I think we can ALL agree that regardless of your political bent, having
Air Force One buzz through Manhattan the other day was
a bad idea. Laying aside the screaming, fear-laden populace of New York
evacuating buildings and making frantic calls to 911,
it was just foolhardy from start to finish. The official explanation we
were offered was that a photo op was being taken of AF1 around
the Statue of Liberty.
The cost of said photo op was more than $328,000. Not a large sum when
your talking about hundreds of billions for bailouts, but to
you and me John and Jane Q. Public, that’s a nice chunk of change.
Battlestar Galactica special FX guru Adam “Mojo” Lebowitz posted to his
blog Tuesday morning that such a stunt need not have been mounted.
He would like it to be known that we are able to do a thing or two with
computers and photography these days.
Aside from talking about placing convincing special FX in such movies as
“Independence Day” and “Air Force One” (both more than a decade old),
he uses a computer to render BSG’s Colonial One over the Hudson River in
Manhattan, chased by two Colonial vipers. He was able
to do this, he writes, in just under an hour.
Mojo adds that he could have done all the photos needed, maybe even with
some HD video thrown in for dirt cheap.
Ain’t science and technology grand?
—RebRob, Science Editor
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