to the sense that these characters are confined to this island, that there’s really no way out, and to the increasingly emotional impact to which the story builds.

- Courtesy : Paramount Pictures -

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