A war film is concerned with warfare of all kinds, from naval to air to land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. How was that possible to shoot in real life without some techniques, so their came the role of VFX.

1. Use Of VFX In War Scenes In Movies
A war film is concerned with warfare of all kinds, from naval to air to land
battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. How was that possible to
shoot in real life without some techniques, so their came the role of VFX.
Themes explored include combat, survival and escape, sacrifice, the futility
and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and the moral and
human issues raised by war.
The stories told may be fiction, historical drama, or biographical with plots
exploring action and even wartime romance.
The Battleship Potemkin (1925) is among the most well-known of the early
war films.
The genre is not tightly defined and its definition varies widely depending
upon people's personal perception of it.
A study of the most celebrated war films, however, reveals one important
common trait: realism.

2. Films like Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, Lakshya,
Madras Café are among the most loved war films from India and the world,
and they all give us an unflinching portrait of the violence and bloodshed, hard
decisions, and tension that characterize any war.
The popularity of war films progressively increased in the 20th century and
the World Wars became the most popular subject.
After the World Wars and Nazi themes, it was the Vietnam War in the 1970s.
In India, there were films made about gaining independence from the British
or ongoing the tussles with our neighboring countries like Pakistan or Sri
Lanka.
With changing times, cinema evolved and so did the cinematic techniques.
Technical excellence became a necessity in film production with the advent of
modern technology, and this trend hasn't changed to this day.
VFX is extensively used in films, and the war film provides an ideal platform
through its need for realism of action.
In addition to creating environments or adding effects such as explosions,
many war films also need crowd simulations as it’s simply not feasible to
recruit thousands upon thousands of actors to play extra roles.
As far as foreign films are concerned, 2006 saw the release of an iconic war
film, 300. Based on a 1998 comic series by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, it
depicts a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae within the
Persian Wars.
Two months of pre-production were required to create animatronics animals,
and the hundreds of shields, spears, and swords, some of which were recycled
from movies like Troy.
The actors trained alongside the stuntmen, and even Snyder joined in.
Over 600 costumes were created for the film, along with extensive prosthetics
for various characters and the corpses of Persian soldiers.

3. Only one scene, in which horses travel across the countryside, was shot
outdoors.
It was filmed mostly against a blue screen, to help replicate the imagery of the
original comic book: environments were digitally created, and the actors
painstakingly composited into the scenes to reproduce the stylised
picturisation of Ancient Greece.
The film has gained a solid place in international film as a unique war movie.
A discussion on technically accomplished war scenes in movies is incomplete
without mention of James Cameron's Avatar.
Released in 2009, the film portrays an epic struggle of the Na'vi to reclaim
their home planet Pandora from the citizens of Earth, who are seeking to mine
the precious element Unobtanium.
Cameron waited over a decade to see the film realised, and not without
reason.
Most of the movie is shot after gorgeous shot of Pandora and the Na'vi.
The planet, its blue-skinned natives, and its black-skinned beasts were
digitally created and animated with the aid of motion capture from actors.
The climactic battle scene is worth mention: as human machines mow down
glowing trees to get closer to the Unobtanium mine, our hero Jake Sully, in

4. Avatar form, takes control of the King of the Skies – Toruk – to turn the tide of
the battle.
The scenes of the Na'vi praying as one at the mother tree while the battle is
afoot are equally breathtaking.
Other notable Hollywood films featuring memorable war scenes are The Last
Samurai by Edward Zwick, Hacksaw Ridge by Mel Gibson, Fury by David
Ayer, and Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola.

5. Indian film, too, has its fair share of war films. Ashutosh Gowariker's Jodhaa
Akbar (2008) and Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Bajirao Mastani (2015) are recent
notable examples of films with a fair share of visual effects augmentation to
portray battles and wars onscreen.
Both (especially Bajirao Mastani) featured extensive use of crowd simulation
techniques to reproduce the huge armies that were taken to battle in those
days.

6. This is typically done for the long shots that establish the battle, as relatively
lower poly models can be used along with image based rendering to get a
good and realistic output without the need for thousands upon thousands of
actors.
Chroma and staged sets were also employed to recreate the environments of
the Mughal and Maratha empires in the respective films.
For Jodhaa Akbar, Gowariker tried to use traditional film techniques as far as
possible; he hired around five thousand extras, and several hundred animals
to reduce the pressure on the post production team. Bajirao, however, was a
different story.

7. It relied heavily on VFX for the environments, and NY VfX walla did a large
part of the effects work for the film – including the war scenes, as well as the
final climactic hallucination sequence of Peshwa Bajirao.
More recently, the Baahubali duology of films (2015-2017) by S. S. Rajamouli
has some notable war scenes that boast of technical accomplishment.
From crowd simulation to environments and weaponry, it has it all. You can
read more about Baahubali in earlier posts on our blog. Rangoon (2017) and
The Ghazi Attack (2017) are more examples of Indian war films.
The former is set amidst the Indo-Burmese tensions during World War II,
while the latter depicts the attack on the Pakistani submarine PNS Ghazi off
the coast of Vishakhapatnam during the war of 1971. On a global level,
Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk is a highly anticipated war film releasing this
month. The film features extensive use of practical effects, augmented with
VFX by Double Negative.
If you are more the doing kind, walk in to your nearest MAAC Kolkata centre
and start your journey to explore firsthand the techniques used to make these
war films come to life.
So creative hearted people still thinking what to do?
We are just a call away. Our helpline number 9836321595.
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