Retaining the title of most-viewed film on Netflix for two consecutive weeks, director Tommy Wirkola’s Thrash has plunged audiences into a South Carolina coastal town under seige – battered by a catastrophic hurricane and rapidly rising waters teeming with sharks.
Bringing that chaos to life required ingenuity on a large scale.
Filmed at Docklands Studios Melbourne, the production pushed technical and creative boundaries to depict a town at multiple stages of flooding – an ambitious undertaking according to Art Director Jacinta Leong.
With credits including Mad Max: Fury Road, Alien: Covenant, Moulin Rouge! and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Leong is no stranger to complex builds. But Thrash, she says, presented a new level of challenge.
“Constructing the town’s main street and all the individual buildings to show the effect of rising floodwaters brought a whole extra layer.”
Jacinta Leong, Art Director
The first hurdle was engineering a vast outdoor water tank where entire set pieces could be secured in place.
Working alongside Construction Supervisor Ross Murdoch and Construction 2IC Chris Baker, and specialists Event Engineering, the team transformed a studio car park into a two-million-litre tank.
Built on a reinforced concrete base with mesh and plywood, and supported by steel-braced walls, the tank measured 45 metres by 35 metres and was filled to a depth of approximately 1.2 metres.
“It was exciting that Docklands Studios Melbourne was open to us building something like this in what is normally a car park… They were prepared to work with us and think outside the box of what’s possible.”
Jacinta Leong, Art Director
“One of the key challenges for the team was managing water temperature for cast comfort and treating it to prevent infections – there was a lot of testing involved,” Leong says.
The next challenge was equally complex – designing and constructing sets of homes, shops, even telegraph poles and trees that could safely exist in water without floating away.
But perhaps the most innovative approach lay in how the filmmakers depicted rising water levels.
“We didn’t raise the water – we lowered the sets,” Leong says.
Each structure was built with horizontal split lines, allowing sections to be removed and repositioned. Using chain blocks, upper portions of buildings could be lowered incrementally, creating the illusion of water climbing from street level to rooftops.
“There was a very dynamic interaction between the tank and the sets.”
Meanwhile, inside Stage 6 the team took full advantage of the studio’s permanent 4.5-metre-deep water pit.
For a key sequence where Lisa (Phoebe Dynevor) is about to give birth in a flooded bedroom, the crew constructed a fully dressed set on a custom “dunking platform.”
Complete with wallpaper, carpet, curtains and practical lighting, the set was rolled into position and lowered into the water to simulate rising floodwaters in real time.
Beyond the engineering feats, the art department meticulously layered in environmental effects.
Drawing inspiration from photographic documentation of Hurricane Katrina, Production Designer David Ingram and the art department added weathering, debris and water impact marks to heighten realism.
“We showed debris caught on buildings, objects floating and colliding – it’s devastating and harsh, but it feels authentic,” Leong says.
“The result on screen speaks for itself… It’s a credit to the capability of the Melbourne crews and the depth of craft in this city.”
Antony Tulloch, Docklands Studio Melbourne CEO
“When the producers came to us and said they wanted to construct a town square in a purpose-built water tank in our car park, the only response was: OK!”
“This is what our Filmmaker First approach looks like in practice,” Tulloch says.
Released on April 10, Thrash has been the #1 film on Netflix for two weeks and follows the recent success of Patrick Hughes’ War Machine, which also filmed at Docklands and spent seven weeks in Netflix’s top ten.
The film was attracted to Melbourne, Victoria through VicScreen’s Victorian Screen Incentive. To learn more about VicScreen’s incentives contact VicScreen’s Head of Incentives, Joe Brinkmann, or visit VicScreen.
