When director Andrew Davis signed on to make “The Guardian,” his primary goals were to pay tribute to the work of Coast Guard rescue swimmers and to portray that work as accurately as possible.

“I thought it was a worthwhile story,” Davis said in a recent telephone interview. “It was an opportunity to profile people whose sole journey in life is to save lives. It was a chance to show a group of military people who are only there to help you.”

Thanks to Hurricane Katrina, Davis was given an unexpected crash course on the heroism of Coast Guard rescuers.

“The Guardian,” starring Kevin Kostner and Ashton Kutcher and now playing nationwide, was scheduled to start filming in New Orleans about six weeks after Katrina devastated the city, Davis said.

Production offices already had been established. Sets were under construction. Crew members had rented apartments in town.

Production designer Maher Ahmad said in a separate telephone interview that “The Guardian” had been dodging hurricanes throughout the summer of 2005. One trip to scout locations was cut short so he and his staff could fly out of the city before a threatening storm; two other scouting trips were postponed until other storms no longer posed threats.

By the time Katrina was churning in the Gulf of Mexico, Ahmad and his staff were blase. They assumed they might have to stay in Baton Rouge for a few days, but that would be it. As Katrina got closer, however, the seriousness of the situation became clear.

There was word that another production in town, the upcoming “Deja Vu,” had chartered a flight out of New Orleans, and “The Guardian” crew hitched a ride with them. The flight to Los Angeles left on a Saturday night – Aug. 27, 2005 – less than 48 hours before Katrina made landfall near Buras, La.

Satellite photos and other reports soon made it clear that the production offices had flooded. Little could be salvaged.

“It looked like the whole project was up in the air,” he said.

Touchstone Pictures decided to proceed with the film, mandating that the production stay in Louisiana to take advantage of tax credits.

A week after the storm, Ahmad flew to Shreveport and began to scout new locations.

Although the movie had a new home, worries were far from over.

Louisiana crew members had evacuated to places all over the country, Ahmad said. Some wanted to come back to work; others had to attend to their families and homes and had to be replaced.

Davis said real-life Coast Guard rescue swimmers hired to work on the film were called to Mobile, Ala., the staging center for rescue teams flying into New Orleans to pluck stranded residents from rooftops. Still images of such rescues accompany the film’s end credits.

Davis said the photos allowed him to remind moviegoers of the reality of the people who had been saved.

“I didn’t want to exploit the Katrina situation, but I didn’t want to run away from the fact that this had happened,” he said.

As in New Orleans, Katrina created a housing shortage in Shreveport, making it difficult to find homes for the film’s crew.

Then Hurricane Rita hit Louisiana, causing another brief disruption.

The availability of materials was an ongoing problem. At one point, Ahmad brought in a load of lumber from California so he could build sets.

Some visual effects shots required the use of as many as five construction cranes, which Ahmad said were difficult to schedule because such resources were being dedicated to the crisis in New Orleans.

New Orleans area engineers familiar with Louisiana’s unstable soils had helped develop the plans for the movie’s $2 million, 120-by-100-foot wave tank, including its 4½-foot-thick concrete floor, Ahmad said. They passed along their work to a team in Shreveport, which built a tank on property near the Louisiana State University-Shreveport gymnasium.

The Shreveport wave tank still stands, Ahmad said, and is awaiting a buyer to take over the property and its maintenance. He said the tank could be one more selling point for Louisiana’s film industry.

Davis said he is proud of the movie.

He said the most difficult sequence to film was a nighttime rescue from a sinking fishing boat.

The 75-foot boat had been purchased in New Orleans and was stranded in Lake Pontchartrain after Katrina. The production staff had to figure out a way to get the boat up the Red River to Shreveport, where it was mounted to an arm that allowed it to be tilted and rotated as if buffeted by a storm at sea. Meanwhile, effects crews were dumping thousands of gallons of water on the boat as stars Costner and Kutcher – attached to safety wires – performed their roles 20 feet above the wave tank’s concrete floor.

He said he was pleased with the film’s ability to re-create the elements, including a storm’s 100-mph winds and 8- to 9-foot waves, and to give audiences a taste of what it’s like to work in the open waters of the Bering Sea.

Despite the challenges of filming “The Guardian” in Katrina’s aftermath, Davis said he wouldn’t hesitate to work in Louisiana again.

Ahmad, too, said he would work again in Louisiana.

“My heart just weeps for New Orleans,” said Ahmad, who previously worked here on Bernie Mac’s “Mr. 3000.” “It’s a truly mystical place. I would never move there, but it gets in your blood.”