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MASTERS OF THE AIR San Rafael, CA's Whiskeytree (https://whiskytree. com) was brought in to work on 19 shots for Masters of the Air, but that order grew over the se- ries' long schedule, ultimately rising to a total of 283. According to Whiskeytree VFX supervisor Aidan Fraser, the studio's contributions spanned the en- tire series, and began with basic, out-the-window shots that replaced previs elements shot on an LED volume. "A lot of the scenes we were working on were kind of where they're on the ground," Fraser ex- plains. "Less of the big action scenes, but required creating that photoreal environment. (They were) slower-paced scenes, and we're used to working on big action scenes, where shots are less than three seconds long. We're looking at a lot of really long takes. So that was interesting. We really get to stare at the work for a while." He points to a scene where the crew is ground- ed due to intense fog. The scene was shot with a gray-screen backdrop and then the Whiskeytree team created the low-visibility environment. One of Whiskeytree's more intricate contribu- tions was a long establishing shot of Nazi-occupied Paris. The visuals are part of a three-minute scene that includes a view from a train and then expands to show period-accurate architecture that's been adorned with German flags. "All of that detail was really fun to kind of esearch and get into," says Fraser of the city's architecture. Fellow VFX supervisor Brian Meanley agrees. "There was a lot of research that went into it. Aidan had done a lot of good work to upfront, like trying to find the right location to base our shots in. And then from there, we could look at the actual map data to make sure we got historically-accurate buildings, streets and the trains that were running through the city. We wanted to make sure we start- ed with that data upfront. And then things had to be art directed a bit too, so we had to remain flexi- ble. But because it was such a large, vast shot, a lot of it [had] to be done procedurally. So that's where (lead digital artist) Pierre (Nahoum) came in." The studio's VFX skills landed them another complicated shot — a scene set just after the Allied forces take the coast of France. "(VFX supervisor Stephen Rosenbaum) liked working with us," recalls Fraser. "Our work was going over well, and he said, 'How about we give you D-Day?' It became one of the shots that's in the opening sequence — that's quite an undertak- ing. We're up in the air, from the pilot's perspec- tive, looking down, seeing not only squadrons of B-17s and P-51s, but basically everything that has happened on Omaha Beach after the battle, and seeing all of the organizing of troops, vehicles and tents. Just an enormous amount of detail to put into those shots." That particular shot went through several itera- tions, notes CG supervisor J.P. Monroy. "We kind of used a bit of that early part of the shot creation to define the amount of things happening in the scene," Monroy recalls. "We had a lot of flexibility in moving things around and getting sort of the right framing, the right composition of boats…You kind of build the assets and then you start to lay them out and get a good read first. Then, you go from there with iterations and an art direction." Whiskeytree uses Autodesk Maya as its asset cre- ation tool and Houdini for procedural aspects, while Gaffer is used more for layout and scene assembly. They also developed a system to procedurally add bullet holes and flak tears to plate footage of actual bombers to represent the damage they received from their respective missions. Fraser describes them as extremely-detailed effects that were added at render time. "(It) also gave us creative flexibility, so we [could] move that damage around the plane and kind of see it as we're working on it," he explains. "We didn't have to be locked down to one kind of look, and we could work with continuity." WHISKEYTREE Deva Anderson (pictured) is the in-house music supervisor at Tom Hanks & Gary Goetzman's production company, Playtone. Masters of the Air features more than 20 on-camera musical performances, as well as 35-plus licensed songs. In fact, the Artie Shaw song "The Chant" was used several times throughout the series and is interwoven with Rosie Rosenthal's portrayal. Four studios created most of the series' 3,400 VFX shots.