Making Of: Learn About The ‘Flight’ Crash Sequence, ‘Skyfall’ Car Explosion, And ‘Dredd’ Mega-City One Creation
Why wait for DVD? The “bonus features” on many older DVD releases (and laserdiscs, for the ’90s folks) pale in comparison to some of the effects breakdowns and other filmmaking explanations that are available in video form all over the internet. The entire internet is now a cache of info about the creation of films, even as they’re in theaters.
So here are a few choice bits of info. One is an effects overview forRobert Zemeckis' new film,Flight, in which a drunk pilot played byDenzel Washingtonnarrowly pilots a plane away from certain doom. The featurette goes into some of the general effects used for the film, before detailing that crash sequence. You might be surprised at how much practical photography was used to create the views of the inside of the plane during that sequence.
Then there’s a piece onDredd, and just as parts ofFlightrequired extensive digital alteration or augmentation to present the view the filmmakers wanted, Dredd digitally altered the landscape of Johannesburg and Capetown, South Africa to generate the film’s sprawling Mega-City One. FInally, get some details on how a real Aston Martin was preserved for Skyfall, even as the filmmakers had a real product to damage.
Here’s the rundown on one of the highlights ofFlight:
This breakdown of the creation of Mega-City One inDreddis a little more basic, but it does reveal how a smart use of existing geography can contribute to the creation of a dominating urban mess:
Finally, we don’t have video of the way that the effects crew onSkyfallcreated and then destroyed a replica of a vintage Aston Martin, but we do have some photos and text, courtesy of3ders.org, viaBadass Digest. The site explains how scale versions of the car were created with a 3D printer:
Those parts were shipped to Pinewood, assembled, some treated with chrome process, and given bullet holes, and assembled. The site says “after the finishing process, it is impossible to distinguish the Aston Martin models made with the voxeljet printer from the original, even in the close-up shots.” It’s difficult to verify that, but the end result is certainly impressive:
