Wednesday, June 3, 2015

CGI Pacific B-24s in 'Unbroken'

The recent film 'Unbroken' on the life of Louis Zamperini featured a significant section on his experiences as a Consolidated B-24 Liberator crewman in the Pacific, with several major incidents including a crash landing and being downed in the Pacific.

While there are currently two airworthy B-24s, understandably the film company chose to use majority of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) for recreating the aircraft scenes, around a gimbal mounted B-24 replica fuselage to film the actors in the studio.

Much of the 'aerial' work was advised by my colleague Bob Livingstone, well-recognised B-24 authority, and he wrote up his experiences in a recent issue of Flightpath (Vol.26 No.3).

 


Here, the company Rodeo FX have put together a very interesting  showreel on the use of the CGI in the film, and I think it shows well the strengths of this often over-used and abused technology special effect, and, not incidentally, some of the weaknesses, not least unrealistic physics and motion. (Think about how an aircraft would pivot around a broken wheel, not against it, for one. And secondly, how a Zero's beam attack path really would work at the 200+mph speeds of a B-24.)  But these are, perhaps, nit pics. On the computer screen alone, many of these scenes are impressive and as presented here, fascinating to see how they're put together.

View on.

No comments:

Post a Comment