Flight, which opened last week and started out by reeling in a hefty $25 million and great word-of-mouth, has yet another two things going for it. Not only is it a character-driven drama, it has great special effects. The harrowing plane crash scene is visceral and frightening and suspenseful. There is no way this movie will ever end up being shown as in-flight entertainment. While I was watching , I didn't pay too much attention to what was vCGI and what wasn't: It just looked so real, I wasn't even distracted by any hokey gaps in the visual effects.
This behind-the-scenes video has some great insight into how they simulated flying and a plane crash in Flight. It involved slicing up parts of a real plane and mechanically turning them upside down for the purpose of the shoot. I hope the extras playing passengers were well-compensated for having to sit in what's essentially an amusement park ride for hours, with luggage flying at them.
Another technique that the video highlights is the use of matte painting to make the weather outside look stormy. Changing the weather in the back of a shot is so commonplace, even low-budget pictures like Take Shelter can do that, though admittedly illustrating an impending storm was a necessity for that movie and was likely a priority even with limited funds. And remember the realistic "other Earth" in Another Earth? That, too, came from painting the sky differently. When I think of visual effects, I think of things like rear projection, or its updated green screens, which help provide the views outside the plane windows in Flight. But we rarely think of weather. In the craft of filmmaking, sometimes techniques with mattes can provide shortcuts, but they also expand the power of the crew. These techniques are something of a perfectionist's dream, allowing directors to subtly re-time events and lighting, snow, and rainfall. So kudos to Flight for combining visual effects with mechanical ingenuity.
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