Roland Emmerich, director of the upcoming SF disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow, told SCI FI Wire that the Mother-Nature-runs-amok movie featured elaborate special effects, but that they didn't distract his actors, including Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal and Sela Ward. "The mix of this movie is 95 percent computer-generated effects and 5 percent models," Emmerich (Independence Day) said in an interview. "We had a very, very small percentage of models. I don't think it affects the actors at all."

Emmerich added, "[The actors] still have to say their lines, and they usually have each other to act with. It is a little bit scary these days, because you can shoot whole sequences against a green screen."

In the Day After Tomorrow, Quaid plays a paleoclimatologist who realizes that a series of cataclysmic disasters foreshadows a dramatic shift in the world's climate. Gyllen haal plays his son, and Ward plays his wife. The scale of the effects sometimes made him nervous. "For example, the opening sequence is in Antarctica," Emmerich said. "The actors stood on a little platform that was probably 40 by 50 feet and had snow and tents and everything. Around them was blue screen. For them, it didn't matter. It was like acting on a stage. For the filmmaker, it's scary, because every shot, in a way, is a visual effect. You have to always imagine, 'OK, this will be Antarctica.' It really doesn't look like that." The Day After Tomorrow opens May 28.