13 June 2011
After making a name for himself in Aussie soap Home and Away Rhys Wakefield has been establishing himself as a movie actor.
Sanctum was the last time that we saw him on the big screen, which is released on DVD today, a James Cameron produced project.
I caught up with the actor to talk about the movie, the training and preparation he underwent before the camera started rolling and what lies ahead.
- Sanctum is due for release here in the UK so for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie yet can you tell me a bit about it?
I would describe Sanctum as a ride of a film as it is an action adventure film. It’s a film about a group of cave divers and things go a little wrong.
- You take on the role of Josh in the film so what was it about the character and the script that drew you to the project?
I think it was the action involved and the skill training that were involved as we prepared for the movie – it was just such a pleasure. Not to mention that James Cameron was on board with the whole project.
But being trained was such an amazing part of this movie as I got all these crash courses in scuba-diving, rock climbing, rope training and fight training – I just felt like a little kid.
- The movie is obviously a very physically demanding one and requires you to be somewhat of an expert in that field so what sort of preparation did you do before the beginning of the shoot? Had you ever done scuba diving before?
No I hadn’t done any scuba diving before so the preparation was pretty intensive. I was put on this crazy gym regime of just trying to get fit and look like I was a rock climber.
Then we earnt to scuba dive, I was put on this quick course in this technology called rebreathers; which is really advanced breathing aparatus that you only really learn after about a thousand hours of scuba diving.
So we got this crash course in that and I was doing two hours of swim training a day for a bout a month and it was incredibly tough – but I did end up very fit.
- You filmed a lot under water so did you have any panic moments? And how much of the diving shots are you?
I did shoot a lot under water, we did have dive doubles for some of the long shots, and there is a whole portion of the movie where I am down under water with no breathing aparatus and no eye mask so that made it pretty treacherous and scary.
But I started to find it quite meditative and you just have to keep very calm and try not to panic because then it’s not fun for anyone.
- The movie was also shot in real caves off the South of Australia so how did you find that? And just how tough did you find the shoot.
There was an additional shoot, I think for about a week, in Mount Gambier (South Australia) and it was all doubles because the water was sub-zero temperatures.
One of our producers was down there as a double, I think he might have been doubling me actually, and it was freezing cold, I think he collapsed afterwards because he was swimming back and forth and the wetsuits didn’t cover that freezing temperature.
There were many long hours, we were in these sound stages but we were freezing cold because these 3D cameras are temperamental that often break down; especially when we were shooting on location in the heat of Queensland, so they would cool the sound stages to freezing temperatures.
So we were in water in these flimsy little wet suits and being physical while carrying these 40kg rebreathers on your back so it was pretty tiring.