Masters of the Air: “There are more special effects in our series than in Avatar!”

No, they didn’t actually fly planes. Most of the aerial sequences were filmed on a green screen. The producers tell Première.

“We didn’t crash any of them, I assure you”. Gary Goetzmanhistoric producer of Band of Brotherstells us how Masters of the Air has reproduced as closely as possible the planes of the Second World War, which we see in the Apple TV + series.

Real P-51 Mustangs, these fighter planes sometimes accompanying the bombers, were able to be put in the air for the purposes of filming. But the bombers never really took off. The directors of Masters of the Air were unable to use original B-17s, “because there are very few left in the world, like 6 or 7 capable of flying” the creator tells us John Orloff. So we had to rebuild it from scratch.s. “We completely manufactured three B-17s in the studio. They were not aircraft that could be flown, but they scrupulously reproduced the real models of the time. Down to the last detail! I even saw once at inside a very small 10 cm plate, almost invisible on the screen, mentioning the precautions to take when using British fuel (laughs)! Like those that were in the cockpits at that time. C “It’s crazy what our teams have achieved.”

Precise sets, which allowed the actors to perform a real choreography inside the cockpits, but against green backgrounds. Because all the aerial sequences were designed in CGI. “Even cinema has never approached such a level of realism” resumes John Orloff. “There have been a few films in the past like Iron Man (1949) or Memphis Belle (1990). But since then, technology has evolved a lot,” he explains.

The production thus benefited from an extraordinary budget (around $250 million) to boost its special effects. “This whole reconstruction cost a lot of money, that’s a fact.“, smiles Gary Goetzman. It also required a certain dedication from the teams, particularly the VFX teams:

“Almost all the planes you see flying on screen are digital effects. We didn’t fly any real B-17s during filming,” confirms the creator. “One of the CGI supervisors had worked on Avatar in 2009 and he told me that the aerial sequences in Masters of the Air were much harder to achieve. Because in quantity, there are more special effects in our series than in Avatar! And then, because the creatures in Avatar are pure imagination. They don’t need to conform to any reality. But we had to make it as realistic as possible. Our B-17s had to look like B-17s, they had to look like they were flying heavy, like B-17s !”

Masters of the Air is currently broadcast on Apple TV+ and also in France on Canal +.