Welcome back to another installment of Night Chenanigans. Today we look at a Hollywood show by Paramount called Lioness. If you have not seen the show, I highly recommend it. It is a fun watch. There will be some spoilers in this article. And as a night vision nerd I like to evaluate night vision use in movies or shows. So today we will take a look at the NODs in Lioness.
First Season Of Lioness NODs
Season 1, episode 5: Truth Is The Shrewdest Lie
In the first episode, the Lioness QRF Strike force are trying to rescue their asset. The QRF are equipped with what look like PVS-31A on wilcox mounts attached to Team Wendy helmets. They have Princeton Tec CHARGE MPLS mounted onto the accessory rail of the helmet.
We see the Lioness QRF team raid a house and we see NODs being used. However they appear to be non functioning dummys with a very blue glow, possibly from an LED inside the dummy goggle. They way you can tell is the glow is very prominent and the actors are not looking through their NODs. See the screenshow below. This actor is looking under her NODs.
Their SIG MCXs are equipped with EOTech Holosun and PEQ-15s.
In this screenshot below we see the stereotypical reflection of the dummy goggle objective lenses. The dummy goggles do not have the same appearance as the blue anti-reflective coating of real PVS-31A.
In some close ups of the Lioness, I think the director instructed the actors to look through their fake NODs.
Season 1, episode 8: Gone is the Illusion of Order
The asset is being rescued and we see the politicians are watching ISR thermal feed. What I found interesting is what appears to be muzzle flash. However I am not sure what thermal system they are using and while the muzzle flash can be seen by thermal, I do not think it would be a perfect circle like in the screen shot below.
Below is an image I captured with my Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced thermal drone. Even though it is an uncooled LWIR thermal sensor it was able to see the massive muzzle blast from a .50 BMG GM6 Lynx.
In the screenshot below the ISR thermal feed is zoomed into the asset. I find this hard to believe since the whole point of ISR is to see your enemy positions in relation to your assets. It is a waste to zoom into a single person hiding behind cover.
Season 2: Even More NODs in Lioness
Season 2, episode 1: Beware the Old Soldier
We finally see POV of night vision being used. However there are some weird things about it. I can't tell if the production used actual night vision to film but there appears to be scintilation and vignetting like you typically see when you film through night vision. However night vision has a very shallow depth of field and yet in the screenshot below, we can clearly see the supressed pistol, the target and the door in the background is all in focus. It is possible they used a refocus aperture like a Matbock Tarsier Eclipse. Or they used something like the NightStalker to use canon camera lenses and camera.
I did like how the special effects team had a little bit of muzzle flash light up the victim's face, but I think real muzzle flash would be brighter. One issue I have with this whole scene is that none of the pistols have lasers or red dots. Now you don't need that for a point blank shot like this, but red dots make aiming easier with NODs.
Take a look at the screenshot above. This is partially why I do not think they are using actual night vision. There is plenty of ambient light however the foliage on the trees does not look right for analog night viison. Watch the video below of my Mikro-D goggles under a full moon. Foliage reflects IR light and causes leaves to appear lighter colored.
It was hard to see the kidnapper's NVG setup but in this silhouette it looks like they are using an Ops-Core Skull Crusher.
Later in the episode we see the props department switched to Aimpoint T2 on Unity Tactical FAST mounts as well as NGALs.
I questions where Zoe Saldana was looking at in the screenshow below. Maybe she was aiming with the back up iron sights in the Unity FAST mount? But I doubt it.
I found it odd that these elite shooters would be using a Holosun AEMS but it is also on a UNITY FAST mount. I did notice they have the UNITY AXON switch but it is not in a position that is easily reached. This would be more sutible for a lft handed user but normally it should be mounted on the top rail rather than on the 3 o'clock side.
Season 2, episode 4: Five Hundred Children
I did like that they used the proper term "NODs".
Later in the episode they raid a building and the asset uses ANVS-9 to fly a little bird at night. However they are clearly dummy goggles. They do not have the typical silver coated lenses and they did not even bother to fake the eyeglow.
You can sort of see these dummy goggles have a sort of lens but it is not how ANVIS glass looks like. They are spherical and shiny due to the filters required to operate aircraft instruments at night.
In this scene the Lioness QRF are using black GPNVGs along with what looks like Pixels On Target Voodoo-S thermal clip-ons.
The GPNVGs are also dummy goggles. You can tell by the uncharacteric reflections on the objective lenses.
I found the Lioness scene below a little bit of a mistake. Joe, (Zoe Saldana) is using her quad NODs but her magnifier is in the up position as well as her thermal clip on. She cannot passively aim and even if she were using activie aiming with the NGAL, the magnifier is too close to her nods. It should have been stowed so it does not hit the NODs.
Later we see what looks like thermal from the Little Bird, however I do not think Little Birds have thermal sensors like Apaches and BlackHawks. However after talking with some helicopter pilot friends, it is possible according to this article.
The helicopter used in the show looks like an MD-600.
Here we see our first POV of, what I assume is, white phosphor. The image is black and white, not the typical pale blue of white phosphor. This black and white image looks like someone using a filter behind green phosphor. Or they desaturated night vision in editing. Although I am unsure why they would do this when they worked so hard to fake the blue eye glow of white phosphor?
Season 2, episode 5: Shatter the Moon
In this episode we see more quad nod and thermal clip ons. However the tag along DEA agent does not have nods so he uses his flash light. I feel like this is a rookie move. These seasoned agents should have white light discipline training.
Here is more POV from the Lioness NODs.
Most of the Lioness QRF were running red dots with magnifiers and Voodoo-S clip ons. But this guy has an actual scope and thermal clip on.
It is a little hard to tell but he is using a Leupold scope with a FLIR T75 ACTS.
One issue I have is the reticle of the scope sight picture does not match what Leupold has. But I do like that the special effects dept has how blood splatter that shows up under thermal. This was an issue I saw in Sicario. Blood would show up cold. Im not sure if this was done practically on set or edited in post. You can even see the "impacts" circled in blue.
I think they goofed in this shot. There is no impact on the front of the guy.
There was a POV shot that defintely does not look right. Just like the green phosphor scene in the first episode of the second season, the POV scenes are too much depth of field. Typical night vision has a narrow depth of field making objects up close blurry. Not the case here. Also the image is very distorted like they used a fisheye lens. One nice thing is that it does appear to be ATAK.
In this POV scene I found it odd that there is a lack of halo from the handheld flashlight. However movie sets and TV show sets use a lot of ambient light to light the scene.
Final Thoughts On The Lioness NODs
I enjoyed this series. It was entertaining and captivating. The night vision use was ok. I understand budget restraints does not make it feasible to have real night vision but dummy goggles are very obvious to those of us who know what they are supposed to look like. I enjoyed the gear used in the show as well as a lot of thermal scenes. If you can, I highly recommend watching this show.
At the time of this article, the season finale has not aired yet. Once it does, and if there are any night vision scenes of note, I will add them here.
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