The filming of the film kicked off in the studio of Universal Studios, and came to an end in the Glamis Desert of California five months later. Coincidentally, the original author Swarford's battlefield experience also lasted 5 months.
The first location selected by the crew was George Air Force Base in Victorvia, California. The base was closed during the Military Base Reorganization and Closurecampaign in the early 1990s. This shot. On the morning of the filming, several military planes landed at the airport and parked near the crew's Boeing 747. For a time, reality and fiction overlapped, and it was difficult to distinguish between real soldiers and extras of the crew.
After finishing filming at George Air Force Base, the crew rushed to a little-known makeshift airport in the eastern part of El Centro, California. The Holtville Temporary Runway is a 2,400-foot-long asphalt runway. Its real name, purpose and structure are rarely disclosed to the outside world. The location of this airport was never marked on the map drawn by the US Geological Survey from 1969 to 1992. The only proof of its existence was an aerial photo taken in 2002. The nearby naval aerial shooting range had hinted that the area was used as a shooting range for the AV-8 "Sea Harrier" fighters for ground attack training. Here, the crew set up a base in Saudi Arabia and paved the "Death Highway" from Kuwait City to Basra.
Subsequently, the crew came to the other side of El Centro and filmed on the plain below Superstition Mountain for several weeks. In the film, the important scene of Swarford's team being attacked by friendly F14 fighter jets was completed here. When filming, the producer rented an F14 fighter plane. The ultra-low-flying fighter plane was only a few hundred feet above the ground and surrounded by rolling mountains. It was a big challenge for the pilots and crew. In addition to the ear-shattering roar of jets at close range, the U.S. Navy's "Blue Angels" aerobatic team also trained nearby, often flying over the filming ground, causing a lot of trouble for the filming. In addition, sandstorms often visit the local area. The scenes where soldiers endure the raging sandstorm in the film are all real.
In order to film an endless view of the salt flats, the crew crossed the Mexican border and reached a depth of 100 miles. The crew wants to build the film's location in a large barren land, and first of all, they have to build infrastructure for themselves, including road systems, water, electricity, security and lighting. 2005 is the year of El Nino, so the weather is unpredictable. The crew suffered several heavy downpours, and the progress of the project was seriously affected.
In the film, the images of the rising flames of the oil field are all from the same oil well, but they were shot from different angles and distances, and they were created into three different effects. The production department used a lot of digital technology when completing the footage of the troops approaching the burning oil well. In the daytime scene, there are digitally generated electric towers and scorched vehicles around the oil well, and the black oil sands extend to the horizon. The glimmer of light in the oil pool is also added later; in the night scene, the actors First, I shot in the studio with a large orange light array in the background, and then trimmed the unnecessary background, leaving only the swaying light.
