Production
Director John Moore scouted locations in Morocco and Australia before looking at, and quickly choosing, Namibia as the crash site. "Where most of the film takes place, was only a 20 minute-drive from the coastal town of Swakopmund." The Namib Desert location caused problems: cameras and other equipment had to be constantly cleaned of sand, and a "couple of hundred people were employed as 'dune groomers'" so that visual continuity could be maintained.
The set was the site of several mishaps:
- A ferry sank during transportation of a major set piece across a river, forcing the river bottom salvage of the aircraft fuselage.
- Jared Padalecki flipped his vehicle.
- Concluding the aerial filming sequences, the flying C-119G N15501 suffered a long gash under the right wing when a film truck backed under it and its driver misjudged the truck's height. A repair crew was flown in, the damaged segment reskinned and the aircraft flown back across the Atlantic.
- On June 3, 2004, camera operator and second unit cinematographer Ciaran Barry was "filming behind a plywood barrier intended to protect his equipment" when an 800-pound "fiberglass model plane propelled down an elevated track, bounced off a sand dune in the Namibian desert and crashed into his hut."
For the latter, in October 2009 a Los Angeles jury awarded Barry $3.95 million in damages for broken legs and neurological damage he received during the accident; $1.3 million of the amount was awarded for lost future income.
Four aircraft were used during the film:
- Fairchild C-119G, N15501 - flying shots. (still flying as of 2007, now part of the Lauridsen Collection at the Buckeye Municipal Airport, February 2010. )
- Fairchild C-119F, BuNo.131700 / N3267U - desert wreck.
- Fairchild C-119F, BuNo.131691 - Phoenix film prop.
- Fairchild C-119F, BuNo.131706 - Phoenix film prop.
A Phoenix that could be taxied but not flown was built for closeups. The Phoenix in flying scenes were done using a radio-controlled model and computer graphics, albeit not that convincing as a movie model.
Read more about this topic: Flight Of The Phoenix (2004 Film)
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—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)