Piloting the Virtual Production for “Masters of the Air”

“We wanted to take on something difficult and try to bring across the heart and emotion that, in the end, is always, what you’re trying to impart to people,” executive producer Gary Goetzman said of the Apple TV+ hit series Masters of the Air.

Goetzman was part of a packed panel discussion at the 2024 NAB Show on the making of the limited series, which Apple TV+ is promoting for Emmy Awards consideration.

For those living under a rock these past few months, Masters of the Air is the World War II drama that follows the fortunes of 10 men inside US Air Force Bomber B-17, known as a Flying Fortress, fighting in the skies over occupied territory in Europe.

It’s produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Goetzman, and follows the template of previous shows dramatizing America’s involvement in WW II, both on the ground (Band of Brothers), and at sea (The Pacific).

One person who has been airbrushed from the marketing for the show, including in the discussion at NAB Show, is the director of the first four episodes, Cary Joji Fukunaga. That’s understandable in light of the misconduct allegations that later surfaced, but has meant that Adam Arkapaw, the lead director of photography on those episodes and the person who most closely worked to devise the cinematographic workflow, is also absent.

It was Arkapaw who suggested that DP Jac Fitzgerald would be a good fit to pick up where he left off to work with directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck on Episodes 5 and 6.

“We were very much aware that we wanted to feel that the characters were involved in this giant war machine and that (four episodes into the story) they’re losing people at such a rapid rate,” Fitzgerald said at NAB Show. “We really wanted to convey that, in moments like this, they are on their own, and they may not survive the day.”

To do that, Fitzgerald, Boden and Fleck wanted to get the cameras closer to their main characters but doing so in the confines of the set — which was a 1:1 replica of a B-17 — was tough.

“It was physically hard to get close to the actors. We were adamant that we weren’t going to start hacking apart the plane to get the camera into places, but when actors were in the tail section of the plane I couldn’t sit without my shoulders hitting the side. So, trying to lens up shots [when] I can barely fit in there with a viewfinder [was hard]. But we managed to get a camera in there somehow.”

Stephen Rosenbaum, the VFX Supervisor on the project, explained his starting position. “We knew that we weren’t going to be content with just delivering storyboards or even basic previs. We needed to get in there and actually choreograph real action, set up real lighting and get an understanding of what the environment was going to be inside the plane based on what was going on outside the windows.”

The production team completed extensive previs, brought that into Unreal Engine, “and from there it was all live, all editable material,” Rosenbaum said. “We would hand it off to Lux Machina’s team, who would then work with the directors and the DPs to choreograph action.”

The main cockpit set of the B-17 was mounted on a gimbal that could be moved and rocked. DPs and directors could, for instance, add interactive lighting for attack sequences. The weather surrounding the set for each mission was designed to be as accurate to the weather during the actual battle as possible.

“We knew if it was a cloudy environment or which direction the sun was coming from when they made the planes turn,” Rosenbaum says. “The actors could feel all of that which made for a much more dynamic performance.”

In partnership with the team from MARS, Lux Machina managed and operated all volumes, fusing the virtual and physical worlds by incorporating bespoke solutions and innovative technology, often shooting simultaneously on all volumes.

They ran two concurrent volumes for almost the entire show, while also occasionally employing a third, smaller volume.

Lux Machina’s Phil Galler said the volume setup “was important to the connective tissue, for the actors, and the dedication to the historical elements, as well as the ability to add creative elements such as explosions, tracer fire, more flak, on the fly. That emotional feedback the audience gets at home wouldn’t have worked nearly as well with a green screen type solution.”

Although many of the backgrounds required VFX, the decision to shoot it on a volume with previs was a way of “bringing a traditional post-production process into production,” said Rosenbaum. “It gave everybody a chance to actually contribute to the action while we were shooting. You didn’t have to wait six months into post to figure out what worked and what didn’t, you knew in the moment that you are getting something that was your vision.”

Not that it wasn’t hugely complex. One challenge in particular was maintaining continuity between shoots on different stages.

“There was a lot of jumping between planes, so there’s always a big focus on continuity, making sure the audience is never getting lost, and that we’re throwing eye lines from this plane to that plane [in the edit], so we understand where we’re looking at all times while still trying to appreciate all the action,” said Rosenbaum. “That is not easy to do.”

READ MORE: Masters of the Air (Lux Machina)

Sound of “Masters of Air”

While there’s a lot of focus on the visual element to the show, the audio was just as assiduously created. The creative teams took some ingenious approaches to give every episode and action sequence a unique look, sound and feel.

“Because there’s so much time spent in the air with these planes, and so many different planes, we really wanted to sell the geography of each location within each plane and also each and every different plane,” supervising sound editor Jack Whittaker said on a Dolby Creative Talks podcast featuring interviews with members of the sound team.

One of the ways the mixing team achieved that was by cutting different sequences, which would then be handed off to another editor for a fresh take. “When you have this much time in the air, you really need to keep the listener involved at all times,” he said.

Re-recording mixer Michael Minkler explained how a crew of six spent days recording sounds of a B-17 from 60 microphones.

“We recorded every possible thing that the B-17 can do on the ground or in the air. We started with that as our template,” he said. “This story takes an arc from the first episode to the ninth episode of these cocky young fliers, and then we watch them just get overwhelmed with fear. Our job was to latch onto that fear factor and deliver it with sound and delay, it’s delivered in their voices.”

They recorded dialogue for months both on set and ADR. Minkler revealed that there are 5,000 loop lines in the series. “Every single sound effect had to have a purpose. It had to have character and emotion and also be very descriptive. It may sound like there’s a lot but they’re there specifically to help tell the story, to draw your attention to what we want you to focus on.”

[IMAGE SLIDER LANDSCAPE]

You get a more unfiltered view of just how challenging it was to work in the volume from DP Richard Rutkowski, who shot Episodes 7 and 8.

“When you hit a roadblock on a Volume stage you are frozen,” he told IBC365. “Suddenly, you are no longer using it and you pivot the whole thing to more CGI and VFX, so having the time to prep, well in advance, is my big takeaway from the experience.”

READ MORE: Behind The Scenes: Masters of the Air (IBC365)

In addition to which, most of the show was not shot in a volume. The ground scenes, for instance, were all shot on location in the UK, or in conventional studio stages.

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