Making of ‘Masters of the Air’: Roundtable panel with 7 creative Emmy contenders
If the creative professionals behind the epic aviation-themed limited series “Masters of the Air” had a singular slogan they could rally behind, it would have been “keep it real.” That was the focus that drove them while working on the nine-part, $250 million Apple TV+ World War II project – some three years in the making – that tells the story of the legendary 100th Bomb Group (the so-called “Bloody Hundredth”) that led bombing raids over Nazi Germany and paid a heavy price for it. Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, it stars Oscar nominees Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan along with Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle and Nate Mann.
Just how exactly did the WWII series so consistently maintain its authenticity? We gathered seven key members of the all-star team that focused their attention on making it all look, sound and feel uncompromisingly genuine to discuss how it came together: Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood, Oscar-winning editor Mark Sanger, Oscar-winning supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer Michael Minkler, Emmy-winning composer Blake Neely, production designer Chris Seagers, cinematographer Jac Fitzgerald and BAFTA-nominated makeup and hair designer Kirstin Chalmers. Watch the full exclusive video interview of the roundtable panel above.
Atwood was tasked with making sure 300 or 400 people looked authentically dressed in their shearling flight jackets, along with the proper flight pants and flight suits. “I was able to gather (material) from all over the world that went into making all of these costumes. We developed the characters in the fittings, including what kind of watch they had, who had what with accessories, the scarves and all of the things based on the photo research we had of everybody in the original photos of the characters they were portraying. My marching orders were ‘be authentic’ and ‘get it done in time.’ And for me, a huge part of being authentic is having stuff look like people have worn it for more than five minutes. So I had a huge aging department as well, and aging leather stuff is very time-consuming.”
Minkler, who had previously worked before on “The Pacific,” the second miniseries link in the Spielberg/Hanks wartime trilogy, was charged with making sure the entire enterprise sounded like the real deal – all of it calibrated in post. “It was the longest mixing process I’ve ever had on anything,” he emphasizes. But it was worth the extra time to convey the actual sounds of the B-17 bombers that are the mechanical stars of the series. “We used 60 microphones and mic the plane inside and out in the air, on the ground, every little thing that moved or made a noise was recorded, built into a library and then enhanced to enrich the experience and give it personality, give it emotion. It was very important to have those elements in the storytelling process.”
Composer Neely was also a veteran of both previous miniseries in the trilogy, “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific.” He was blessed to have all nine completed episodes before incorporating the music. His focus on historical reality began with he following: “I didn’t want to use any sounds that predated what we were watching (time-wise),” he says. “I wanted it to be very period, which left me with a challenge because when you get into the action, a lot of times we composers turn to electronics. So I just decided I was going to figure out a way to do all of that with orchestra.” His musical sessions “came up with these crazy sounds that are all organic and keep it orchestral to the time period. I also really wanted more heroic sounds than we’d been able to do on ‘The Pacific.’ It’s more about the glory and the heroism and the drive and the tension.”
The thrilling, heart-in-your-throat air battle sequences in “Masters of he Air,” meanwhile, were done in coordination with cinematographer Fitzgerald, who put maximum effort into “getting in close with the actors to feel their emotion. We want people to see and feel what it must have been like for the boys in the planes, including all of the brutal sounds when the plane is being ripped apart in midair and the wind is gushing through.” A lot of that from the photographic perspective was made possible by the project’s use of the immersive, state-of-the-art technology from Industrial Light and Magic known as The Volume, which she calls “completely invaluable” in terms of capturing multiple reactions simultaneously.
Seagers, as production designer, was tasked with the construction of two complete replica B-17s capable of taxiing down the runways of a vintage airfield. “We built two exterior set pieces and two exteriors, and it was an enormous task right in the middle of COVID,” he explains. “We made it for real, fiberglass and other materials and aluminum around the engines. It’s like, how do you eat an elephant? You go one bite at a time. That’s what we ended up doing. That was in addition to (building) all the barracks, the administration, all of the different facilities. We just broke it down into its component parts, but it was quite a mammoth thing. And we only had two planes to represent all of the planes while breaking it all down so we knew the damage to each plane, who was flying in what and in what position. I think I wound up knowing more about what (actually) happened than a lot of the people (who were actually involved).”
Finally, there was the look of the airmen and women, and it was tasked to Chalmers and her team to make sure they were appropriate to the period. It started for her with tons of visual research of the 1940s, including photographs and movies. “You just dive into any descriptions, any photographs, that you can get your hands on,” she stresses. “You want the look to be similar to the original men who were part of the 100th Bomb Group but not absolutely slavish to their looks. You go for the essence of all the characters and a real feel for what the actual men and women of the time looked like.”
Chalmers was also careful to use only authentic products to derive the looks. “For instance, with the women, hairspray was just being invented she points out, “so I made sure none of them had any hairspray and (their hair) was only pinned, and have it be above their shoulders when in their uniforms but let it drop down when they’re dancing. It was also a challenge with the makeup for the men who were injured to be sure the wounds all matched up with the prosthetics exactly right.”
Masters of the Air” streams in its entirely over Apple TV+.
