In this Suite series Neil Trifunovich talks about the nut and bolts process of special effects and the people he has worked with including director Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer and actor Marlon Brando in The Freshman.
In what is becoming a second career, Trifunovich is often interviewed for DVD bonus features discs. Check him out in the DVD special features for The History of Violence, The Four Brothers and Open Range.
Part One. Neil Trifunovich speaks about the device of water as a not so silent character in 2003 Kevin Costner western Open Range directed by and starring Kevin Costner, Robert Duvall and Annette Bening, now being hailed as contemporary western classic.
Suite 101: Open Range is unlike any western I have ever seen and that has a lot to do with man against the forces of nature.
Neil Trifunoivch: “The opening scene of Open Range was going to be a windstorm. They were trying to find some jeopardy so that the store keeper’s wife was outside and the pole fell over and she was saved or something and then someone came up with the idea, possibly the producer, that maybe it should be a rainstorm and that a flash flood should come through town. So they were already building the town and I had to now come and design this whole system that had to work continuously.
I did the basic drawings for it and we hired a civic engineer and we were just fortunate enough that one of the guys on my crew, his brother in law was here from Hong Kong, where he puts in water treatment plants, so he knew completely how to do this.
With my drawings, I showed him what I needed to have happen. We came up with a basic design where we dug a huge hole in the ground and made a part of that the town which was then a big lake and it was 400,000 gallons of water. Then we dug a trench through town down the main street where the flood was going to go and we put these massive six foot high water pumps in that pushed 36,000 gallons of water a minute down that town. It was all built so that it came from different places from one end to the other. To get the water to there, we had to go a mile away because when they were surveying the location ( an Indian reservation) Kevin Costner from the helicopter said ‘Oh Look, there’s a river. We can get the water from there.’ not realizing that it was a mile away."
Suite 101: The cinematography in this film of dawn and dusk on the wide open range is skifully juxtaposed with the torrential rain and the flood scenes. Those storm scenes make such an impact in the film that water becomes a not so silent character itself!
Neil Trifunovich: “Because we were on an Indian reservation, we couldn’t get any mechanical equipment like a pump, with oil in it or gasoline or diesel near the river so we had to have a crane come and drop off a huge big water pump 100 feet down next to the river which took the water and pushed it up 100 feet up to another diesel pump but then took the water and pushed it through big irrigation pipes a mile away to the town where it filled up the 400,000 gallon tank. That was for the flood. These pumps were all run by electricity and was almost one quarter of million watts of power to run that. For the rain in the sequence we had two 10,000 gallon water tanker trucks that pushed 1000 gallons a minute of rain from the sky from huge rain trusses that covered 60 feet by almost 300 feet in the town which almost did the whole main street. That was a big deal."
Suite 101: So what was it like to work with Kevin Costner?
Neil Trifunovich: “I have so much respect for Kevin as a director and a producer and as an actor. He treats his crew extremely well. I am so in awe of his energy and his creative ability to pull together a huge project like Open Range that I worked with him on. I am so looking forward to working with him again on his next project or another project.
Next Suite Neil Trifunovich on Robert Redford’s 1998 drama The Horse Whisperer.
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