Recreate with 3D

How can you recreate something that was never filmed – and make it believable?

In our documentary film Daisy: The Story of a DC-3, about Sweden’s last operational DC-3, we hear the story of a dramatic event that took place in Ethiopia in 1976. Daisy came within a few meters of crashing into a mountainside.

But how do you show something so dramatic that wasn’t filmed at the time? With 3D animation, of course.

We took it in 3 steps:

Step 1: Build the airplane

Thanks to photographs and crew members who were there, we were able to recreate what Daisy looked like in the 1970s using the animation program Blender. A TTV animator then refined the model, adding textures, paint, and other details.

Step 2: Build the environment

By interviewing Daisy’s crew we got a description of how the landscape looked on the day of the dramatic flight. This made it possible to create an environment that looked like the Ethiopian back country. When the environment was complete, we imported the finished 3D airplane model and started to animate the film for maximum dramatic effect. To make it even more realistic we animated the sequence in a style that made it look like it was filmed with old movie cameras.

Step 3: The Finished Product

With the animation done we imported the sequence into the larger film project where we added sound effects and intercut it with an interview with the pilot at Daisy’s controls during the critical flight.

Since we have all the necessary personnel and skills in-house, we were able to zero in on the smallest details and small adjustments to create a film that is as real as possible.

See a clip from our work process below: