‘The Road’: Many vivid images of the end of the world were real

The world ended twice this fall -- in “2012� and “The Road� -- but the latter, based on the Cormac McCarthy book, by far has the upper hand when it comes to disturbing images. And that’s not due to a bigger effects budget. In fact, many of the film’s most striking scenes were given a boost from real-life disasters. For instance, a shot of bodies hanging from a barn early in the film used hi-def footage of the World Trade Center aftermath from 9/11 to create a billowing background of black smoke. But a lot of the post-apocalyptic setting was found in post-Katrina New Orleans, which was still not completely recovered in 2008, when the film was shot.

The people of New Orleans “had been cleaning up ever since the storm hit,� said director John Hillcoat. “But the areas with wealth and business got done first.� Other areas, such as a neighborhood of new suburban houses near the infamous Lower Ninth Ward, remained abandoned and were the perfect backdrop for Viggo Mortensen and his on-screen son, Kodi Smit-McPhee, to explore. The only problems were the green grass and the blue sky. To cover the grass, Hillcoat’s crew used a snow machine to spray “ash� made from biodegradable paper in shades of gray around the set. The blue sky was grayed-down with computer-generated imagery.

But there was no CGI used to get the two boats on a freeway. “A crew was making a family film on the bayou when the storm hit. Two days after, they went out and shot 70-millimeter Imax footage of those two boats sitting on the freeway. We took the shot straight from the source.�

-- Patrick Kevin Day