Plane Crash Scenes

[Nell Barreto]

Ihave mad respect for Swedish independent film outfit Crazy Pictures for their big-budget cinematography skills that are being utilized on a moderately small budget with rigs and labor that are within reach of almost any videographer. They've put together an incredibly informative behind-the-scenes video that covers in detail the massive amount of work that goes into such a short segment of film.

In this video they show us how they film a plane crash, one that certainly rivals the best I've ever seen from any major Hollywood studio. They begin with the actors and shooting everything that is real; pretty straightforward until they get into the awesome CGI that is actually based around practical effects.

What we've done now, after filming the background, is a simple 3D sketch of how we want the plane to be traveling, its speed and trajectory, how it's going to hit the ground and run into the truck. We want to hit so the back of the truck explodes everywhere.

The footage they've assembled to show how it's all done is an absolute treat. After the basic sketches, they build real-world models to decide how to handle the physics of the plane hitting a truck. But they don't stop there. They actually construct a gigantic "green screen box" and film the model plane crashing as the basis of their graphics postproduction.

We decided to film real rain, instead of doing it digitally. We sprayed a hose into the air and backlit the water droplets so they stood out against the black background. This way we could isolate the rain and use it in our scene.

Sean Molin is an award-winning photographer out of Indianapolis who specializes in weddings, portraits, travel, and live music photography. He has had work featured in galleries and in magazines ranging from Popular Photography to Rolling Stone.

This is EXACTLY what independent movie making is about. Learning as you go, improvising, and practical special effects. I feel like too many of today's "film makers" get caught-up in droning and using sliders while completely forgetting to actually tell a story.

On Thursday May 26, 1983, Rex Miller (26 years old) took off in his Piper PA-28-140 (registration: N1316T) from Poughkeepsie, NY at approximately 9:12 am heading for Watertown, NY. Before departing, the manager of a flight school informed him that the weather was bad, with poor visibility due to fog and overcast skies. Miller, with a student certificate that had been previously revoked by the FAA for violations and no flight plan, ignored the warning. At approximately 9:48 am his plane collided with trees at the top of mountainous terrain at an elevation of approximately 3400 ft. After the initial impact, his aircraft continued about 500 ft. before coming to a stop in a wooded area atop Stoppel Point. Mr. Miller was the only passenger and he did not survive the crash.

Stoppel Point at 3420 feet is the 45th highest point in the Catskills, or #10 for the Catskill 67. This mountain is located north of the busy North-South Lake State Campground. The North-South Lake area to North Point is full of history as it was the birthplace of hiking in the Catskills.

The Catskill Mountains are littered with plane wrecks and make for interesting destinations when mapping out a hike. I had wanted to do this hike for several years, but was hesitant. The Catskills are a little out of my comfort zone and with the exception of Overlook Mountain and several other areas, I have never explored the area. Living two hours away, the rugged terrain and vast wilderness that I was unfamiliar with were good enough reasons to keep putting this hike on the back burner. Fast forward a couple of years, with thousands of miles on the trails under my belt and increased confidence, the time was right.

We then arrived at a junction with the blue-blazed Escarpment Trail and the last push to North Point. The blue-blazed Escarpment Trail is 23.9 miles long and travels along some of the Catskill Mountains most scenic territory. It crosses seven summits over 3000 feet on some of the most rugged terrain in the Catskills.

It was worth the effort as we reached our first destination. North Point, an area of many open ledges located at 3,000 feet above sea level, offers outstanding views. Looking southeast, North Lake is on the left with South Lake on the right and the Hudson River is visible in the distance to the left.

The Escarpment Trail continues to climb, but much more gradually. The bulk of the elevation was done getting to North Point. The trail now continues towards the summit of North Mountain, with some minor rock scrambles along the way.

Although we were officially at Stoppel Point, we still had about 1/4 mile to go to reach the plane crash site. Along the way, there is a short spur trail that leads to a northwest facing viewpoint of the Blackhead Mountain Range. From left to right: Thomas Cole (partially obscured by the foliage), Black Dome and Blackhead Mountain.

A short distance from the viewpoint we arrived at our turnaround point. The plane wreck is just a few feet from the trail and considering it has been sitting in the same spot since 1983, the fuselage is fairly intact.

Many action movies have a scene where they show a plane or helicopter blast/crash. Seeing as how planes are very costly and it includes various dangers, they wouldn't try to crash real ones. In Spectre, the helicopter in which Blofeld is present is crashed on the bridge. In The Living Daylights, the cargo plane crashes into a cliff.

Large budget -Most high end productions can rent a specific model of craft (hero craft, tight shots, flying), and buy a secondary (rebuild) and retro fit to RC like a radio controlled toy, or third (non functioning from graveyard). Secondary and thirds have cosmetic work done to look like hero. Most explosions are dropped with cables, off cranes, or actually on ground and exploded. Radio controlled are very costly.

Models and CGIHigh end models are made of the crash scene, and the model plane to crash. If the modelers are good, this blends very well. If not, you can see the variance (James bond series has a few plane crashes done in the past that don't look quite right)

Many stock footage companies now will take a hero plane (common type of craft), and R/C control a secondary (flying condition), and crash and explode it in a field. This stock footage is edited to clear back ground option.

I personally worked on set with a helicopter crash. A rented helicopter was used one day to fly down a street and shoot machine guns at a limo. That scene cost $30,000.00. The balance of helicopter footage was stock footage, and the crash was stock footage and CGI. Still was a great piece.

In just about every Tom Cruise film, the actor steps up the level of stunt action, and The Mummy is no exception. Caught in a spiraling C-130, Cruise and co-star Annabelle Wallis are featured in a zero-gravity sequence as the plane disintegrates around them. Wallis exits by parachute while Cruise rides the plane all the way down to the ground and to his apparent death (spoiler alert: he comes back to life).

Production and MPC Visual Effects Supervisor Erik Nash and fellow MPC Visual Effects Supervisor Greg Butler reveal how the plane crash was planned, shot and executed, including with 60-plus takes on the vomit comet itself.

The vomit comet is actually a converted Airbus plane from NoveSpace, occasionally used to train astronauts. To provide weightlessness, the plane would climb to 25,000 feet then reduce thrust and fall back towards Earth. That gives a zero-gravity feeling to passengers for 22 seconds.

Still, not all the required shots could be obtained inside the vomit comet. So a matching spinning gimbal, decked out by Tuohy to also look like the C-130, was built. This enabled filming, in a more controlled manner, scenes of the actors tumbling as the plane spirals out of control.

These stunts were filmed as practically as possible, with aerial plates filmed over England where the action was unfolding. MPC then modeled and animated a digital plane and delivered shots showing the hair-raising moments leading up to the end of the plane and, at least it seems, Cruise.

For Nash, the biggest single challenge in selling those shots of the plane in peril, especially when the gash in the side of the aircraft now means the audience sees the outside, was re-creating believable lighting. He worked closely with Director of Photography Ben Seresin on the shots.

In 2005, Ricardo Pea made the discovery of my jacket with my documents and wallet in the pocket, and my sunglasses as well, without the lenses, a few yards away. It was so unexpected and so unusual, which I saw as a suggestion that the moment had come for me to share my experience beyond the scope of my family and friends, to which it had always been restricted.

In 2006 and 2007 Ricardo, who was by that time a good friend of mine, went back to search the area, but on both occasions the spot where he had found my belongings was covered in a thick layer of snow. On our expedition to the valley in 2008 he went back up the mountain to try again while I stayed down at the base camp.

Calls from one to another, still shocked and terrified after the echo of the crash, cries of pain and agony, names shouted from the darkness and the pressing urgency after the avalanche, the voices sounding broken with anguish and strangely distorted due to the tiny enclosure we had been buried in. These stand out like jagged needles in the throng of my memories, although time is slowly smoothing them and making the jagged edges less sharp, just as it does to the peaks of the mountains.

In this place for centuries upon centuries there had been no other sound besides the thundering landslides, the crashing of smaller rocks over the smooth and steep rock cliffs, the creaking of breaking ice, the whistling of the wind blowing with no obstacles in its path, perhaps a muffled earthquake or the brutal force of an avalanche. But in this slow world, which one day we were part of, any disturbances settle and it becomes peaceful again, and silence returns to rule its domain in the immutable serenity of the mountain. The equilibrium returns, inevitably. The storm ceases, the rocks roll to a stop, and the snow returns to its quietude after the fall. The volcano returns to its sleep of a thousand years.

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