Once we had done our detailed research and created the 3D, we had it approved or adjusted by U.S. In the same way, on Generation Kill we sourced masses of reference material from military websites, the BBC motion gallery, reference books, stills taken on set by our representatives and even YouTube! We needed to research the way the guns fired, the way the equipment looked and operated.

We were pretty happy that we got that positive feedback from people there so we are confident that people who aren't there are watching something realistic.ĭave Sewell: HBO pride themselves on authenticity in all of their productions and I know that Cinesite strove for absolute realism on Band of Brothers. We only had two feedbacks that were saying we needed to change things, which we did. HBO was big on this realism so they also had several test screenings with large groups of Marines who also fought in the Iraq War for the purpose to ask them if this is what it's like. HBO said that if he approves it, then they are happy with it. Everything we created had to be OK'd by him. We had a military advisor, Eric Kocher, who was actually a soldier in the real events that the program is about so he's seen everything we are portraying with his own eyes. HBO have been really big on the fact that it's got to look exactly like it happened. It's all very much like working on something that's happening as we speak so it was challenging and very rewarding. It's not like doing a WWII project where there are streams of documentation of how things looked and happened. I think the biggest challenge is that although it was historical, in the sense that it was five years ago, it's quite current. While it's a drama, it's based on real events and it's shot in a documentary style. Stuart Partridge: The whole premise of the show is that it had to be completely photorealistic. What did HBO express to you about what they wanted to see from Cinesite for Generation Kill ?

Tara Bennett: Obviously Band of Brothers was a phenomenal achievement in war storytelling.

In 2001 HBO and Cinesite were lauded for Band of Brothers so they worked to recapture that success again on this new project.Ĭinesite Effects Supervisors for Generation Kill, Dave Sewell (episodes 1, 2, 3, 7) and Stuart Partridge (episodes 4, 5, 6) and CG Supervisor Stephane Paris spoke to VFXWorld about the challenges of bringing a current war story to the screen in an authentic way. In order to get the realism of such recent history correct, HBO went back to their frequent visual effects collaborator, Cinesite (Europe) Ltd. The seven-part miniseries follows a reporter embedded with the First Recon Bravo Company Second Platoon during the first wave of the war in 2003. This summer HBO shifts its focus to the present day Iraq War in the adaptation of Evan Wright's novel Generation Kill. From the Emmy Award-winning Band of Brothers to their latest miniseries Generation Kill, HBO demands authenticity in the telling of their war stories, which makes them such 'must see' events. When it comes to making films and documentaries about our world's great wars and conflicts, HBO has positioned itself as one of the preeminent networks.

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