Thinking Big In Small Spaces...

How would you shoot reality inside a grounded plane? By Barnaby Girling, Creative Director at Alpha Century.

During their recent production of three films for Virgin Atlantic, Alpha Century broke some new ground in shooting airline environments.

Shooting inside planes is notoriously difficult. You can't use much conventional grip, you need a ton of extras to populate the shots, and lighting has to be rigged outside the windows – twenty feet off the ground.

It is for these reasons that promotional films, ads and even those nail-biting airplane scenes in nearly all Bond films are generally shot in an airline's training rigs; semi-working cross section models of real planes. With this approach, impossible angles can be filmed since cameras can be put where, in reality, a seat would be. Having a cross-section allows for traditional studio lighting set-ups, giving a generic studio finish to the look and feel of the cabin.

Considering all this, our decision to shoot inside the new Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787 – using real staff, serving real food inside a real plane might have seemed rash. Luckily it was a challenge that our first choice director, James Nunn, was up for.

Virgin Atlantic wanted to be authentic – they did not want to put smoke and mirrors in its promotional material to entice potential passengers to fly with their airline instead of competitors. The Virgin Atlantic 'Dreamliner', complete with its crew in their Vivienne Westwood uniforms, was already glamorous enough

The technical work required to make a real-life Boeing 787 feel like it’s flying required many things:

1. Using external lighting to recreate the sun
One of most pleasurable experiences of flying is the moment the sun shines through the windows of the plane; its rays casting a heavenly hue across the cabin.

Recreating that moment was going to be problematic since we were filming on a grounded Boeing 787. To get around this problem, enormous amounts of external lighting was flown from the roof of a vast hangar at Gatwick – stimulating the effect of uninterrupted sun usually cast on planes in flight.

2. Applying the benefits of technology
Director James Nunn said: "The only way to make this was to shoot on location on the real plane. Aside from being a one-of-a-kind aircraft (at time of production), we wanted it to be 100% real, to feel the textures, see the seats you're purchasing, and sense the dimensions. Even if it was problematic from a filmmaking perspective to track down a cosy aisle or glide across economy seating, we'd find a way, and the new movi-rig technology made this achievable as well as giving it a floaty, dreamlike feel. For me the magic is because you believe it, and it feels real because you don't feel tricked by it."

Movi-rig technology, such as the M10, a hand-crafted and custom-designed 3-axis camera stabliser, was instrumental in enabling Nunn to create the angles and shots that would otherwise only be achievable on an airline's training rig.

3. A huge cast
Despite the undeniable quality of the Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787, you can't film an airline promotional video without people – a lot of people.

In order to populate the shots, a huge cast was required. In addition to hiring actors (although we wanted to ensure that the film was authentic, it would not make much sense to employ real passengers for obvious reasons) we also worked with real staff who were not trained actors.

4. Efficient scheduling
The Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787 was treated very much like a celebrity in its own right. This meant that it had a schedule of its own for a myriad of commitments a new plane has to fulfill, with the priority being training for crew. In addition to this, we also had to consider times for press appearances and other promotional activities.

Scheduling when we would film on the Boeing 787 was critical, especially since we needed a series of night-shoots for the film, so timing was everything.

5. The Hollywood finish
An airline promotional film wouldn't be complete without tracking shots of the sky and the views of the airport into the planes' windows. However, creating these shots is a big CGI task.

So it only made sense to call in the visual effect studios responsible for creating such shots for Hollywood blockbusters like 'Prometheus' and 'Guardians of the Galaxy'. These visual artists painted vistas from the numerous windows and the myriad of setback screens which do not register on camera without strobe lines.

Creating an authentic sense of flying on a real-life Boeing aeroplane was no easy feat. However, with some ingenious use of technology, time management and a little help from Hollywood, we managed to create a promotional film for Virgin Atlantic that authentically represents the experience of flying with the brand. In doing so, we proved that, when it comes to filming for an airline, the sky is never the limit.

This article is also available to read in BFV online.

(JP)