WWI film

[carrick58 23]

They fly like jets,but still fun to watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kHPmxtV67U

[Olham 164]

The film shows, what can be done nowadays. Now, if only they would do it much more realistic!

It looked so promising - and then still so wrong.

[Hasse Wind 46]

I wouldn't try those maneuvers in OFF. The wings of the Albatros may disagree with you at some point.

 

But yes, the technology is here. Almost anything can be done with the help of modern computers. Now all we need is a good script and a director who is interested in doing a historically accurate WW1 aviation film and is capable of doing it without any interference from the so-called Hollywood experts... Peter Jackson?

[Olham 164]

The more I learn about WW1 air combat, the more mistakes do I notice.

MvR has never been flying an unmodified Albatros D.V with the "hunchback".

And Till Schweiger's googles are far too modern.

Ah, well, and Schweiger as Werner Voss - much too old.

[NS13Jarhead 6]

It had a lot of potental that it failed to fully live up to. Too bad it wasn't historically accurate like Flyboys or Pearl Harbor...

 

Oh, well. Maybe when he's done playing with Hobbits, Peter Jackson can do it right!

 

Edited March 6, 2011 by NS13Jarhead

[Javito1986 14]

My Apology for the soundtrack, my advise is turn off your speakers, this is from 1930. Before anybody heard of CGI

 

 

 

Now I know what I'm watching tonight

 

 

 

 

To be totally honest with you, I think Hell's Angels looks much much better than Red Baron. That Red Baron action sequence just bothers me, it feels horribly wrong, and Carrick's right they fly like jets. There's so much appeal to seeing REAL biplanes in Hell's Angel that Red Baron lacks.

 

 

[Flyby PC 23]

I can never understand why so much time and effort goes into the minute detail of appearance of authentic aircraft, only to get the physics of flight so wrong.

 

I try to forgive them, and say that a real dogfight would not make good cinema, but I'm sure they could do better.

 

For a movie, you want to see the narrative, things like the enemy on the tail of the hero, being caught by the hero's wing man etc, - which means you need to visually identify three different aircraft at the same time. In real life, at least one of those aircraft would be a dot, and the chances of all three being in the same frame for more than half a second are slight. If you slow everything down so the audience can keep up with whats happening, you lose the urgency of the action. If you think about it, next time you have a dogfight, try to describe what happened. It's very difficult, because it is never far from chaos. So what occurs is careful composition of shots with slower interaction between aircraft, with the background kept very dynamic.

 

You'll see the victims of movie dogfights are quite static, when in reality they would be evading like crazy, but you couldn't keep it in frame and you wouldn't know one was being hit..

 

I think we get spoiled because we have such a good sim, and actually 'take part' in the battles. When we expose ourselves to dogfights, we engage much more than our eyes. A lot of us use trackir, and put ourself in the middle of a real (but make believe) 3d world. That doesn't happen at the movies, you have to take in the information from one viewpoint. Visually, realism would not look as good, nor would it carry the story. Watching a movie is like using tracker, zoomed in, with tunnel vision.

 

So even in 3d movies, wherever there is a narrative point to showing a dogfight, I think we should get used to crappy dogfight sequences. To watch it for real, little dots in a big blue canvas wouldn't tell the story. Just my tuppenceworth.

 

I have the horrible feeling that the way we knowingly criticise dogfights in the movies might be the same reaction that real pilots have to our simulated dogfights. That's not to criticise the simulators, but there is no substitute for the real thing. Everything else is pale by comparison.

 

So I reckon, it's never going to look correct, but I hope it might look a little more correct than it typically does. It may not be perfect yet, but it's better than B of B's plastic stukas on a string. (Which funny enough doesn't bother me).