With Red Tails out now on DVD and Blu-ray, The Fan Carpet had the pleasure to interview Paul Kavanagh, the lead animator at Industrial Light & Magic.
His many film credits include the Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises, The Adventures of Pinocchio, Flubber, The Lost World: Jurassic Park and the Harry Potter series. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Achievement in Visual Effects for J.J. Abrams's 2009 reboot of Star Trek.
In Red Tails a crew of African American pilots in the Tuskegee training program, having faced segregation while kept mostly on the ground during World War II, are called into duty under the guidance of Col. A.J. Bullard.
So much of your career has been spent in Indian Jones and Star Wars related content - it must be refreshing to step away from that for a change?
The best part of my job is that projects are vastly different from one to another, I could be animating a creature fighting a robot in the Star Wars universe one day or flying P51's in a huge dogfight another. I'm a huge Star Wars / Indian Jones fan and I originally joined ILM to have the opportunity to work on the Star Wars Prequels almost 16 years ago now and it's been a roller coaster ride ever since!
What was it about the Tuskegee Airmen story that fascinated you so much?
Just how these brave men not only fought through the war but how they also had to fight through discrimination.
Did you feel a sense of responsibility taking on a story that has affected many people across the years?
Yes indeed and we wanted to tell that story as true as it could be even with the visual effects. We did a lot of research to make sure we were building, animating and rendering our CG models with all the correct period detail.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE
Red Tails Film Page
RED TAILS IS OUT NOW ON BLU-RAY, DVD AND TO DOWNLOAD, COURTESY OF MOMENTUM PICTURES
