
It was more efficient to blow up a real 747 than to use miniatures or CGI - a5withtrrs
https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2546992/why-christopher-nolan-actually-blew-up-a-real-plane-for-tenet
======
MichaelZuo
A 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.

~~~
112012123
They'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....

~~~
nathan_f77
Wow, I would have never guessed that! That makes me think that it might be fun
to buy a piece of land and live inside an old 747. I found this video where
someone is living inside a Boeing 727: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iat-
WgSvGME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iat-WgSvGME)

Here's another person living in a 727:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=rKm5oF2p-II](https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=rKm5oF2p-II)

This one has a much nicer interior:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwLlI9abgU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwLlI9abgU)

According to one of the comments on the first video, they spent 120k on the
plane, and another 100k to move it to the forest. I would probably want to
spend another ~300k for renovations and everything else (proper foundation,
shower, kitchen, water and sewer lines, etc. etc.)

It's not cheap, but that's a lot cheaper than I was expecting. Especially
compared to the average house in an expensive city. I think it might also be a
lot more fun than living in a "tiny house".

I recently read this "Why We Don't Like Our Underground House" article that
was posted on HN: [https://dengarden.com/misc/The-Pitfalls-of-an-Underground-
Ho...](https://dengarden.com/misc/The-Pitfalls-of-an-Underground-House) That
was a reminder that doing something unconventional can be risky and cause lots
of unexpected problems. So it would probably be a good idea to also spend a
lot of money on architects and engineers to make sure that everything is done
properly and there's no surprises.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
A better price break down is probably:

$120k on the plane. $5k to move it into the forest. $95k fee for not having
friends with heavy equipment. $200k for making somebody else do the renovating
for you. $50k on materials. $50k on markup.

Neither the weight nor size of the plane are astronomical. The square footage
to renovate isn't that high either. The reason it costs so much is that it's
odd and every time you pay someone else there's a huge cost associated with a
one-off and everything about the project is one-off.

~~~
nsonha
transporting a dead airplane should cost much more than 5k

~~~
loco5niner
That's where this comment comes in:

> $95k fee for not having friends with heavy equipment.

------
trimbo
I 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.

~~~
berkut
While I agree in general, I work in the VFX industry as a software dev writing
a renderer that's used for blockbusters, and one situation where CG still
isn't quite "there" yet IMO is fluid effects and explosions (which is somewhat
combined with the simulation of them as well as the rendering).

So much iteration time can go into attempting to get the right "shape" of the
simulation, as well as "colours" (smoke, combustion, flame), whether via a
black-body spectral shader or a more artist-driven one, and it's very
difficult to get people to agree on what looks "real" or "right", especially
compared to say hard-surface rendering.

Doing it practically (assuming the correct scale, and fuels were used) _might_
(depending on directors and producers' opinions) make people "just" accept
that the result is "realistic", and remove a lot of the uncertainty, at the
very least just because they can't tweak things afterwards, and what was
recorded is the result they get, as opposed to having a team of 10s of people
iterating for months (including lots of compute time for simulations and
rendering) trying to get something the people at the top are happy looks
"real".

~~~
tempnowreal
Hi, if I wanted to have a career doing what you do whats path if course I
should take considering im a total novice in programming.

~~~
berkut
I'm not sure I'm afraid... I started programming when I was quite young, and
have always been interested in it, and in terms of the VFX / Graphics
industry, I've only been involved in that for the past 10 years, before that I
was in other industries, so I really stumbled into doing it.

All the graphics / VFX knowledge I now have is self-taught (other than
learning off colleagues) as well as experience working in the industry.

I'd say learning how to program is a good starting point, if you are _really_
interested in graphics it's probably a good idea move into low-level
programming (C,C++,CUDA) that's used in the HPC realm, because often the code
will need to be extremely optimised. However, you can still do cool things in
a higher-level language.

~~~
tempnowreal
Thank you. I've always felt this is a niche field and hence not may resources
are available online.

Thanks a bunch for your output :)

------
tardismechanic
Reminds 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
I 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. ;)

~~~
mhh__
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnGXerN0tlo)

Here is a video of Jeremy Clarkson getting an English Electric Lightning
installed in his front garden, much to his wife's dismay (as you might expect)

~~~
zaroth
Wife: Does this shows up on rad... err, satellite?

Husband: ...yeah.

Wife: So we could become a bombing target.

Husband: ...No?

Wife: You don’t think they’ll mistake us for an airbase?

Husband: We’ll be able to use this, in the summer, as a place to get out of
the heat!

------
helsinkiandrew
The 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.

~~~
cm2187
I must say that I lost interest in all-cgi action sequences. Too smooth and
cartoonish to feel real. I miss the roughness of the movies from the 90s. The
archetype is something like Die Hard 3. From a cinematographic point of view,
I fully support using real planes when possible.

~~~
kungtotte
Take a look at Jurassic Park sometime, the Spielberg one from 1993. They used
animatronics for most of the dinos and they look almost real still, almost 30
years on.

The same with the original Star Wars trilogy, they're all models lit by actual
lights so there's a depth and "realness" to the lighting that makes it look so
much more authentic than even modern CGI.

~~~
kbr2000
Indiana Jones special effects were pretty interesting too in that regard:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN4weKvqmb8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lN4weKvqmb8)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YceegyOXzh0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YceegyOXzh0)

------
OldHand2018
It'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)

------
TazeTSchnitzel
This 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.

~~~
herbstein
This 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)

------
mdturnerphys
Original source: [https://www.gamesradar.com/tenet-christopher-
nolan-747-plane...](https://www.gamesradar.com/tenet-christopher-
nolan-747-plane-crash-interview/)

What he actually said was "efficient" not "cost effective".

~~~
dang
Ok, we've changed the title to say that. Thanks!

------
viraptor
I 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
Pure 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.

------
unicornporn
Blog spam. Original blog post: [https://www.gamesradar.com/tenet-christopher-
nolan-747-plane...](https://www.gamesradar.com/tenet-christopher-
nolan-747-plane-crash-interview/)

------
exabrial
I 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_.

------
icpmoles
To my surprise the airplane was pretty much unbroken from the outside.

[https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9719776](https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/9719776)

------
amelius
That's wasteful. I hope someone can prove him wrong by doing it in CGI.

~~~
formerly_proven
Aren'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
Yeah 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_Forc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Monthan_Air_Force_Base)

------
aeternum
Should have used a 737-max, probably could pick one up for close to free :)

~~~
karamazov
They wanted a controlled explosion.

------
khendron
I 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?

------
rkachowski
It 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
I 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.

------
aaronbrethorst
Congrats 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-
ch...](https://variety.com/2020/film/box-office/tenet-box-office-christopher-
nolan-warner-bros-1234768187/)

~~~
iwasakabukiman
There's no way that $200 million is break even for that movie.

The budget alone was $200 million, which doesn't factor in marketing...which
will probably be higher than normal since they had to run a marketing campaign
multiple times as it was pushed back throughout the months. Often times that
alone can be as much as the movie budget.

~~~
teruakohatu
With Hollywood Accounting they would have inflated the costs as much as
legally possible.

------
slykar
It's just an ad.

~~~
Udik
Exactly. It's one of those movie-trivia articles to keep up the interest in a
movie. Part of the marketing budget I suppose.

------
UrSuchAGenius
It's a shame Nolan didn't use the Mexican presidential plane, lol. It's for
sale.

~~~
prichino
I would have paid to see that.

------
bookofjoe
[https://youtu.be/iv1ZRdgSrsM](https://youtu.be/iv1ZRdgSrsM)

------
ineedasername
"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.

------
addicted
It’s Nolan. He doesn’t like CGI when he can avoid it.

This doesn’t pass the smell test.

------
code_duck
I would estimate that if you include the true environmental costs of
destroying a plane with explosives, this is not accurate.

~~~
icebraining
Here'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
Okay. Looks like 'blowing up' isn't an accurate description.

------
watertom
I’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
If you include the externalities of people driving to the theater, it’s
probably the greenest movie he’s made.

------
thefounder
It looks like the Boeing planes may be good for something after all! (sarcasm)

------
trashburger
Bravo Nolan.

------
breck
SPOILERS

