[WWI] Flyboys

[Andy Bannister]

I don't have a problem with CG - it's what we do with it I have a problem
with. At this point we're still like a kid with a new toy and we're trying
to cram as much CG stuff in per frame as we can. Some of the battle scenes
in the last Star Wars film or the
"running-between-the-legs-of-stampeding-dinosaurs" scene in King Kong for
instance. It's just so ridiculously OTT the scenes lose all credibility in
my view. They're asking me to suspend my disbelief enough to believe I'm
watching dinosaurs or a space battle and then they ruin it by making the
scenes completely ludicrous. With CG aircraft there's far too much "zooming"
going on or impossibly stable flight (a la The Aviator) to convince me that
I'm looking at a real aircraft. As a friend of mine who's in the film post
production business says, "it's not the technology, it's the people who use
it".

But, you're absolutely right. Insurance and safety issues mean that the only
way we could have a WWI movie is with CG - it's just a pity they don't seem
to have aircraft enthusiasts running the graphics programs! And I have to
say I'm very glad that a WWI aircraft movie has been made at all and I hope
there will be more.
Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: wwi-bounces at wwi-models.org [mailto:wwi-bounces at wwi-models.org] On
Behalf Of mflake at airmail.net
Sent: 25 September 2006 22:52
To: wwi at wwi-models.org
Subject: Re: [WWI] Flyboys


Having a devil of a time finding time to post, so I'm going to try to
squeeze this in...

Last week the Wall Street Journal ran a story about how Flyboys couldn't
have been made with realistic dog fights made to insurance liability
problems.  The article drew the analogy that jet fighter stories are easier
because the dog fights are so far apart.

As we all know, WWI dogfights were more like a knife fight in a phone booth,
comparatively speaking.  The story noted that two or three pilots were
killed filming Hells Angels and that Howard Hughes was injured when he flew
a stunt his hired pilots refused to do.

Anyone trying to make a movie with "realistic" WWI dogfights would have had
a hard time finding an insurer, the article noted.  Even if they had found
one, the payments would have been astronomical.

For all the whinging about CGI, you've got to admit that that is probably
the only way we're going to get a WWI aviation movie made.

It'll be interesting to see how flying sequences are handled in the MVR
movie being made in Germany.

I haven't seen it yet and was wondering if it would be appropriate to take
an 11 and/or 8 year old to it (they both watched the Lord of the Rings
Trilogy).

Marc Flake