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The Host (2006)
Directed by Bong Joon-ho.
Directed by Bong Joon-ho · Shot by Kim Hyung-koo · Music by Lee Byung-woo · 119 min
How it was made
- Bong Joon-ho based the film's opening scene directly on a real 2000 incident in which an American civilian ordered employees to dump around 470 bottles of formaldehyde into a drain feeding the Han River.
- Wētā FX and Industrial Light & Magic both quoted prices Bong could not afford for the effects work, ILM alone wanting about ₩100 million per shot, so the roughly 120 CGI shots of the monster went to American studio The Orphanage, costing $4.5 million of the film's $11 million budget.
- Wētā Workshop in New Zealand built a maquette of the creature and John Cox's Creature Workshop in Queensland built its animatronics; the digital model was built in Silo and animated in Maya.
- Animator Tim Dobbert combined rotoscoped elements with alpha compositing to match-move the monster into live-action plates, and the crew burnt a bass and a trout as reference for the scene where the creature catches fire.
- About 80% of the film was shot on location along the Han River, including scenes filmed in the real sewers, for which cast and crew were inoculated against tetanus.
- Actor Oh Dal-su volunteered during a night out drinking to dub the monster's roars, after Bong had been dissatisfied with earlier attempts to create a realistic sound.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Bong Joon-ho
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