An island stand-in

The thriller “A Perfect Getaway” may have been set on the lush Hawaiian island of Kauai but most of it was shot in Puerto Rico. “Everything within the first 50 feet of the camera looked great,” visual effects supervisor Tim Carras said. “But the difference was the terrain that exists in the background. Kauai has really tall, cathedral-like mountains with rain in the middle.” Puerto Rico is much flatter. To fix this, Carras and Josh Comen of Comen FX added 200 visual effects to create mountains and backgrounds. Armed with hundreds of Hawaii photos, the two made rough comps as guides to start adding the effects. “It was important that we build in layers so it didn’t feel like a background,” Carras said. The trickiest shot involved a wide vista showing mountains in the background and a coming rainstorm in the distance. The actual live action shot was done on a bright and sunny day. “That shot went through 25 to 30 revisions before we got the characteristics of rain and the clouds exactly right,” said Carras.

-- Patrick Kevin Day