'Masters of the Air', VFX Supervisor, Stephen Rosenbaum

0:08Stephen RosenbaumWhere are you?

0:10Jawad MirI am in Toronto, Canada.

0:12Stephen RosenbaumAll right.

0:13Jawad MirAnd yourself?

0:14Stephen RosenbaumI, right now I'm in, at my in-laws' house in Monterey Bay area.

0:20Jawad MirThat's nice.

0:21Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

0:21Jawad MirYeah, Toronto gets really cold, but, knock on wood, it's been three weeks it's been pretty nice for us. You know, it's been, it's been like zero degrees, and we haven't had a major snowfall in like almost a month. So far so good.

0:38Stephen RosenbaumI think there's a big storm just south of you, right, that's coming through, but you're, you guys are missing it, right?

0:42Jawad MirWe're kinda missing it, yeah. Yeah. We… the… even last week there was one, that hit the eastern part of Canada, Nova Scotia. They had 150 centimeters of snow. Yeah. Like all the way, like you open the door and it's snow. You know, your car… cars are buried underneath it. And they do get something like that every four or five years anyways. But just because they're right on the eastern side of Canada, so for far east of North America.

1:09Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

1:10Jawad MirYeah.

1:10Stephen RosenbaumI'm a naive Californian, so I know nothing about that.

1:14Jawad MirWhere are you from originally in California?

1:16Stephen RosenbaumWell, I grew up in LA.

1:18Jawad MirLA.

1:19Stephen RosenbaumAnd then went to school in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I now live, lived our whole adult life up there. So, it's been…

1:28Jawad MirOkay.

1:28Stephen RosenbaumYeah. Enjoy it.

1:30Jawad MirYeah, no, I love San Francisco. I don't necessarily come to the downtown much often.

1:36Stephen RosenbaumYeah

1:36Jawad Mir... But more in the Redwood City, Santa Carla or San Mateo and San Jose…

1:41Stephen RosenbaumYeah

1:41Jawad Mir... And all that stuff. It's nice.

1:42Stephen RosenbaumSouth Bay, yeah. Yeah.

1:43Jawad MirYeah, it's nice. It's nice. Well, good. Well, you know, thank you so much for working on Masters of the Air. One of the things that is, I mean everything in any project or any series is so pivotal and important, but I think talking about Masters of the Air, the most important part for me was, and a lot of people, because you see all these discussions where some people are not happy, but majority of people are happy, are the visual effects, right? And to me, I was, I've talked to, Captain Dale Dye, who was the consultant. I've talked to Colleen Atwood. I've talked to Richard Wdowski, I think his last name is. He was cinematographer.

2:25Stephen RosenbaumWitowsky, yeah.

2:26Jawad MirWitowsky, yes. And, one of the editors, Spencer, and I'm speaking to a few other people. And w… in one of those conversations I talked about the visual effects very briefly, just to kind of give you a little bit my perception and then we can go into the conversation and questions, is that what I loved about the visual effects was no matter where you are in the plane, right? And it's a very tight space when you're flying it, and e… even if it's a model and you have all these windows, right, on the front and on the kinda halfway on the sides.

3:00Jawad MirYou would see every intricate detail from a cloud, you know, to a smoke, to a plane flyings by or a bunch of planes flying by, which was great, but the one that stood out for me the most, which I was like, "Wow," like, "this is like amazing," and it's a very simple thing. There's a scene in one of the episodes where the plane lands into a field.

3:22Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

3:23Jawad MirAnd you see the fields like just through the rear, the side mi… window just flickering back and forth, back and forth. Now, I don't know if it was, you know, real or if it w… there was like some sort of bushes…

3:39Stephen RosenbaumLike a

3:39Jawad Mir... That kinda just set it there. Yeah, like a reference point.

3:42Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

3:42Jawad MirBut it still looked amazing, the movement, the way the plane was landing and moving. It, I was just blown away by that. That to me defined the visual effects of the entire series. So just wanted to make sure that I mentioned that before you begin.

3:56Stephen RosenbaumOh, thanks. Thanks. Yeah. We, just a… it's, as a sort of a how we approach the work, everything interior, so if you're,.. We had, we had a, you know, a B17 set, but we broke it up into different compartments. So if you're, we had a, like a nose and a cockpit compartment…

4:16Jawad MirRight

4:16Stephen Rosenbaum... Set. We had a waist gunner compartment set. We had a tail gunner compartment set and a ball turret and top turret to, as individual sets. So that made it more manageable in terms of how to shoot the actors. But all of that was typically 99% of the time was put up on a motion base of some sort. Now I can talk a little bit about what those were on a stage.

4:40Jawad MirPlease.

4:41Stephen RosenbaumAnd so the, for example, you had the cockpit and the nose compartment on a, 10 ton motion base. So it was a six axis motion base, if you can imagine. So it could, it could, tilt, roll, pitch, as well as well as, twist, and heave and so forth. So, it allowed us to have a lot of, interaction in terms of the flying sequences from generic, you know, just flying vibration, which is a subtle thing that I think a lot of shows miss out on. You know, it certainly helps the actors in terms of feeling like, you know, they're in this massive, aircraft that has this vibration. If you've ever seen, you can go onto YouTube and listen to some of the, you know, the coverage that they've done or s… or see some of the coverage they've done of flying real B17s. It's, it's, it's this giant shaky structure, right?

5:41Stephen RosenbaumThere's just this vibration and this sound, this droning sound that happens. And so starting with sort of the baseline vibration, you know, culminating to action s… sequences where they're having to be, they're being attacked by flak. So for example, if there's a, if there's a flak explosion off the port side pilot window, The motion base could react, to that explosion. So it…

6:08Stephen Rosenbaum... Will actually buffet the plane, so then the actors react. And then, simultaneously you had all this stuff that's dangling in the background moving, you know. So there's not much that's really dangling, but you do have things like oxygen tank, cables and so forth that you see move when the, when they jostle and so forth. So that adds a lot of element of realism to their performances and just, you know, the general look of it. But all those, all those, sh… shots in across the nine episodes that we shot, interiors, were all done on the stage with the motion base against a giant LED wall. And, we chose to do that, just principally because it makes for a more cohesive performance again culminating to that. And I can talk about that in a second, but just to answer your question coming back, everything out the window was ultimately com… computer generated.

7:11Stephen RosenbaumSo, we didn't have the, we didn't have the ability to go, I mean, as much as we really wanted to, it's just not realistic to take a real B17 up in the air…

7:22Jawad MirYeah

7:22Stephen Rosenbaum... These days.

7:23Jawad MirYeah.

7:24Stephen RosenbaumYou know, n… not just for cost, you know, you, if people think about the insurance, you know, if you're putting a whole crew on a B17, if, God forbid, something happens. And of course, there was that calamitous accident that happened at the Dallas Air Show…

7:38Jawad MirRight

7:38Stephen Rosenbaum... Not too long ago. Things like that just say, you know, we're just gonna do the sets interior and then everything outside will be visual effects. So when you see, you know, the be… it's, you're, I think you're describing the belly landing scene where

7:53Jawad MirYes

7:53Stephen Rosenbaum... Ray coming in and he's, he's descending very quickly adjacent to the runway, which is what they did. They had these big open fields, and they would just slide essentially to a stop. It's quite dramatic. That's all computer generated. So he, you know, we have one shot you might re… recall where it's sort of a, the co-pilot's POV. He looks out at the, at the Thorpe Abbott control tower and some of the ground crew that's down there getting ready to rush out to them. That's all, that's all fabricated as visual effects. So we would, ge… we fabric… we created the whole Thorpe Abbott environment and placed it into the shot. So all you're seeing that's traditional, shooting, you know, photography was the interior environment, and then everything out the window is us. So coming back to the LED, what allowed the actors to really sort of lift their performances were, just that.

8:57Stephen RosenbaumWe had a proxy version of Thorpe Abbott. They could, they could see, you know, that... We ultimately replaced everything, most of it.

9:05Jawad MirRight.

9:06Stephen RosenbaumNot all of it actually. But if you're looking outwards towards the window, and the camera's looking out that direction and you see the control tower, let's say you're over the shoulder of a, of a pilot, we usually replace that, and that's all computer generated. But the actors had, the benefit of, a proxy version of that environment. So they could see, "Oh, there's the control tower. Oh, there's the field."

9:31Jawad MirYeah.

9:32Stephen RosenbaumWhen they're up in the battle, you know, "Oh, there's a, there's a BF109 coming straight at me. I can see it, and there it goes." And, you know, all the eye lines work and the interaction, the interactive light explosions, you know, and so forth. So it sort of elevated again the realism of the performance. You know, so that was the main impetus. T… traditionally prior to that, it was, you know, blue screen or green screen work, which…

9:58Jawad MirYeah

9:58Stephen Rosenbaum... You know, made for really nice mattes for visual effects, but, you know, didn't make for a great performance from the actors. You know, it was usually like, y… you probably have seen this, it's…

10:12Jawad MirOh, yeah

10:12Stephen Rosenbaum... Just some geek like me holding an eye line pole saying, "BF109," you know? Kind of like with a, with a pole and a tennis ball at the end of the stick saying, "That tennis ball is your plane. Follow that," you know? "Oh, it's coming at you." You know, it w… it didn't, it doesn't make for the best performances. So, you know, having the wall being able to project, you know, real proxy planes coming at you and understand, you know, where they are spatially and again the interactive light. It also made for, you know, the camera composition to be that much more realistic because the, you know, the camera, the people operating the cameras could understand, "Oh, there's a plane. I need to pan left and catch that," you know, as it, as it swings by. So it really helped a lot. Anyway, I'm rambling. Go ahead.

11:03Jawad MirNo. This is, please don't think that. It's amazing the information that you're giving. It's awesome because, being in the industry myself and I know that how, like, you know, one thing I don't know if an average moviegoer notices it, I certainly do, I know friends who do who are in the industry, is that forget about visual effects. You know, there's a, there are movies out there, a lot of movies, where you sh… do pick up shots of two characters inter… interacting with each other, without the other one even physically there because of schedule conflicts, right?

11:35Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

11:35Jawad MirAnd there's a prime example of, there was a movie co… came out in the late '90s, I think, called Red Planet with Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore.

11:45Stephen RosenbaumClassic. Yeah.

11:45Jawad MirY… you know about, and how there was a whole story that Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore really did not get along with each other. Yeah.

11:52Stephen RosenbaumYeah. Yeah.

11:52Jawad MirSo they filmed all of their scenes…

11:54Stephen RosenbaumYeah

11:55Jawad Mir... Separately. And I mean, it shows. It literally shows when that chemistry of physicality is not there, whether it's the, or you're s… another's character or the physical space like you were talking about.

12:09Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

12:09Jawad MirIt comes across on camera. I notice it. I'm sure you notice it. I don't know if an average moviegoer notices it, but it's so evident. And I'm so glad that you guys did what you did with this because having that, you know, eye line and that reference point is so pivotal that you can tell, you can tell in a snap.

12:30Stephen RosenbaumYeah. Especially with fast-moving action, right? You know, so, you know, you s… y… you know, an FW 190 is, like, here in one second, and then another second it's over here. Or, you know, so you have to... Y… there's no way you can recreate that physically, certainly, with an eye line pull or something, or even just telling the actors, "Look fast." You know, they're never looking in the right place. So…

12:54Jawad MirYeah

12:55Stephen Rosenbaum... You know, we made it easy for them, and they loved it. You know, it was... They gave them perfect opportunity to just act and not try to imagine what is gonna ultimately be out there, you know, nine months from now.

13:09Jawad MirYeah. So tell me about this. So, you know, you said most of it what was outside the window, if not all of it, was visual effects that were... The LEDs were the proxies, right? So i… in the sequences where you see other planes coming in or, you know, gunshots or whatever, in the sky, the clouds, they were on the LED, right? But in order for them to be LED, they had to be created.

13:39Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

13:40Jawad MirSo how was that sort of workflow where you guys had to figure out from a storyboard standpoint that we gotta create these shots, these planes moving, you know, on the sides or coming in or the fire coming in, and then making sure that it's again replaced by something similar if not the same thing?

14:00Stephen RosenbaumYeah. It, I mean, it, the general workflow for visual effects is pretty typical throughout. But, for me, I'm a big pre-vis guy. So, you know, what... It always starts with the script, certainly. In this case, we had this amazing, these amazing tome, essentially, of scripts and historical references from John Orloff. So he gave me,.. He has a, he has a research bible that he created. It's, like, 250 pages long or something like that.

14:30Jawad MirWow.

14:31Stephen RosenbaumSo I had this baseline to start with. You know, 'cause you imagine you're coming into the show. It's funny because I, and I'm sure I'm gonna get grief about this, but, you know, growing up, I was a kid a… I was a cars kid. You know, you, when you're, when you're growing up, you're either like cars or airplanes, and I was a cars kid.

14:48Jawad MirOf course.

14:49Stephen RosenbaumYeah, I had to learn everything about airplanes as quickly as possible. So, you know, this was certainly the baseline for historical references and, you know, what were the, our characters in the, in the sh… in the series, and how do, you know, how do they interact and so forth. So John's research bible was bi… was, you know, critical for that. Then his scripts, and then of course, you know, the original book, from Don Miller.

15:20Jawad MirDon, yeah.

15:22Stephen RosenbaumAnd then you start reading other online stuff. There's a, there's an amazing wealth of information online that you can find, and we had, we had some great researchers, you know, helping us. So if I needed to know, okay, how, you know, what was the strategy in 1943 for, the Luftwaffe attacks and how did that change once they became u… once they started using, rockets and then as the war progressed, the formations changed with the B-17s and, you know, what was the, you know, the baseline formations they started with and how did that evolve and so forth. So there was a huge, learning curve for me at the beginning. And that, so once I got all that, then yeah, you go into, you go into storyboarding, and that's usually done with the directors and some, you know, extraordinarily talented storyboard artists in there. They're drawing out, sketching out action based on what they're reading in the script. So, you know, plane flies from A to B, character reacts, you know, maybe there's an explosion or whatever.

16:25Stephen RosenbaumSo you're, you're s… you're, you're f… you're drawing out the storyboards, and basically blocking out the action, for that. And most of the time we're doing storyboards just for action. We're not necessarily doing it for drama, you know, or generic…

16:41Jawad MirYeah

16:41Stephen Rosenbaum... Dialogue.

16:41Jawad MirYeah.

16:42Stephen RosenbaumSo there's no, there no need for that, but it's just choreographing action. Once we get there and the director's happy with that, I take it and I sit down with, a pre-vis company. In this case it was The Third Floor, and I had, I had the benefit of working with a pre-vis supervisor named Matt Smart, and he happened to be a pilot, and he understood, you know, plane aerodynamics and, big World War II junkie. So he was thrilled to get into this. And so we would sit down with the boards and we would step through them and talk about each sequence and how to, how to, you know, approach things. And he would then wade into it with his team, and then start blocking the action, bring it back to me.

17:29Jawad MirSure.

17:29Stephen RosenbaumWe'd talk about it. We'd review. I'd give him comments. And then once that, once those sequences, were pretty fluid and we were happy with, you know, the action and in terms of that, what we were looking for principally was, you know, not just being historically and technically accurate, but also just fun to watch. I mean, it's, it's, you know, this is a s… you know, an issue I think you see with a lot of shows, where they're so focused on being technically accurate, but it's a big yawner in the end when you're, when you're trying to watch it. Y… you kind of have to really think, okay, this is, like, technically correct, but it's kinda boring, so how do we elevate it so that it's fun? And so for that matter, I think we stayed, I would say 98% true to the technicalities of these battle sequences. Occasionally, yes, we would take creative license, and I can talk a little bit about that. And…

18:26Jawad MirSure

18:27Stephen Rosenbaum... You know, I'm sure there are people who will, are gonna go and pound me on it. But you know, I, it... Like I'll, I'll give you an example. We had, we had, some great technical advisors on set with us. One guy, Ty Ramey, he was, he was superb. And he actually runs a B-17 bomber camp. So you can, you can go, it's in California, you can go to it, his website, and you can go for a long weekend and fly a B-17 and shoot, you know,.50 caliber guns. It's a, it's a, it's a lot of fun.

18:59Jawad MirOh, wow.

19:00Stephen RosenbaumHe was there with us, and, I remember it was like probably the first week he comes up to me, goes, "Steven, whatever you do, Hollywood always gets this wrong. The front of the engines never catch on fire." And he's like, he's like, you know, really intense. Okay. Okay, Ty, I got it. I got it. We can't... You just... The... There's no fuel there. There's nothing to catch on fire. I mean, technically you probably could. There could, might be a little bit of oil or something like that, but it's, for the most part, it's not this big, you know, inferno on the front of the engine. Anyway, not more than a week later, we were in a shot and, we're, we're, we were doing a scene and there was a shot where we're over a pilot's shoulder looking out at the engine. And of course, the director's like, "What are we looking at?" You know, "Let's make it turn, make turn, make it go on fire." So we're like…

19:55Jawad MirOops.

19:56Stephen RosenbaumSo it's, you know, it's those situations where, you know, you're, you're composed for a shot with a pilot who really is only seeing the front of the engine. You know, they have the prop and the front of the engines, and you have to be showing something. You can't just show, you know, a little bit of fizzling smoke or something like that. You have to…

20:15Jawad MirYeah. Dramatic

20:16Stephen Rosenbaum... You know, it calls for some action or some…

20:18Jawad MirYeah

20:18Stephen Rosenbaum... Something fun to watch. So I would say 2% of the time. So anyway, I don't think it's gonna stop Ty from like throwing something at the screen when he sees it, but You know, he'll go, "I told them. I told them." But we tried to, we tried to remain true most of the time. But, anyway, so once we get the previs worked out, and the d… you know, we'll sit down with the director and we'll, you know, they'll give their comments. On the show we had, it was nine, it's nine episodes, and we had, we broke it into what were called four blocks. So there were four sets of directors.

20:56Jawad MirRight

20:56Stephen Rosenbaum... And, in the actually block two, we had a, we had a directing, c… two directors. We had, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck directing two. But other than that, there were just single directors on the other two, other three, blocks. And we'd sit down with them and we'd go, we'd go through the previs, they'd give their notes. I'd then I'd take those notes back to the, to Matt, and we'd sit down and we'd, we'd, you know, make some corrections and adjustments. And then, you know, basically it's the normal back and forth creative, workflow.

21:32Jawad MirRight.

21:32Stephen RosenbaumTill we got, till we got to a point where they're happy. And then at that point, the, that work gets distributed to the departments. So s… stunts, special effects, costume, makeup, they're all looking at this now going, okay, and they understand what their part, what their, what they need to do, in order to, address, the action in the, in that previs. And then all of that was then projected on the LED walls. So we brought that into Unreal Engine

22:01Stephen Rosenbaum... And Lux Machina. Lux, we, when... Just to step back. W… when we started the show, there was no, like, virtual production stage, where we were gonna shoot. This was in, north of London, in some old converted warehouses. So Lux came in and designed the LED volumes. We had three and a half volumes, I believe. The half volume was actually a for… a mobile one, we could move it around. And, so they designed it and then they came in and managed, the shoot. So we, they would take the previs, ingest it into Unreal, and then, play it on the wall. And the beauty of working on it with Unreal is that the DPs, and they love this, is that they could, they could come over and they could do all their lighting in Unreal, dynamically. So as we were setting up shots, you know, you're in a, you're in a very cloudy environment or you're a sunny environment, they could position the sun wherever they wanted.

23:03Stephen RosenbaumThey had a big explosion, they could cue it however they wanted based on, how, what they were shooting at the moment. So the director could go, and, you know, explosion and the Unreal operator could then, add an explosion, which would give interactive light to the actors. So it was all, again, all proxy content out the window. But, it made for that, you know, that sort of realistic, look, and n… and it was highly interactive. It was all real time. So, it, I think again, it comes through in terms of production value for when you watch the show. But yeah, I mean, there are little things that we had to think about, in terms of making that commitment to doing the LED walls. One was, because we weren't shooting a green screen, matting became a problem, right? So we had, if you think about it's not just, for people who are familiar with matting, you know, you're just layering it, the world behind things.

24:05Stephen RosenbaumSo if I have the camera's over my…

24:07Jawad MirRight

24:07Stephen Rosenbaum... Shoulder, I need to ar… create a matte that then sits the outside world behind me, not on top of me. So you have, you have to articulate draw a matte. We used, we used some AI tools actually now that were, that could say, "Okay, we understand what the structure of the B-17 window frame is, from any angle. And from there we can generate a matte." and, it gave you a pretty good start to it. You'd have to go in and clean up. But there are things that people don't understand is, like, y… you know, you have people right up against the window, so you have the reflection. And it's not just this, it's this, right? It's the reflect… It's, it's their reflection of this side. So…

24:53Jawad MirRight

24:53Stephen Rosenbaum... It meant that we had to then also put the reflect… you know, the window reflections back into the shot in order to make it look like there was a pane of glass there. Otherwise, if you didn't have that kinda stuff, it would just look transparent and clear. It would look like there was, be no window. So things like that, you know, we made that commitment just because the perform… we really wanted the performances to be that much more dynamic, to not use green screen or blue screen. And I think it paid off.

25:22Jawad MirYeah, no, it, 100%. And I really hope, I mean, all the s… stuff that you've talked about, you know, again, this is just a small percentage of people. About anything in life, we're always complaining about something. You know, when Masters of the Trail… Air trailer came out, there was, online there was like, "Oh, the visual effects look crappy," and this and that. And, you know, until you see the series and you understand that's not the most important part, it's the story, but also understand that how it was done…

25:50Stephen RosenbaumYeah

25:50Jawad Mir... And the challenges that it... People may understand that, so I'm glad you're talking about this. And, you know, while we're talking, I, there's this, somebody p… sent me a question on Facebook, on a group. His name is, I don't know how to pronounce it, so his name is Piotr, I think, and he asked me something. I think you asked me, you answered me already, so I wanna read the question just so I know that you've answered, and you can tell me if you have to. If not, then you can, maybe you can address it if that's okay.

26:18Stephen RosenbaumSure. Yeah, hit me.

26:19Jawad MirSo he asked, he asked, "Can you ask how the shots were designed and how, and as John Arloff mentioned, the visuals projected on the volume were s… simplified for actor reactions and reflections, how the foreground and cockpit shots were separated from the background for the final FX composition? Didn't use green screens when using volume. Thank you." I think you answered that, right?

26:42Stephen RosenbaumYeah. I'll try to summarize the answer again, but it's, it's basically we used, the proxy content was the pre-vis, essentially, from, that we generated from third floor. So that gave the opportunity for the actors, the camera lighting and so forth to react to what was happening outside. Rather, if we had a green screen, you would never see any of that. Again, it would just be, like, me with a tennis ball on a stick, you know, running around going, "BF109," and it, and, you know, it just would have looked much more detached. So yeah, it was... And then how it was replaced was, again, traditionally when you're matting, you're, you know, you're, you're rotoscoping, you're drawing, edges around the thing that you wanna put content behind. So if the camera's here on me, it's gonna, you wanna draw a mat that's, you know, an articulate edge, a very sh… perfect edge right around down my shiny head, down my shoulders and so forth. And that creates a mat that then keeps me in front of whatever you're gonna layer into the shot.

27:47Stephen RosenbaumNow, you know, long ago, that used to be drawn hand, you know, hand by, you know, h… frame by frame by hand. As we started using computers, we started to, the computers, you, we could do all the in-betweening with the computer. So you could draw, you know, if I'm moving from here to here, you could draw the starting and the end position, and then the computers could figure out all the in-between frames. Now, with this AI roto, tools we have, we're letting the computer start to figure out those key frame positions. So, you know, if it, if I'm starting here and I'm moving here, it could, it looks at those frames all as one sequence and, you know, with, you know, s… the algorithms that are pretty smart, they, it will understand, okay, I need to draw an articulate mat for this. And it gives you, it gives you 95% of that. It's not perfect, but it saves a lot of time. So there's still some hand work that has to go into it, to start layering. As far as the reflections go, we had, we had CG versions of the actors.

28:54Stephen RosenbaumSo I scanned them all, and then we would do, CG versions of them. I… in some cases we used them as, you know, the camera, would actually see them. You know, for example, when they're falling through the sky, you know, jumped out, jumped out…

29:08Jawad MirRight

29:09Stephen Rosenbaum... Of a plane and…

29:10Jawad MirParachutes

29:10Stephen Rosenbaum... Sky and so forth.

29:12Jawad MirYeah.

29:12Stephen RosenbaumBut for the most part, for, like, reflections, they would just be, animated to move to match the actor's motion. So again, if the actor went up from here to here, we would do the CG version of that person moving from here to here, render it from a, from the reflection, reflected angle, you know, the incident angle, to the, to the, where the camera was looking. So if it's here, the reflection's gonna be, you know, exactly the opposite of that position. And so, and then layer that in at a, at a reduced, opacity, essentially partially transparent, element that then would be layered on. And that gave that reflection. So if you understand what I'm talking about, like…

29:53Jawad MirYeah

29:53Stephen Rosenbaum... You're seeing reflection of something, you're not seeing, it's not completely opaque.

29:57Jawad MirYeah.

29:57Stephen RosenbaumYou just wanna get a sense that there's something there. And that gives the sense of the window fra… you know, that there is actually a glass there. We also added scratches. You'll see that there's subtle, like, scratches and pitting on the window. That helps a lot, too. Yeah.

30:13Jawad MirYeah. No, thanks for answering that. And yeah, it's, it's, again, what you just said is something I've been kinda saying o… over and over again, the detail. The attention to detail is so important in any project, but specifically with this, you know. And o… one thing I wanted to ask you, kinda moving away from B-17s Now, I don't know if this episode has been aired yet, so I don't know if I can even remotely ask you in detail, but, just to kinda generalize the sets of, POWs, right? Were there any visual effects used in that sequence to kinda expand the view…

30:53Stephen RosenbaumYeah

30:53Jawad Mir... Of those places?

30:54Stephen RosenbaumYeah, I'm, I'm glad you asked about that. We... I… it was interesting. If you, if you think back, wh… when I started on the show t… January of '21, we were... COVID was just really getting bad, right?

31:10Jawad MirYeah.

31:11Stephen RosenbaumAnd, I moved to England to start prepping for this and, the UK had done something interesting where they'd, they'd, they decided, "Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna try to make a go of this. We're gonna,.. There's gonna be all these protocols, you know. You have to wear a mask." I mean, ev… every day was, you know, wake up, answer something on the, on a website that says, "No, I don't have a temperature. No, I'm not achy." And then you'd show up at work and you'd walk up to the security guard, he would take your temperature, and then say, "Okay, you're good. Go get tested." You get tested, a PCR test. Get your red wristband and then go sit in your car for an hour and a half waiting f… to get the test.

31:54Jawad MirWow.

31:55Stephen RosenbaumGo to work. So just a quick digression to explain my answer. So you're, you know, it's, it's, you know, you're showing up at 6:00 AM to just start work, you know, by 7:38. And, you know, they, you get the text and you go, okay, come get your green wristband, and then you can go to work, and you're wearing a mask all day, and you have, COVID, we had COVID minders, p… you know, this team, COVID team that would, you know, ex…

32:19Jawad MirCOVID police.

32:20Stephen RosenbaumYeah. COVID police we call them. Yeah, exactly. And if, and if you got too close to somebody or you're having a conversation, or, you know, the n… the tendency is to pull your mask down a little bit, and s… when you're, you're trying to have a deeper conversation and they come over and sh… you know, reprimand you. But we, it worked. I mean, people got used to it. I… certainly there were the occasional outbreaks and delays and so forth as a result, but it worked. And, but what it meant was that, if you think about Europe, the rest of Europe being completely shut down, we had the intention originally to go on location and shoot a lot of these environments and, or build ex… more extensive environments. So, that was all off. So the art department, you know, b… basically had to pivot and build, you know, sets to whatever they could, you know, was reasonable schedule and cost-wise. And so in the case of like the Stalag, the POW camps…

33:18Stephen Rosenbaum... They built four barracks. And then so when you see everything beyond those four barracks, that's all visual effects. Including people. So we had, you know, it's not just the environment extension. Rodeo FX did all those, all that work, and they did a really good job with it. So it's all, you know, visual effects extension, with digi-people populated into the background.

33:47Jawad MirYeah.

33:48Stephen RosenbaumBut there were a lot of other, people will see, again, just going back to the extraordinary production value we were really intent on adding to the show, and it's not just visual effects. Every department just was…

34:00Jawad MirYep

34:00Stephen Rosenbaum... Bringing amazing…

34:00Jawad Mir100%.

34:01Stephen RosenbaumYeah. But we had all these locations that we needed to build out. You know, if you'll see p… episode four, there's a shot, there's an establishing shot over, it starts low, across train tracks, and the train goes by.

34:19Jawad MirYes.

34:19Stephen RosenbaumAnd the camera booms up and it's Paris. Big establishing shot. That's 100% CG. So that, people look at that, they go f… that's just f… it's phenomenal. It's not, we couldn't go to Paris and shoot a shot like that because of COVID, so we had to just create it. I tried, I spent a lot of time, we had scouts going across like Eastern Europe, maybe we could sh… you know, get a piece of it or something like that. And then finally we just said, "We're just gonna have to create it." So the train, the tracks, the, all the background cars, the people, and the Paris, terrain, including the Seine, the sparkly water, it's all computer generated, done by Whiskey Tree. They did, they, so those kind of environments. You'll see it later, in some of the German villages that we're, we come across, and even a German city that we come across, which is, you know, has very recognizable, features to it. People will rec… you know, pe… anybody who studies World War II will know, you know, what the, what city we happen to be in.

35:21Stephen RosenbaumAnd that's, that was all fabricated in the case of the actors moving through. They just built a, our department built a little set, and then we would extend out from there, put the whole city around it. So there's quite a, quite a lot of environment extensions, that we had to create, just for the sake of not having the ability to go on location, but still wanting to, you know, maintain the production value of, you know, not just staying in, you know, a handful of environments like so many shows end up doing.

35:53Jawad MirYeah. And again, one of the things that you see on TV series or even films where the visual effects might be really great, but just somehow, whether it's the camera movement or whether it's the interaction of the characters, you feel that it's not real. You feel that it's kinda like, you know, for the lack of a better word, fake.

36:17Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

36:17Jawad MirBut again, I don't know if it's my bias, you know, be… being a fan of Band of Brothers or Pacific, and Pacific, a… and a Spielberg fan. It's just, it d… like that train sequence that you're telling me about, I, while you were talking, I was just like, "Holy crap." Like, i… it didn't even seem... Like, to me, that was real. I felt it was real. And that's an amazing thing to achieve bec… and that's at the same time quite a scary thing, because what's gonna happen the next 10 years, imagine, right? Like, do we really need anything else? Everything is gonna be all visuals.

36:51Stephen RosenbaumOh, I don't, I don't know about that. I think for me…

36:52Jawad MirI'm just, I'm just saying, right?

36:55Stephen RosenbaumIt really goes towards, you know, I think, you know, the, that cinematic expertise.

37:02Jawad MirYeah.

37:02Stephen RosenbaumI had the benefit of coming up... You know, I started, I started as an artist, and I'd spent many years, lighting and composing shots, and, w… I had the benefit of working a lot with Steven on sh… on a number of shows. And he, the, I think the biggest takeaway I had or I learned from him was grounding the camera, learning how to, you know, offer the perspective that the audience understands. It's not, you know, too often these days because it's a computer-generated effect, you get these magic camera moves that are, you know, flying from A to B in, you know,.3 seconds. And you... The audience sees it, and they kinda go, "Oh," and they accept it, but they don't, they don't understand why it looks fake, and it's, it's usually because of that, because we're, we're... There's a sort of this subconscious betrayal of the laws of physics, you know?

38:03Stephen RosenbaumThere, it's just not physically plausible to…

38:05Jawad MirYeah

38:05Stephen Rosenbaum... Achieve that stuff. So if you... You know, what St… what I learned from Steven, and I try to impart on throughout this series, is figuring out how to ground the camera so, you know, whether you're inside the B-17 or you're stuck to the outside of it, you're attached to it, or your point of view is if you have to do a geography shot, it could be shot from another plane looking down, or looking across. It's, it's, it has to be, like, physically, a physically plausible camera position, and moving at a, at a physically accurate, speed. So all the cameras that we have are... You know, the planes are moving at the correct speed. The B-17s are flying, you know, anywhere from 150 to 180 miles an hour typically. The German fighters are coming in at the correct speeds, you know, 300, sometimes 400 miles an hour. So there's, there's the, all the accuracy of speed and composition follows that, you know, that grounding position of like, okay, I...

39:11Stephen RosenbaumIf I were really there, I could understand that action. And sometimes it's just a quick flash, and that's okay. It's just like, that's what would really happen, you know? You only have a split second to see something, and that really is the point of, I think those air battles. When you, when you... You know, you see a lot of other shows where, you know, there's, there's fighter planes coming and, you know, you're on it for five, six, seven seconds. You know, here it comes. It's still coming, and there it goes. And it's like that just doesn't happen. They're just, like, gone in an instant. So for us, it was, like, important to make sure we were physically grounding the camera, we were physically accurate with our speeds, and then the composition is just a reaction to that.

39:59Jawad MirYeah, and I'm glad you mentioned S… Steven's, approach. I mean, to me, there's very handful of directors who know how to use visual effects properly in the film.

40:10Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

40:10Jawad MirSpielberg being one of them, probably the pioneer I would say. And then Christopher Nolan is another one. I mean, he more so uses practical effects, so… sort of Spielberg. But there's just that integration and marriage of real elements versus, you know, computer-generated elements. We saw that in Jurassic Park, the original one that first came out.

40:31Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

40:31Jawad MirLike, where you see the full-sized dinosaurs CGI, but anything else where you don't see it in full body shot, it's animatronics, right? Whether it was a T… T-Rex or Triceratops. But yeah, no, and it, again, like, it's just a… an amazing achievement that you guys have made, and you know, I really enjoyed the series. I've been looking forward to it for a long time, and having to see it and just feel the excellence that went behind it... From everybody, from Colleen to yourself, your team, to directors, to John, everyone. It's just, it shows. It clearly shows.

41:14Stephen RosenbaumThanks. It... I think people are starting to see now as the episodes come out that it's, it keeps getting better.

41:24Jawad MirIt does.

41:25Stephen RosenbaumYou know, o…

41:25Jawad MirIt does

41:26Stephen Rosenbaum... One and two were, are sort of a nece… necessity in terms of, like, laying the framework so the audience…

41:30Jawad MirYeah

41:30Stephen Rosenbaum... Understands and so forth. So, it was a, it was probably the most, quote-unquote, "generic" of it. But then, you know, you're starting to... Okay, you're introduced to a lot of characters, and now you're trying to get into, you know, their heads, basically, following on and understanding the, their fear and their, what their f… their sacrifice that essentially that they're making. And then, and then it, you, then you're in it. From three onwards, you're, you're now on this ride with them, and it, and I would say by episode nine, people are gonna be really pleased. It's, it was…

42:03Jawad MirOh, they will be, and for me, and this is not trying to take one episode better over the other, just for personally for me, episodes seven, eight, and six were the best. Like, I, like, that's where the plot really gets interesting. Not that it doesn't before. Characters become really... Like, you're attached to the characters way more. The stakes are high. And obviously, you know, the episode nine was so beautifully done as well. Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about, just briefly, you mentioned, I think the gentleman's name was Tyler who has his own B-17, right?

42:37Stephen RosenbaumTy.

42:37Jawad MirSo he…

42:37Stephen RosenbaumTy Remy, yeah.

42:38Jawad MirTy Remy.

42:39Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

42:40Jawad MirI would love to have talked to him about that. So he was, is a, I believe…

42:45Stephen RosenbaumHe's around. I think if you Google, like, B-17 bomber camp, I forget the exact website, but it's, it's in Stockton, California. You'll see it.

42:54Jawad MirHow far is Stock… Stockton from, San Francisco? I'm gonna be going there in a couple of weeks. I'm just wondering if I can, not that I know how to fly, just even to go to the camp.

43:03Stephen RosenbaumI think it's about an hour.

43:04Jawad MirOkay, so that's not bad.

43:06Stephen RosenbaumYeah. Yeah.

43:07Jawad MirOkay. Yeah, no, I'll, I'll, I'll re… So he was the, as a c… a consultant in the beginning of the series, or?

43:13Stephen RosenbaumYeah. He was there, he was with us from beginning and through the shoot. So he was there on set with us every day, you know. A… a… and you can imagine, you know, the myriad of technical questions. It's like we... That's again one of the great things about the show is like, okay, the sequencing for the dialogue between the pilot and the bombardier in terms of, you know, now they're on their bombing run. What's the, what are the steps, the processes? And just, you know, making sure that they're flipping the right switch, that they're setting the, they're s… you know, they're setting the speed correctly.

43:48Jawad MirYeah.

43:48Stephen RosenbaumAnd then they're handing over the aircraft to the, to the navigator. The navigator's actually flying the plane at that point. I mean, the, sorry, the navigator, the bombardier is actually flying the plane at that point. So just, you know, Ty was very key to helping us understand that, the little idiosyncrasies. I remember him, you know, I, pretty much every week I'd like, I'll go, "Ty, tell me about cow flaps. How do cow flaps work?" You know? And, you know, you see them open when they're taking off, but it's like, okay, when do they open that? Well, it's, it's right, you know, when they do the pre-flight check. They're, they're going through all their rou… routines. And so it's like, okay, well, at this point they need to be open until they take off and then they pull them back, you know? And so it's those little s… subtle technical details that he was key to.

44:35Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. N… and speaking of learning, did you... What did you learn about World War II that you did not know before? And also about B17s, like do you have any interest in maybe going to the bomber camp and trying to learn how to, how to fly one?

44:54Stephen RosenbaumOh, yeah. I mean, we had, there were, there are some B17s in the UK, and we were very much wanting to get up in there, but they, the production wouldn't let us for insurance reasons. They were like, "No."

45:06Jawad MirYeah, of course.

45:07Stephen Rosenbaum"You can do that after we're done shooting." But

45:10Jawad MirSo you do know how to fly? Do you know how to fly?

45:12Stephen RosenbaumNo. They…

45:13Jawad MirOkay

45:14Stephen Rosenbaum... You can, but they, we wanted to experience it, so there were…

45:18Jawad MirOh, just pi… pilots.

45:19Stephen RosenbaumYeah. So, but I'm still very keen now. I mean, it's interesting 'cause I know pretty much every little detail of a B17F. The Gs are, I'll ta… I can talk about that in a second. But the, our principal aircraft was the F model. And, you know, to, what we built two model, full-size, full-size model versions of them to use…

45:46Stephen Rosenbaum... O… on the airfield, so they could taxi around and park on a hard stand and so forth. They had little electric motors attached to them so they could wheel around, but they were not, they were not airworthy. You know, they couldn't, they couldn't fly nor move pa… move more than really 10 miles an hour. But anyway, I would, I would love to go up and, I mean, Ty's always like, you know, "Come on out," and do it. So now that the show has come out I would love to get up there and fly one for real. There's, there's still s… still some airworthy ones out there, so I'm, I'm anxious to do that. We did, when we were shooting I did make a point of scanning the, some real B17s. I scanned the real Memphis Belle. And, there are actually some, what do you call them? Easter eggs that I put into the, into some of the shots. You'll, if people look carefully in episode four, I put Piccadilly Lilly in there, which…

46:50Jawad MirAh

46:51Stephen Rosenbaum... She was actually in the, she was in the 100th, and, she's in the background. It wa… she wasn't a featured aircraft, in our, in our series, but, you know, because she's such a famous, plane, I put the original Piccadilly Lilly 'cause there were, I think there were multiple since. But all the, all the serial numbers and, ID, you know, marking IDs that were on the plane, they're all technically accurate. I had a, I had a, there was some guy who wrote a book that has lists every single plane, their serial number, all their, all their markings, so we were very methodical about getting that. So I challenge anybody to find a mistake in there

47:34Jawad MirOkay.

47:35Stephen RosenbaumBut you might be able to spot Piccadilly Lilly as a result of, you know, finding the serial number if you know what the Piccadilly Lilly is. So, you know, you'll go, "That's it. That's her." Yeah. Anyway.

47:43Jawad MirNo. That's, that's good to know. That's awesome. You know, your credentials are incredible. Something that I always talk about in the beginning of an episode, but we just dived into, you know, Master of the Air really quickly and organically. You know, I, tell me if I've got this wrong on IMDb just because I'm kinda going over it. Like, you know, you worked on films like, Terminator 2, Avatar, Jurassic Park, of course, R… Hunt for Red October, and, you know, Indian in the Cupboard. I remember as a kid that was a huge thing for me.

48:17Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

48:17Jawad MirAnd one thing, one movie that came out that I s… I gotta watch again, and now that I just, it just reminded me because looking at your IMDb, Snow Falling on Cedars.

48:27Stephen RosenbaumOh, yeah.

48:27Jawad MirLike that I mem… that I remember watching that, and I just don't, I honestly don't even remember now what the premise was, but I remember the visuals, and I gotta see it again, and I gotta talk to you about that again eventually if you're up for it, or other films, 'cause that would be a really cool discussion to have.

48:46Stephen RosenbaumI'll tell you a funny story because you're a Canuck. It's like there, we went, we shot this, the Snow Falling on Cedars in interior BC, and, we did a scout like in December. I forget what year it was. But it was like the…... Perfect. I mean, you're like, you get there and everything's, like, crystalline white. Trees are just laden with heavy snow, and the streets that the little town that we shot in, Greenwood, I think it was. Greenwood, BC. You can look it up. Great bakery there. And, we were like, "Where's the cameras? We need to, you know, start shooting." Anyway, we came back a month later to, with a, with the crew, and there had been no snow. If you imagine January in Canada, there was no snow, that's, like, total anomaly, right?

49:31Jawad MirThat's this, that's this year too. Yeah.

49:33Stephen RosenbaumYeah. So we were like, you know, it was just one of those moments where the whole crew is like, we arrive at this town and it's like, there's not a speck of snow anywhere. And, you know, you could see all the producers sort of simultaneously spin and turn and look at me and go, "Steven?" "Can you help us here?" So when you see the snow, I mean, the foreground snow was all practical. They brought in artificial snow for, like…

49:59Jawad MirYeah

49:59Stephen Rosenbaum... Close-up shots. But everything extended beyond all the following, everything was all c…

50:05Jawad MirVisuals.

50:07Stephen RosenbaumIt became its own character in the show. But a good movie.

50:09Jawad MirIt is.

50:11Stephen RosenbaumBeautifully shot.

50:12Jawad MirBeautifully shot, great characters, great story that I don't remember, but I remember that it was great when I saw it. But yeah, no, amazing. I mean, your work is amazing. It speaks for itself. You know, thank you so much for working on Masters of the Air. Not that, you know, you're, you did it for anybody, but, you know, just for the story, and the fans absolutely love the series. People are talking about it online, and it just, it's amazing. And I w… I would love to ch… I really enjoyed this conversation. I would love to chat more if you have time down the road for any of your other projects. It'd be amazing to happen.

50:49Stephen RosenbaumSure, happy to do that, yeah.

50:51Jawad MirGreat. Anything else you wanna add?

50:53Stephen RosenbaumNo. I mean, I mean, for me, you touched on something a moment ago about, you know, what motivated me. And it, you know, it was interesting, like, for me, again, I hadn't... I kinda had dabbled a little bit into World War II genre in pa… on a, on another project, but really this was the first deep dive into it.

51:18Stephen RosenbaumAnd I think the, for me, a… and I think this resonated a lot with a, with the crew, is as you get into it, you start to really realize, you know, how terrified these people were, how a… scared. You know, there's just, fear was a huge factor in it. But yet they still did it day after day. They got into these planes and they went out there. And it sort of, to me, it established something in my mind that, it, which I think is kind of timely, actually, for our, you know, what's going on in politics and so forth in the world, where it's just, like, the element of sacrifice. You know, knowing that there's something more important that's worth sacrificing, you know. Basically setting aside your fear, your anxiety about things and, you know, for the better, for the common good, you know, that it, that it's important. And I think that was something that really resonated with me, is like these guys really... I mean, the, you hear the term sacrifice, but you don't really understand what it is until you, until you really start to witness what they went through.

52:20Stephen RosenbaumAnd then you ask yourself, "Well, why do they keep going?" And they really, they realize because it's, it's for something bigger than they, than their own self-interest. And I…

52:30Jawad MirYeah

52:30Stephen Rosenbaum... That's, that's something that I think really motivated us, dr… drove us, in terms of producing, you know, the best work we could.

52:39Jawad MirSo it's amazing that how everyone I've spoken to has pretty much said the exact same thing, that how that motivated them to produce the best work they could. And then, and you know, it's, going to what you were saying, it's about, you know, the camaraderie that these people have, not just in Masters of the Air, just World War II itself, and, or any war, or any army. It's about the man next to you, right?

52:59Stephen RosenbaumYeah.

52:59Jawad MirLike, that's who you're fighting for. And I think…

53:01Stephen RosenbaumYeah

53:02Jawad Mir... That attitude of, selflessness is, that's…

53:06Stephen RosenbaumYeah

53:06Jawad Mir... Where you probably get, I don't know. My dad served in the Army too. He never talks about it, but that's where you get that motivation, that it's not about me. Maybe it's about the cause or for the good, but it's also mainly about the guy next to me, because I know this guy…

53:22Stephen RosenbaumYeah

53:22Jawad Mir... Really well.

53:23Stephen RosenbaumYeah. Yeah. Yeah.

53:25Jawad MirGreat. Thank you so much, Steven. Appreciate your time, man. We really had a great time, and thank you for all the insight.

53:31Stephen RosenbaumWell, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

53:33Jawad MirTalk soon. Take care.

53:34Stephen RosenbaumTake care. Bye.

53:35Jawad MirBye-bye. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share, and comment, and do come back for another episode. Until then, have a great day.