Hi Guys
I was watching Battle of Britain yesterday afternoon,to help with research prior to starting my next aircraft build.

I had a light bulb moment

Apart from the obvious money making,star power..I'd like to see studios remaster some of the classic movies ie:replacing m47/48 with crosses to CGI Panzers.

George Lucas did it with Star wars.

I'd like to think that this would be better than some of the crap which is currently on the Big Screen.

Comments??

Chris

Hey Chris,

I suppose it's because it's not what people want, unfortunately. Either that, or it's not something that studios want to provide.

I guess now that I think about it a bit more, it's nothing other than the obvious financial reasons. Studios are not going to want to spend big bucks giving movies a facelift when they can make more money from creating new movies. I think studios would rather do a new version of Battle of Britain before they remaster the original. It's also the general publics fault too for going to watch terrible movies.

It's a great idea but I think it would be financially difficult for a studio to do. I can't see a return on the investment. The public want to see new movies rather than remasters of 40 or 50 year old war movies. And some of them are pretty awful you have to admit. Perhaps as DVD or Blu-Ray release but they'd have to sell a lot of copies.
It would also be technically difficult to do. It's not like Star Wars remasters where model shots were swapped or enhanced with CGI. We're talking about completely replacing a real vehicle in a live action shot with CGI. It would have to be done frame by frame and require a lot of digital manipulation (making it move behind or in front of objects or actors, environmental effects and possibly re-positioning actors on the vehicle to get them in the correct place). It would need a lot of work and the danger would be that if something was wrong it could look worse than the original. Although could anything be worse than this? https://youtu.be/V8Shn_HL9zk

I'm looking forward to seeing new war movies. Although I've only seen a few clips of Fury it does look good.

Don't use CGI for war films, Red tails have you seen that garbage Mr Lucas made

I think Lucas has trouble working out the difference between a P-51 and a T-65 X-Wing. I've only seen bits of it, but from what I saw I didn't think it was as good as the earlier Tuskegee Airmen.

I think CGI can be useful if we need aircraft or ships which no longer exist or are so valuable and expensive to operate that it would be impractical to use for live filming. Take 2008's The Red Baron for example. Only a few replica WW1 Albatros and Fokker Dr.I are flying and I can't see any pilot wanting to throw them around the sky like they do in the movie. The CGI flight and battle sequences were pretty convincing in that film I found. Just a shame the rest of the movie was disappointing, especially the last half. For ground shots they used accurate reproductions of the aircraft. Same goes for Flyboys. In contrast, 1966's The Blue Max used DH Moths and Stampes modified to look like Pfalz D.III's and painted in fictitious lozenge cammo. They also used a French built parasol monoplane to stand in for the Fokker E.V Stachel is killed test flying and some replica Fokker tripes. To the trained eye, it's obvious. But on the plus side, the flying was real and therefore looks better. However, reading about the making of the film a lot of the shots were difficult to do, took a lot of practice (and therefore more time and cash) and some pilots refused to do certain stunts on grounds of safety. With CGI, we take away the human and safety element and take as much time as a studio needs to get a shot perfect. If a mistake is made it can be redone. Not so if your onto the last take and the budget doesn't call for a another flight and potentially risking someones life. We have to remember that a stunt pilot was killed in the original Flight of the Phoenix and Battle of Britain. Incidents that would bankrupt a movie these days!
There are pro's and con's with live filming and CGI. If CGI can be done well and importantly look real (by that I mean aircraft are doing what they can do in the real physical world, unlike Red Tails), then the result will be a visually stunning movie. Now if only the scripts could be improved too I'd be a happy moviegoer.

Some interesting stuff on The Blue Max here, the authors opinion on the movie is telling stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Max

Personally I'm looking forward to the new Dambusters that Peter Jackson has been promising for years. If anyone can do it and do it right, it's him.