Double Negative created the exciting dogfight sequences in Flyboys, which depict the first American fighter-pilot squadron to confront the German aviation during World War I. All images © 2006 Electric Holdings (Flyboys) Inc.

There used to be a time when fighter pilots didn’t shoot enemy planes from miles away. In the early days of aerial dogfights, during World War I, they had to get so close to their foes that they could actually see their eyes. Plus, there was a real sense of chivalry between pilots. You didn’t shoot an enemy who was handicapped by a faulty weapon or engine. It was just not fair. Flyboys (opening Sept. 22 from MGM) takes us back to those days when good manners were still the norm. The movie tells the story of the Lafayette Escadrille, the first American fighter-pilot squadron to confront the German aviation during World War I.

Needless to say, it was out of question to try to film dogfights with vintage planes that were almost a century old. To create the exciting confrontations, director Tony Bill turned to visual effects supervisor Peter Chiang and vfx producer Fay McConkey of Double Negative in London. “We did more than 740 shots in total,” Chiang recalls. “We started by previsualizing the battle sequences — there were six of them. At the same time, we adapted our pipeline to the fact that Flyboys was shot using the new Genesis camera from Panavision, a high-resolution 1920x1080, full 10-bit log color depth digital camera, designed to take Panavision film camera lenses. All our images to date have been originated on film. So, the new camera system meant that we needed to create a completely new pipeline. First, the Sony digital tapes were input through a Sony SRW1 tape deck retaining the digital quality that was captured. Second, a new look up table was needed to view the images the correct way. Response curves from Panavision were given to us so we could work out the correct viewing system. The rest of the pipeline was also adapted to the new format.”

Double Negative found that its main technical challenge was developing a procedural system for the animation of the planes. Courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc.

Motion Capturing a Plane
To create the shots, Double Negative used a Linux- and Mac-based pipeline that included Shake, Photoshop, and Maya 3D with RenderMan. Final Cut Pro was used for editorial, and Baselight was the tool of choice for color grading.

Chiang and his team found out that their main technical challenge was developing a procedural system for the animation of the planes. Their solution was to create the first motion capture system for a plane in flight. “We encoded a Jungmann that was flown by Nigel Lamb during a three hour session. Lyndon Yorke of Aerofilm, and Helmut Kohlhaas of IGI systems, worked with Panavision’s Peter Swarbrick to lock the digital camera to the encoded data through an Inertia Measurement Unit (IMU) and GPS system. Fitted to the plane, the IMU recorded the exact position of the aircraft 128 times a second. The unit was synced with the GPS system linked to the world time clock. The Genesis camera was also linked to a GPS system that was time stamping the world clock onto the digital tape. This allowed us to sync the data to the pictures we were filming. The pitch, yaw and rotation of the plane were all read by the IMU, and then translated, with proprietary code written by Oliver James, to the CG planes. This meant that our CG planes had all the flight characteristics of a real plane. We compiled a library of various maneuvers and applied the right data when it was needed. We were able to study the translation curves and build up procedural animation for the more generic flight characteristics. Animation supervisor Mattias Lindahl headed up the previs and animation team.”

Even though the system provided highly realistic maneuvers, animators often embellished the action to heighten the drama that was taking place. In order to keep the animation grounded in reality, senior R&D developer Jeff Clifford wrote a piece of software that alerted the animators when they were exceeding the flight capabilities of any given aircraft.