The Real Star Of 'Deepwater Horizon'? Its Insane Oil Rig Set.

Source: NOLA

It's not like Chris Seagers hadn't seen his share of Louisiana oddities before.

The filmmaking veteran had worked previously in New Orleans on 2006's "Déjà  Vu" and in Baton Rouge on 2015's "Fantastic Four," along with amassing dozens of credits on noteworthy projects ranging from "Saving Private Ryan" to "X-Men First Class." So he's been around the block a time or two.

But it wasn't until the making of the disaster drama "Deepwater Horizon," which recounts the dramatic, life-or-death events that led up to the 2010 BP oil spill, that Seagers first saw a swamp breathe.

As the production designer on the film, which opens nationally on Sept. 30, Seagers played a key role in making sure its real star became a reality: a towering 85 percent scale model of the real Deepwater Horizon oil rig, easily among the biggest and most impressive set pieces ever built for a Louisiana-shot film.

Given the sheer scale of the project, the logistical problems there were obvious, and head-spinning.

Working from a handful of dodgy schematics found online ("BP's not real keen to give us an oil rig to film on right now," director Peter Berg said), it took 85 welders eight months to build the main set in the parking lot of the derelict Six Flags New Orleans amusement park. Some 3.2 million pounds of steel went into the set, which weighed an estimated 2,947,094 pounds when all was said and done, according to the production's estimates.

Two smaller but still enormously impressive portions of the film's re-created oil rig were built, along with other sets, at the old Lowe's site in Chalmette along West Judge Perez Boulevard.

Standing some 70 feet tall, the main set included a functioning helipad – strong enough for a massive Chinook helicopter to land on it during filming – as well as two elevators to carry cast and crew to various levels of the set, and a stadium-size video screen to project a flickering orange light, simulating fire, on the entire scene. Beneath it all, a tank was constructed to hold more than 2 million gallons of water simulating the Gulf of Mexico. It took three days to fill.

"This is not a set," Seagers said during a break in filming in summer 2015. "This is a major piece of construction. ... Then you're setting the whole thing on fire."

And that would have been hard enough. But complicating matters was the fact that Seagers and his crew were building their ersatz rig in a Louisiana swamp that has been working overtime to reclaim the Six Flags property since it was shuttered in the wake of the post-Katrina floods of 2005.

As was the case with the half-dozen or so other movies that have shot at the site ("Jurassic Park," "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes," "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters" ...), that meant having critter handlers on duty at all times to remove snakes, alligators and whatever other wildlife decided it was ready for its closeup. But it also meant a few other surprises.

"Basically, we're sitting on a swamp here, and this parking lot is no more than 12 to 18 inches deep," Seagers said. "And we figured out very quickly we couldn't build (the rig) on the parking lot. So we dug out these 50-by-50-foot holes, about two feet deep, and then we sunk 45 piles in each hole. Then we put two feet of concrete in (each hole) and that became our base.

"Once we got the legs up, we got the main platform on, and we got our first projected deck out, we put these lines out to go to the ground as tell-tales if everything was stable," he continued. "And we couldn't figure out why, twice a day, it was going from like six inches to two inches (from the ground). We couldn't figure this out."

It wasn't a problem with the structure itself, though. Rather, as Seagers and company learned, it was the underlying swamp, breathing in the way that swamps do. "We suddenly realized the tide was coming in," Seagers said, still incredulous, even months after the fact. "This whole parking lot goes up and down with the tides. But because we're affixed to the ground, we were stable."

As if all that wasn't enough, Seagers had to make sure to adhere to Berg's number-one rule: Make it all as authentic as possible.

To that end, the production's construction crew made maximum use of a Louisiana oil-field salvage yard, where they found countless pieces of old oil rigs. Those pieces were then hauled to the Six Flags site and reassembled by the crew, many of whom had previously worked in the oil field.

To Mark Wahlberg, who stars in the film as real-life Deepwater Horizon survivor Mike Williams, that level of authenticity makes all the difference.

"It feels really more real," Wahlberg said of the set. "You're up there. You're on a rig. 'Perfect Storm' was difficult with the CG stuff. We were in the Atlantic Ocean, we were in the Pacific, but most of the time – 86 days – we were in (a wave) tank. .... Making it as real as possible, you get the best results."