While generally speaking, one sees the job of a professional Hollywood movie star as looking like it's pretty awesome overall, there are certainly elements of making movies that are likely less fun than others. For some that may be the physical work of needing to get into particularly athletic shape, which is usually accompanied by a strict diet. For others, it could be the emotional toll of having to exist in the headspace of a particular character. Or, for Amy Adams on the set of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it could be having to get your ears vacuumed out after getting a severe ear infection on set.
That's apparently what happened to the actress who played Lois Lane in Batman v Superman. It's also what happened to Ian Seabrook, the director of photography who filmed Adams' underwater sequence near the end of the movie. In a recent piece for Insider about the underwater sequence in Jungle Cruise, Seabrook reveals that the underwater set for the superhero film had a serious rust issue, which resulted in both actor and director suffering. According to Seabrook...
On Batman v Superman myself and Amy Adams both got ear infections from the rust from the underwater set because the crew didn’t use marine-grade materials. Having your ears vacuumed is not a pleasant way to spend your afternoon.
Near the end of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Amy Adams' Lois Lane tosses a kryptonite spear into a deep pool of water to get it away from Superman. However, when it's realized that the spear is the best weapon available against Doomsday, she jumps in the water to go get it.
The entire area where the final battle takes place is abandoned and full of junk, and apparently to make the scene realistic the crew just used actual junk and didn't pay attention to whether or not it was marine-grade material. Throw normal metal in the water and you get rust. Spend enough time in a pool full of rust and your ears will suffer.
The good news is that Ian Seabrook took extra care of the set of Jungle Cruise to make sure that nobody needed to see an ENT after filming was complete. Seabrook is apparently something of an expert in filming underwater, so if your movie needs that, you call him.
While a lot of underwater sequences in movies are simply handled with CGI now, for those of us that love to see practical effects continue to be used in movies, it's great that there are people not just willing to do things like film underwater but dedicated to the task. As long as those people are out there and available to be called on we probably haven't seen the end of real underwater sequences. Hopefully, with fewer ear infections going forward.
