Watched The Perfect Storm again last night..

..and although it has its flaws (like some of the dialog is kinda stupid) it really is an amazing feat of movie making.. Yes, there is extremely obvious CGI in it, but the storm scenes on the boat with all the water and wind and whatnot is just crazy cool..

Being a 3D graphics guy who uses some of the same software movie makers do to create those scenes, I know how difficult it is to piece together animations like that.. water is notoriously the hardest element to animate and they just crushed it in that movie.. An excellent mix of real life filming (aboard a boat on a pedestal that rotated every direction) in front of green screens with literally tons of real water and wind mixed in.. Holy cow, that's some seriously good footage pieced together..

I will admit there are some painfully obvious CGI shots there were not done so well, but I can forgive those because of the amazing other shots - especially sine this film was made years ago before the technology was as advanced as it is these days..

I actually own a piece of the boat used for filming the movie, so next time you watch The Perfect Storm, keep an eye out for it: its during the par,t more toward the end, where George Clooney has to climb out on one of the metal planks that "the birds" hang from they they lower into the water to stabilize the ship.. it had broken loose and was smashing the wheelhouse windows, so Clooney climbs out to cut the chain with a torch.. As he's climbing out, Mark Wahlberg reaches up and grabs a disc-shaped chrome looking gadget and spins it - then they show the spotlight on the boat spinning so that Clooney can see what he's doing.. The gadget he spins actually spins the spotlight out on deck.. I own that gadget he spins - its at the end of a long pipe with anothe rpipe inside that does the spinning.. unfortunately I didn't get the spotlight with it..

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Friendship is like peeing your pants.. Everybody can see it, but only you can feel the warmth..