Another 3 Qs

The magazine everyone loves to hate, Cinescape, has another one of its 3 questions things. This time its with the movie's visual effects supervisor Chris Brown.

CINESCAPE: How did you get around the budget restrictions to capture the look you wanted?

Brown: With a space movie there is a temptation to do a lot of model photography because its always been done that way. But we don't have resources to do what Industrial Light & Magic does, so you try to make the best of what you have. We had eight months and a little over $5 million. Because the budget on Wing Commander was so tight, it was a great opportunity to go strictly CG. The amount of flexibility you have in designing the shots and the dynamic you can put into shots because of the opportunity to fly the aircraft in any which way you want makes a big difference.

CINESCAPE: Can you describe how that flexibility makes a difference? What would be something the audience might notice?

Brown: There's a large battle sequence that probably has about 15 spacecraft doing some really dynamic dogfight [maneuvers] that I know we would not have been able to create on a model stage only with models--we would have added in CG aircraft to enhance it. We were able to push how close we get to a digital model and also how close we can run along the side of that model. We could also show the enemy aircraft diving and taking hits at it and having explosions go off right in your face.

CINESCAPE: Sounds exciting.

Brown: What we were able to do was really build this sequence based on true aerial photography because we could create our own background plates. Then we could fly the digital models in any [configuration] we want. It was a great opportunity to push the limit on the look of everything