Wing Commander Test Footage Reveals Kilrathi Point of View (December 18, 2018)

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All the way through pre to post-production, the crew working on the Wing Commander feature film explored the idea of giving the Kilrathi a unique point of view. Before shooting, the crew at Digital Anvil experimented with some basic effects using footage shot around their offices to get a feel for the styles they might like to use.

This clip features some of that early footage plus some of the post-production tests done to hone in on just the right kind of look. Possibly taking inspiration from things such as Predator's heat vision, the Terminator's information readouts, or the POV shots from the Alien's perspective in Alien 3, they ran many different passes with differing levels of distortion and color correction to make various highlights stand out. Keen observers will also notice the statue of Sivar that sits at the heart of the Snakeir bridge.

The crew also explored the idea of giving the Confederation Marines a helmet HUD and infrared enhanced vision. The opening clip is that test (which you'll notice actually is the same shot as the following green Kilrathi view, just treated differently).


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Original update published on December 18, 2018
 
Never been a big fan of 'monster vision'. Especially if you do it for sentient aliens. Aliens always shown in movies as bigger, faster, stronger, etc.. but when it comes to vision they got crap? Immersion breaking, imo. And I was very disappointed that our gloriously furry bad guys got downgraded to your bacic generic hairless 'slimy?' aliens.
 
I was very disappointed that our gloriously furry bad guys got downgraded to your bacic generic hairless 'slimy?' aliens.

The end results didn't match what the movie's creators had in mind either. For various budgetary and producer related reason's they just don't match the aesthetic of the concept art for them at all.

I'm not 100 percent sure if they intended them to be hairless. THere's some set decoration that suggest that maybe they intended more or a peach-fuzz look. But what they did want to do was to make them more "alien" and less muppet... have them not be cute and cuddly.

Their armor and culture is also a reflection of imperial Japan so their armor reflects a kind of samurai aesthetic. Their general features are still feline in the movie but there was just so many errors with their construction and not enough time to figure out how to shoot with them properly (they basically burned through several days of shooting getting unusable footage because the animatronics company was crap). The proportions were all wrong. THey were top heavy and constructed in a way where their arms look like they're pinned to their sides at the elbows. They aren't really slimy though just kind of rubbery.
 
Well being a sentient alien doesn't preclude "monster vision" - on our own planet vision has evolved differently in different species. Cats and Dogs are predator species but don't see color with the same saturation and depth that we do - though cats at least make up for it with their night vision, and dogs have the ability to construct an environment in their minds based off smell (try and represent THAT on the screen :) ). So I think that if it's done well a different perspective can add to the immersion of a film (ie. Predator). That said - some of the samples above, especially the ones that leave trails and it seems like the Kilrathi are tripping on shrooms would probably make you think (how the hell did they achieve spaceflight seeing like THAT) would destroy the immersion, but some of the others where the colors were desaturated and tinted were kind of cool I think.
 
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And I was very disappointed that our gloriously furry bad guys got downgraded to your bacic generic hairless 'slimy?' aliens.

I'm neither here nor there on the movie Kilrathi design but I remember that Chris Roberts was never satisfied with how they looked in the games. When someone says Kilrathi, I think of WC3 Hobbes... but Roberts apparently wasn't totally happy with that, so he changed it again and we got WC4 Melek which looks ... not that great either.
 
I'm neither here nor there on the movie Kilrathi design but I remember that Chris Roberts was never satisfied with how they looked in the games. When someone says Kilrathi, I think of WC3 Hobbes... but Roberts apparently wasn't totally happy with that, so he changed it again and we got WC4 Melek which looks ... not that great either.
I agree. I would really like to see the original WC3 footage, to see how well (or badly) the WC3 design looked at higher resolutions.
 
The interesting thing to me about both this monster vision and the 'obscure things with gas clouds' final product for the Kilrathi is that they're both intended as nods to the green monochrome communications messages in the game... even though those went full color when the technology allowed.
 
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