The German-born director of special effects-filled blockbusters, 'Independence Day', 'Godzilla' and 'The Day After Tomorrow', was searching for a mountainous, snow-covered location for one key scene in his new epic, '10,000 BC.'
The movie was scheduled to be shot in South Africa and Namibia in eight weeks' time.
The one shot he needed in New Zealand would be from a helicopter looking down on four men walking through a dramatic, snowy mountain range.
"I told the location scouts you have to find me a location that has a 250km radius of mountains," Emmerich said in an interview in Los Angeles on Sunday.
The scouts took him to mountains near Snow Farm, the world renowned high altitude training facility in the Alps, about 55km from Queenstown.
"I said 'Oh my God!'," Emmerich recalled the first time he saw the location.
"It was just magical.
"It was eight weeks before the shoot, we had already started preparing in the Trackensburg Mountains in South Africa, but I had to call Warner Bros and say 'We have to shoot in New Zealand instead'.
"I flew to Los Angeles and showed them some pictures and they saw the pictures and said 'Yes, we have to shoot there'."
'10,000 BC', is, obviously, set in 10,000 BC.
The story begins in remote, bitterly cold mountains in Africa where a small tribe, the Yagahl, survives hunting mammoths.
The tribe is almost wiped out by a gang of slave traders who raid the camp and steal its young males and females members.
The film then follows four male survivors who chase the slavers, leading to a journey from the mountains, through rainforests filled with predatory birds to vast desert regions.
Months before the location scouting trip to New Zealand, Emmerich visualised the setting for the Yagahl camp and had artists draw a mountain backdrop.
"Snow Farm was exactly like the landscape we had drawn up," Emmerich said.
Sets and costumes created in South Africa were quickly shipped to New Zealand and just prior to principal photography, Emmerich asked members of the Ngai Tahu, a Maori tribe on New Zealand's South Island, to perform a traditional blessing at the film set.
"I thought it was appropriate," the director said.
'10,000 BC' stars American actors Steven Strait and Camilla Belle, both 21, and well-known Kiwi actor, Cliff Curtis.
The mountainous South Island setting provided an impressive backdrop, but the cast, crew and Emmerich were soon wondering if it was the correct decision to shoot there in winter.
"I felt sorry for the guys," Belle, who starred opposite this year's best actor Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis in the 2005 drama, 'The Ballad of Jack and Rose', said.
The actors were bare-chested and wore little more than loin cloths in below zero temperatures and blizzards.
"We had to focus so hard to not let our teeth chatter in the cold while we were shooting a scene," Strait said.
"We tried to pack heat packs wherever we could, but we weren't really wearing clothes so we didn't have many places to stuff the heat packs.
"In between takes you try and run into a tent that has a heater."
The blizzards shut down filming for several days as some of the sets were on mountain ranges without roads, with the only access by helicopter.
'10,000 BC', just like Emmerich's recent work, is filled with special effects.
Creatures in the film include a sabre tooth tiger, mammoths and the predatory birds.
Extravagant sets involving giant pyramids also were built and hundreds of extras were needed for elaborate scenes.
Emmerich said the special effects, complex sets and marshalling extras were not the most difficult aspects of the film.
"The weather was," he said.
It was the only thing he could not control.
"I thought because of 'The Day after Tomorrow' someone is pissed at me," Emmerich laughed, recalling the film where Manhattan is destroyed by extreme weather caused by global warming.
"The weather was a nightmare.
"The snow was a bitch, but it looked good."
It did not change when the crew moved to the deserts of Namibia for the second leg of the '10,000 BC' shoot.
"We went from blizzards in New Zealand to sandstorms in Africa," Belle said.
The extreme weather, and the stress that came with it, was worth it, Emmerich and Strait said.
"Trying to focus on a scene, while you're in the midst of a blizzard or getting pelted by a sandstorm, is obviously challenging," Strait, whose breakthrough Hollywood role was in the ironically named 2005 musical-drama, 'Undiscovered', said.
"On the flip side of that, that's what happens when you shoot on a location.
"You are really reacting to all of those things.
"There's really a no acting requirement because you are actually reacting naturally to what's going on, which you wouldn't do if you were doing it in a studio."
'10,000 BC' opens in Australia this Thursday (March 6).
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