Fortress

Fortress (2012)

Battles were fought on the ground, wars were won in the sky.

When the commander of the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber is killed in action in a raid over Sicily in 1943, his replacement, a young, naive pilot struggles to be accepted by the plane's already tight-knit Irish American crew.

Date of release
2012-04-01
TMDB
5.3 / 10 (49)
Runtime
1h 29m
Genres
War
Director
Mike Phillips

Casting

Interesting facts

Fortress is a 2012 American war film directed by Michael R. Phillips and stars Bug Hall, Donnie Jeffcoat, Sean McGowan and Joseph Williamson. The film was released by Bayou Pictures and although initially intended for wider release, was a direct-to-video release on July 31, 2012 made by Monarch Video. Fortress takes its name from the iconic Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress World War II bomber that was the centerpiece of the aerial battle in Europe.

Production

In the closing credits, Fortress filmmakers make the sardonic declaration, "No B-17s were hurt in the making of this film." The statement was accurate as the low budget feature could not afford to use actual surviving B-17s, either in private collections or in museums. With principal photography undertaken in 2011, Radical 3D was responsible for the authentic computer-generated imagery (CGI) film effects.

Radical 3D was also involved in television projects for Discovery Channel, History Channel and National Geographic Channel including 24 and Dogfights (premiered in 2006), the highest rated series on the History Channel during its first season.

For Fortress, a full-scale interior mock-up was made, recreating the fuselage from tail to cockpit. The principal exterior visual effects began with a CGI rendition that had a unique origin. The producers acquired a 1:28 scale Guillow’s B-17 Balsa wood "flying" model and scaled it up, producing, in effect, a 1:1 B-17 scale model.

Location photography for the Algerian scenes in Fortress took place at Rocking Horse Ranch, Ramona, California in 2011. Other studio work was completed at Radical 3D facilities in Culver City, California.

Fortress depicted accurately the bombing of Rome in World War II in 1943, primarily by Allied aircraft, before the city was freed by the Allies on June 4, 1944. Pope Pius XII was initially unsuccessful in attempting to have Rome declared an open city, although negotiations took place with President Roosevelt via Cardinal Francis Spellman.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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