Boats ’n boas
Sony Pictures
The film’s real star is its villain: a 25-foot green anaconda who, as some snakes do, regurgitates its food just to relive the joy of that first tasty bite. As it would be unfair to ask Ice Cube and Jon Voight to battle a real Emerald anaconda, a life-size snake designed by Walt Conti was used for several key sequences, giving its co-stars the willies — and if it didn’t freak them out, the local monkeys did. But filming primarily on the water came with its own challenges; it’s not as easy as carrying a camera onto a boat. Everything needed to be accessible on the water, as support vehicles like props and electric couldn’t operate remotely from dry land. Jim Dyer likens it to a puzzle:
“The first thing I asked myself was how do we put this production on water? We built our picture boat from scratch and all the working barges including our EFX boat, as well as the necessary barges to hold equipment that would marry up to it. All in all it ended up being a giant floor space puzzle. We boated equipment back and forth. We had a yacht with a number of suites to house the eight actors and director during the day in-between scenes and it also held the hair and make-up departments.”
And so, production became a network of locally-sourced barges and hollowed-out sightseeing boats as floating work trailers. Dyer’s final count was “five work barges, five skiffs, 15 canoes (long rowboats), and five faster shuttle boats” to get the job done. But the most ingenious creation made for “Anaconda” was yet to come.
Filming Anaconda On Location Called For Some Creative Engineering
Sony Pictures
By Anya Stanley/Nov. 15, 2022 9:50 pm EST
Boats ’n boas
The film’s real star is its villain: a 25-foot green anaconda who, as some snakes do, regurgitates its food just to relive the joy of that first tasty bite. As it would be unfair to ask Ice Cube and Jon Voight to battle a real Emerald anaconda, a life-size snake designed by Walt Conti was used for several key sequences, giving its co-stars the willies — and if it didn’t freak them out, the local monkeys did. But filming primarily on the water came with its own challenges; it’s not as easy as carrying a camera onto a boat. Everything needed to be accessible on the water, as support vehicles like props and electric couldn’t operate remotely from dry land. Jim Dyer likens it to a puzzle:
“The first thing I asked myself was how do we put this production on water? We built our picture boat from scratch and all the working barges including our EFX boat, as well as the necessary barges to hold equipment that would marry up to it. All in all it ended up being a giant floor space puzzle. We boated equipment back and forth. We had a yacht with a number of suites to house the eight actors and director during the day in-between scenes and it also held the hair and make-up departments.”
And so, production became a network of locally-sourced barges and hollowed-out sightseeing boats as floating work trailers. Dyer’s final count was “five work barges, five skiffs, 15 canoes (long rowboats), and five faster shuttle boats” to get the job done. But the most ingenious creation made for “Anaconda” was yet to come.
And so, production became a network of locally-sourced barges and hollowed-out sightseeing boats as floating work trailers. Dyer’s final count was “five work barges, five skiffs, 15 canoes (long rowboats), and five faster shuttle boats” to get the job done. But the most ingenious creation made for “Anaconda” was yet to come.
“The first thing I asked myself was how do we put this production on water? We built our picture boat from scratch and all the working barges including our EFX boat, as well as the necessary barges to hold equipment that would marry up to it. All in all it ended up being a giant floor space puzzle. We boated equipment back and forth. We had a yacht with a number of suites to house the eight actors and director during the day in-between scenes and it also held the hair and make-up departments.”
The Panaconda
One of the most unique vessels built for the film was a small two-man skiff, dubbed “the Panaconda” by cinematographer Bill Butler. It would enable underwater-to-surface shooting from the snake’s POV, and worked “quite well, actually” according to Butler, who recalls to Film Scouts:
The result can be seen throughout the movie, but here’s a glimpse of the magic worked by the Panaconda, stalking his victims like a serpentine Michael Myers:
“It was powered by a tiny, quiet electric motor and it was able to move through the trees, like a snake. We put the camera in a water box, which was kind of half in and half out of the river, placed it in the boat, and maneuvered through the water, the way a snake might.”
If the clip got you jazzed for an “Anaconda” revisit, we have fantastic news for you: a re-imagining of “Anaconda,” in the style of the megashark blockbuster “The Meg,” is currently in the works with “Tomb Raider” writer Evan Daugherty penning the script.
