10,000 BC meets Sky Capitan in Sci Fi channel premiere of WarbirdsHOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 4/19/08 – “The movie really holds up, with or without the pterodactyls,” says Jamie Mann of ‘Warbirds’, premiering on the SCI FI channel tonight. Mann plays a WWII WASP (Women’s Air Service Corps) pilot ferrying “the bomb” and forced down by a storm on a deserted Pacific island. Well, deserted except for the Japanese soldiers and ravenous flying monsters. It’s a WWII fantasy in the style of ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’, but with dinosaurs instead of robots.
Although not pterodactyls, Mann says real flying monsters attacked the cast and crew while shooting in the bayous of St. Francisville, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge. “When the sun goes down the bugs come out. You’ve never seen bugs like these. It’s 100 degrees and 100% humidity, and the cameraman is wearing gloves and a hat, and has a back scratcher. The horseflies are so large they can bite you through your clothes. People were jumping, shrieking, bleeding from bugs, 24 hours a day.
There’s one scene in the movie where if you look closely you can see [co-star] Brian Krause getting bitten by a mosquito. I couldn’t believe he didn’t flinch. And, there were snakes. I’ve never spent any time in the woods before. I did not like walking back to base camp at night. I was terrified.”
“We’re very happy we went there, but in the beginning Louisiana was a financial decision,” says executive producer Bill Greenblatt. “This was a very expensive movie for the SCI FI channel, more expensive than most SCI FI movies. It was difficult to find a way to make the movie on the budget [under $2M]. We checked out many locations. We went to Puerto Rico because they have rebates, but it would be more expensive to make it there. Louisiana had the most easily accessible rebates and locations that would look like a south sea island. We had a very good time in Louisiana. I would go back again.”
“We did casting out here [Hollywood] and local casting in Louisiana,” says Greenblatt. “We did casting ourselves. Jamie was the first person who came in to read the part. I knew she was it right away, that there wouldn’t be anyone better.
Brian was cast up here. We also cast Tohoru Masamune who played the Japanese captain. And, he was really wonderful. He came and read and we thought maybe he had too strong a Japanese accent. But, then we found he was born in New England to Japanese parents and had no Japanese accent. His father was head of the math department at MIT, and Tohoru is a graduate of MIT himself. Kevin’s wife Susan also graduated from MIT and was a student of his father’s. We also cast Gizza Elizondo here who plays Vicky, who’s someone I’ve worked with before. The rest of the people were cast in Lousianna.”
‘Warbirds’ is Kevin Gendreau’s first film as writer-director. A reason that ‘Warbirds’ is so heavy on visual effects is that first-time director Gendreau has supervised visual effects on many films for the SCI FI channel. “It’s huge,” says Greenblatt. “There are over 250 visual effects shots. We only had 15 days to shoot [in June 2007]. We not only had to do what you usually do in an action movie, but block and shoot plates that are necessary later. It was shot on 35mm film, and the dailies were transferred to Hi-Def. The editing was all done in Hi-Def in Final Cut Pro by Margaret Guinee, who did an excellent job. I think working in Hi-Def is how most of these movies are made today. We needed to be working on individual scenes in visual effects almost before the picture was locked.”
‘Warbirds’ is a ‘Jurassic Park’ meets ‘Sky Captain’ scenario. In the final days of World War II, a group of WASPs fight the Japanese and pterodactyls.
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