Hulk (film) narrative location San Francisco
Filming
Filming began on March 18, 2002, in Arizona and moved on April 19 to the San Francisco Bay Area. Locations included Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oakland, Treasure Island military base, and the sequoia forests of Porterville, before several weeks in the Utah and California deserts. The penultimate battle scene between Hulk and his father used the real Pear Lake in Sequoia National Park a backdrop. Filming then moved to the Universal backlot in Los Angeles, using Stage 12 for the water tank scene, and finished in the first week of August. Filming of Hulk constituted hiring 3,000 local workers, generating over $10 million into the local economy. Mychael Danna, who previously collaborated with Lee on Ride with the Devil and The Ice Storm, was set to compose the film score before dropping out. Danny Elfman was then hired.Eric Bana commented that the shoot was "Ridiculously serious... a silent set, morbid in a lot of ways." Lee told him that he was shooting a Greek tragedy, and that he would be making a "whole other movie" about the Hulk at Industrial Light & Magic. An example of Lee's arthouse approach to the film was taking Bana to watch a bare-knuckle boxing match. Bana would later disfavorably reflect on his experience making the film as the majority of the time he was working indoors while the rest of the cast interacted with a CGI recreation of the Hulk, somewhat limiting his screen time. Computer animation supervisor Dennis Muren was on the set every day. One of the many visual images that presented an acting challenge for Bana was Lee's split-screen technique to mimic comic book page panels cinematically. This technique required many more takes of individual scenes than usual. Muren and other ILM animators used previous technology from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (for the Dobby character) to create the Hulk with computer-generated imagery. Additional software included PowerAnimator, Softimage Creative Environment, Softimage XSI, and Pixar's RenderMan. ILM started computer animation work in 2001 and completed it in May 2003, just one month before the film's release. Lee provided some motion capture work in post-production. Gary Rydstrom handled sound design at Skywalker Sound.