Blue Crush 2

Blue Crush 2 is a 2011 direct-to-video sports drama directed by Mike Elliott and released by Universal Studios Home Entertainment. A standalone follow-up to the 2002 surfing film Blue Crush, it stars Sasha Jackson, Elizabeth Mathis, Ben Milliken and Sharni Vinson, following a young Californian who travels to South Africa to surf the breaks her late mother once wrote about.

Water is the most punishing thing a sports drama can ask of a visual effects team. Surfing demands fluid simulation with spray, foam and mist that can enlarge a real wave or replace it outright, face replacement so a stunt surfer becomes the lead mid-ride, and exhaustive rotoscoping through backlit spray where no key will ever hold. Matte-painted coastline and CG environments extend a horizon no unit can control, and compositing has to reconcile plates shot in wildly different water, weather and light. Terminal FX provided visual effects and animation for the production as part of its film, television and commercial portfolio.