How can I imagine this whole thing technically?

Max Riess: We researched a lot to get an idea of how a planetary collision could look like. There are many ideas basing on asteroid impacts - but what happens if such a huge object like Earth hits another planet, is largely unknown. The scope of our task included a very lot of possibilities on how such a catastrophe could look like... The best way seemed to stay close to a "real" scenery... as strange as this sounds. We met an astrophysicist who explained us the reactions and properties of a gas planet. Theoretically, the Earth could even fly through a gas planet... But there is even a chance that the Earth could get torn up by the crash and the liquid core would then get hurled into space... It is principally impossible to calculate every detail... But these unpredictable elements created spaces which we could fulfill with our own creativity.

Sven Sauer: We started the first developments of the pictorial world with Sven Martin (VFX Supervisor, Pixomondo). The same team had priorly buried Germany under rubble and ashes for the TV two-parter "Volcano". We already had our experiences with disaster movies...



In the first phase, the planetary crash has been implemented unmoved, like in a comic strip. This allowed us to determine which elements would be shown later in the scenery: What color is the planet? What exactly happens during the impact? That wasn't easy at all. The main problem was that such a destructive force could quickly turn into a caricature - a scenery which cannot be taken serious by the spectator. Peter Hjorth, Special Effects Supervisor and the right-hand man of Lars von Trier, explained us the collision like that: "Imagine you have a huge ball consisting of honey, whose surface is lightly frozen, and you throw a raw egg into it..." This task sounds curious at first, but on closer observation it creates an image which describes exactly what happens during a planetary collision: The raw egg (the Earth) hits the frozen skin of the honeyball (Melancholia) and bursts up the surface. Icesplitter get catapulted into space. Once the Earth has reached the honeyshift, the eggshell implodes and gets devoured piece by piece by the honey. This description doesn't only express the physical features of the elements which hit each other; it also describes their esthetic impact. Thick, tough and slow. This planetary collision shouldn't seem to be frightening - it should be associated with a quiet fascination, with almost a beauty.