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It was more efficient to blow up a real 747 than to use miniatures or CGI
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y agoThis reminds me of how it was cheaper for the US to go to the moon than it would have been to fake the moon landing with the technology of the time. At least I remember reading an article a few years ago with that premise.
- erik_seaberg 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw had fun exploring what they could and could not fake.
- herbstein 6y agoThis video goes through why the video technology at the time simply wasn't even good enough to enable faking the moon landing. Even if they wanted to. https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs
- morceauxdebois 6y agoWhile it is a bogus conspiracy theory, I got more of an understanding why people could think of it as reasonable after seeing 2001 and realizing it came out _before_ the moon landing.
- eru 6y agoCompare the moonlanding poster in https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/04/prospiracy-theories/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/04/prospiracy-theories/
- viraptor 6y agoI wonder what's the chance of failure on that kind of shoot. Redoing the CGI explosion to tweak it would be likely cheaper than 2 planes. Or is there a "plane failed to explode nicely" insurance?
- thih9 6y agoPure speculation, but I’d guess people who are already responsible for handling explosives in a safe way would also be responsible for making a sufficiently “nice” boom. I’m assuming they have ways to plan how things are going to explode and maybe even ways to test it somehow before the shot.
- amelius 6y agoThat's wasteful. I hope someone can prove him wrong by doing it in CGI.
- formerly_proven 6y agoAren't many of these 50 year old airframes are being decommissioned and towed to aircraft boneyards anyway? I assume most of the aircraft would still be usable for being picked apart there. And to be a movie prop it doesn't need to even have all the parts for airworthiness, it could practically be an empty hull with broken engines and you wouldn't see a difference.
- holler 6y agoYeah there's a huge boneyard at Davis–Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, AZ. I would imagine that many of those will sit there into perpetuity, some scrapped for parts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Monthan_Air_Force_Base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Monthan_Air_Forc...
- tyingq 6y agoPretty sure that's the play. Buy it while it's still certified, but almost on its way to the boneyard.
- ssivark 6y agoMaybe it was just a 737 Max... X-D Jokes aside, I wonder how much one of those decommissioned planes costs. Maybe disposing off a decommissioned plane is the hardest job and nobody cares about stripping out parts — in either case I’m very curious about the actual costs. A practical advantage of CGI is that you can tweak it and redo till you get it right, whereas in the real scenario you have one take so you better make it count. But I don’t know if we should even seriously discuss a comparison; in all probability it’s more of a PR stunt. (Maybe one good enough to be worth spending a substantial fraction of the marketing budget!)
- reitzensteinm 6y agoSurely you can buy one approaching end of life? They don't fly the engines or airframe forever.
- aaronbrethorst 6y agoCongrats to Tenet for hitting break-even last week, despite tanking at the U.S. box office. https://variety.com/2020/film/box-office/tenet-box-office-christopher-nolan-warner-bros-1234768187/ https://variety.com/2020/film/box-office/tenet-box-office-ch...
- ponker 6y agoGoes to show how 80+% of countries have basically solved Covid.
- cwhiz 6y agoThe US seems intent on not reopening even in places that clearly have covid under control. For example, NYC. Just what exactly are they waiting on? Has the curve not been profoundly flattened? How many cases per day until they feel safe reopening?
- bleepblorp 6y agoViruses spread exponentially. It only takes one case to start a massive outbreak. No matter how many cases there are today, anywhere that 'reopens' will have unacceptably high case numbers sooner rather than later. Nowhere can return to what used to be normal ('reopen') until enough people have been vaccinated--with a truly effective vaccine--to prevent new outbreaks from spreading. This will take years or decades.
- XorNot 6y agoAlso with hospital beds and an exponentially spreading virus, once you're at 50% capacity (sounds like you've got a lot of headroom right?) you're actually out of beds and over flowing by the next wave (2-3 weeks later with this disease).
- cwhiz 6y agoOkay so if cases start going back up, shut things back down.
- MichaelZuo 6y agoA mothballed 747-100 might be worth almost nothing, literally cents on the dollar, especially as anything valuable will usually have been removed by various parties before it even hits the boneyards. And during the current situation where air cargo, the only viable use for even airworthy old 747s, is not growing I can see some broker selling a plane in the low single digit millions. An airworthy 747 will of course be worth more but the article doesn’t mention that and it seems unlikely.
- tyingq 6y agoI'm reasonably sure he would have used a "near end of life", but currently operating 747. "Un-mothballing" isn't cheap. I suppose maybe you could find one in a small, corrupt, country, but outside of that, it would be expensive.
- alkonaut 6y agoWhy couldn’t a mothballed/not airworthy one be used? So long as you can film the scene at whatever boneyard it’s parked, it seems like the easiest and cheapest option.
- ikeboy 6y agoTenet finished shooting before covid hit.
- 112012123 6y agoThey're worth a good bit less than single-digit millions. For context, you can pick up an airworthy 15 year old 777 right now for ~5 million dollars. Last time I spoke with a widebody broker a few months ago, an old 747 with no equipment was a smidge less than $100k. Though with COVID, airworthy 747 freighters are 30-50 million....
- tyingq 6y agoThere's likely some middle ground. Like a 747 that is ALMOST due a heavy check and mx cycle and very close to end of life.
- aeternum 6y agoShould have used a 737-max, probably could pick one up for close to free :)
- karamazov 6y agoThey wanted a controlled explosion.
- electro_blah 6y agoBurn
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tardismechanic 6y agoReminds me of this: “India's mission to Mars cost less than the movie Gravity” https://www.vox.com/2014/9/24/6838079/india-mars-mangalyaan https://www.vox.com/2014/9/24/6838079/india-mars-mangalyaan
- crazygringo 6y agoI don't doubt that a decomissioned/mothballed 747 would be cheap or worthless -- in the same way you can basically get an old upright piano for free just by offering to take it away from someone's home. My question is actually a logistical one: how on earth do you get a presumably inoperational 747 to wherever it is that you need to shoot it exploding? Or do they just fly a crew and equipment out to god-knows-where, set up ginormous green screens behind it and detonate it in whatever airplane graveyard it sits in? Given the massive transportation costs either way, I'm inclined to believe this headline is false, but good publicity. ;)
- robjan 6y agoYou usually slice it up along the fuselage and remove the wings, similar to how they left the factory in the first place. Then take it away in an operational 747 then shut it together again at the destination.
- shakna 6y agoThe plane was destroyed on an abandoned runway within a few hundred metres of a 747 junkyard. I think it's fair to say that transportation was less difficult in this situation than most.
- mhh__ 6y ago
- UrSuchAGenius 6y agoIt's a shame Nolan didn't use the Mexican presidential plane, lol. It's for sale.
- prichino 6y agoI would have paid to see that.
- mdturnerphys 6y agoOriginal source: https://www.gamesradar.com/tenet-christopher-nolan-747-plane-crash-interview/ https://www.gamesradar.com/tenet-christopher-nolan-747-plane... What he actually said was "efficient" not "cost effective".
- dang 6y agoOk, we've changed the title to say that. Thanks!
- trimbo 6y agoI guess Cinemablend isn't going to fact check this claim? It's typically much cheaper to do anything like a plane crash in a computer (or models + computer). Even 20 years ago, when I was bidding visual effects, I bet it would have been cheaper. [Note, I haven't seen the movie, so maybe there are 50 angles of it exploding, in which case it might not be] The cost of a mothballed plane is probably trivial compared to the daily cost of Tenet's movie set. You've got all of the actors (or maybe stunt people in this case) and crew members, so their salaries, food, hotels, costs of being on location and so on. The cost of renting the location itself. Constructing things you're going to destroy, cleaning up, etc. My guess is that Nolan wanted to do it this way because it's more fun. Nolan knows it's cheaper to do it in CGI, but blowing stuff up in CGI is boring. He gets to sit in a desk chair and look at something blowing up on a screen instead of seeing it IRL. And he can call the shots because he's Nolan, he directed, wrote and produced the thing.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago> cleaning up I would not underestimate this cost.
- csours 6y ago> "[Note, I haven't seen the movie, so maybe there are 50 angles of it exploding, in which case it might not be]" There are quite a few angles of it exploding, as well as it being a major set piece with people running around it before, during, and after the explosion.
- ehsankia 6y agoYeah the plane is part of almost a good 10-15% of the movie.
- ComputerGuru 6y agoBasing the choice on the result we now see in the cinema is a fairly tautological affair. I mean, when you’ve made the decision to go with a real one then you might as well include as many shots and angles as you can get and milk it for all it’s worth. The real question is if the movie could have been done with fewer angles and interior shots.
- code_duck 6y agoI would estimate that if you include the true environmental costs of destroying a plane with explosives, this is not accurate.
- icebraining 6y agoHere's a photo of the plane after making the movie: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24526292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24526292
- code_duck 6y agoOkay. Looks like 'blowing up' isn't an accurate description.
- watertom 6y agoI’m so glad Chris Nolan saved a few bucks so that he could release all that pollution for the sake of making a movie.
- jcims 6y agoIf you include the externalities of people driving to the theater, it’s probably the greenest movie he’s made.
- thefounder 6y agoIt looks like the Boeing planes may be good for something after all! (sarcasm)
- ineedasername 6y ago"Cheaper to do it for real" might only work out if you actually get the shot you need on the first try. There's probably directors out there who went for the same approach with less financial success.
- OldHand2018 6y agoIt's funny that the article mentions The Dark Knight without mentioning that in that movie Nolan blows up a real building in the scene in which the hospital is destroyed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nJTZzgBwnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nJTZzgBwnQ
- exabrial 6y agoI miss 80s-90s action flicks :/ cgi, even in 2020, looks like cgi. Glad the article did a shout to Tom Cruise. The helicopter stunt scenes in the last MI were _absolutely phenomenal_.
- trashburger 6y agoBravo Nolan.
- helsinkiandrew 6y agoThe HN headline is click-bait. The quote is 'more efficient' rather than cost effective and article goes on to say that it may been more expensive. I'm guessing that 'more efficient' means you buy a 747 and film it being blown it up and move on to the rest of the film. Where as CGI or miniatures take longer and add more risk if they don't look right on the first attempt.
- stingraycharles 6y agoAnd I guess with CGI since the possibilities are endless, the bikeshedding about how it must look also doesn't help with efficiency. I agree with you, the HN headline is click-bait.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Aeolun 6y agoI imagine that the problem with that was that he started filming this thing before the coronavirus came around. I can’t see a 747 going for much more than scrap metal cost these days.
- wp381640 6y agoTwo were sold a couple of months ago for $48M total: https://fortune.com/2017/11/22/boeing-747-jets-taobao-auction/ https://fortune.com/2017/11/22/boeing-747-jets-taobao-auctio... Running it seems the going price is $16+ or so But this was filmed in Victorville and they likely had an old stripped 747 laying around that could have been bought for very little The airport itself received a $600k+ location fee: https://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20191108/new-details-emerge-on-christopher-nolan-movie-filmed-at-scla https://www.vvdailypress.com/news/20191108/new-details-emerg...
- sillysaurusx 6y agoYou sure? I flew recently. Things aren't that different now, and even restaurants are opening up. I was going to say more, but let's not start a big coronavirus subthread in the middle of a neat CG thread. However, it's kind of interesting how normal it seemed to fly. Everyone is very cautious, things are sterilized, and there's not even any drink cart anymore -- it's individually-wrapped packs of food, to dampen contamination. Not saying whether it's good or bad that things are going back to normal-ish, just that they seem to be trending that way.
- breck 6y agoSPOILERS
- slykar 6y agoIt's just an ad.
- Udik 6y agoExactly. It's one of those movie-trivia articles to keep up the interest in a movie. Part of the marketing budget I suppose.
- unicornporn 6y agoBlog spam. Original blog post: https://www.gamesradar.com/tenet-christopher-nolan-747-plane-crash-interview/ https://www.gamesradar.com/tenet-christopher-nolan-747-plane...
- addicted 6y agoIt’s Nolan. He doesn’t like CGI when he can avoid it. This doesn’t pass the smell test.
- icpmoles 6y agoTo my surprise the airplane was pretty much unbroken from the outside. https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9719776 https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9719776
- rkachowski 6y agoIt seems like we have come full circle, in Escape from New York (1981) it was cheaper to build a miniture New York skyline and attach fluorescent tape to the edges rather than create a CG wireframe model for the "computers" in the main characters glider.[1][2] [1] https://www.amc.com/talk/2008/06/the-behind-the https://www.amc.com/talk/2008/06/the-behind-the [2] https://youtu.be/xxYmMRxnEic?t=68 https://youtu.be/xxYmMRxnEic?t=68
- pontifier 6y agoI ran into this counterintuitive situation when trying to do better simulations of a fusion reactor I designed. High end physics simulation software that might do the job starts at $50k. Then there will still be tradeoffs on the accuracy of the simulation. Because of the way it uses some older, off the shelf equipment for a key part of the device, I might actually be able to build a prototype for that price.
- khendron 6y agoI do sometimes wonder about the environmental impact of the entertainment industry. Destroying something for the sake of entertainment seems ... I don't know ... wasteful? In this case, yes the plane was probably mothballed anyway, and yes actually blowing it up will give a more realistic result in a shorter time than CGI. But were the environmental impacts even considered when making the decision?
- bookofjoe 6y agohttps://youtu.be/iv1ZRdgSrsM https://youtu.be/iv1ZRdgSrsM