Photorealism was the goal for the vfx in Generation Kill. Previs and animatics were used for the key shots in the Superhighway and convoy sequences. All images © HBO, Inc. Courtesy of Cinesite. 

When it comes to making films and documentaries about our world's great wars and conflicts, HBO has positioned itself as one of the preeminent networks. From the Emmy Award-winning Band of Brothers to their latest miniseries Generation Kill, HBO demands authenticity in the telling of their war stories, which makes them such "must see" events.

This summer HBO shifts its focus to the present day Iraq War in the adaptation of Evan Wright's novel Generation Kill. The seven-part miniseries follows a reporter embedded with the First Recon Bravo Company Second Platoon during the first wave of the war in 2003. In order to get the realism of such recent history correct, HBO went back to their frequent visual effects collaborator, Cinesite (Europe) Ltd. In 2001 HBO and Cinesite were lauded for Band of Brothers so they worked to recapture that success again on this new project.

Cinesite Effects Supervisors for Generation Kill, Dave Sewell (episodes 1, 2, 3, 7) and Stuart Partridge (episodes 4, 5, 6) and CG Supervisor Stephane Paris spoke to VFXWorld about the challenges of bringing a current war story to the screen in an authentic way.

Tara Bennett: Obviously Band of Brothers was a phenomenal achievement in war storytelling. What did HBO express to you about what they wanted to see from Cinesite for Generation Kill?

Stuart Partridge: The whole premise of the show is that it had to be completely photorealistic. While it's a drama, it's based on real events and it's shot in a documentary style. I think the biggest challenge is that although it was historical, in the sense that it was five years ago, it's quite current. It's not like doing a WWII project where there are streams of documentation of how things looked and happened. It's all very much like working on something that's happening as we speak so it was challenging and very rewarding.

HBO have been really big on the fact that it's got to look exactly like it happened. We had a military advisor, Eric Kocher, who was actually a soldier in the real events that the program is about so he's seen everything we are portraying with his own eyes. Everything we created had to be OK'd by him. HBO said that if he approves it, then they are happy with it. Everything had to be exactly as it was. HBO was big on this realism so they also had several test screenings with large groups of Marines who also fought in the Iraq War for the purpose to ask them if this is what it's like. We only had two feedbacks that were saying we needed to change things, which we did. We were pretty happy that we got that positive feedback from people there so we are confident that people who aren't there are watching something realistic.

Dave Sewell: HBO pride themselves on authenticity in all of their productions and I know that Cinesite strove for absolute realism on Band of Brothers. In the same way, on Generation Kill we sourced masses of reference material from military websites, the BBC motion gallery, reference books, stills taken on set by our representatives and even YouTube! We needed to research the way the guns fired, the way the equipment looked and operated. Once we had done our detailed research and created the 3D, we had it approved or adjusted by U.S. Marine and Military Adviser Eric Kocher, who we worked closely with throughout the production. The most challenging aspect of our work was creating shots which look absolutely authentic and impressive without the sensationalism of Hollywood effects films. We were aiming for complete realism; reality isn't always as sensational as the audience might think.