Hollywood Meteorologist: Fatally real special effects

While filming Pirates of the Caribbean on location in the Bahamas, hurricane “Wilma” was sweeping towards the archipelago with 200 mph winds, bringing cast & crew into mortal danger.

Disney owes the fact that the production did not sink with all hands on board to Susan Genett. She advised the startled "Pirates of the Caribbean" production management to evacuate immediately. Shortly thereafter, “Wilma” swept over the film set, destroying access roads and trailers, damaging ship superstructures of the "Black Pearl” and "The Flying Dutchman".
No one, however, was injured.

„ The most thrilling desk job in the world “

Genett is signed on by film and TV-production companies for planned shoots on location and delivers individually tailored weather forecasts, by phone or e-mail and “now and again I have to do a little hand holding ”. Nine years ago she founded her company RealWeather in Newport, RI. By now an urgent phone call from Hollywood is an everyday occurrence for the 36-year-old American.

Her interest in meteorology as a career began when she joined the Air Force at age 18. While studying, and during her semester breaks, she worked at the National Weather Service coordinating firefighter deployment in the central and northern tiers of Alaska. In Utah she acquired her hot-air balloon license. Now she has “the most thrilling desk job in the world”. Beyond the film industry she counts yachtsmen, aviators and adventurers among her clients.

A tense climate on set

The work on a film production often begins long before shooting starts. For instance, she weather-routed the three-masted “Bounty” and the sloop "Providence" on their 8,000 mile long sea passage from their US ports of registry to the different "Pirates of the Caribbean" film locations: the Bahamas, Lesser Antilles and the Gulf of Mexico. Altogether she delivered 400 weather forecasts for the production. She also worked on Peter Weirs’ film "Master and Commander". Most recently, Genett provided weather forecasts for Martin Scorcese’s yet to be released film “Ashecliffe”, which was shot in New England.

Fortunately a hurricane does not happen every day, but safety on a film production is of uppermost importance. Creative demands can also bring forth challenges on the set. What to do if the director has expressly "ordered" a troubled sea, but the sea, however, has been calm for days? Genett has learned to take these things in her stride. She works to find the small weather window that lets the director get the shot in the can.

Always the great unknown

The first professional weatherman in the film industry was Irving P. Krick, hired almost 70 years ago by Victor Fleming. This director needed a prediction for a crucial shot that could only be done once. Only when Krick predicted a clear quiet night did Fleming set Atlanta ablaze within the Hollywood studio. This would become one of the most dramatic scenes in the film classic "Gone with the Wind”.

Krick, a pioneer of modern meteorology, also determined the most favourable date for the Allied Forces invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Like Krick, who was not credited in “Gone with the Wind”, neither, so far, is Susan Genett. Hollywood’s weather goddess remains the great unknown for cinema audiences.