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)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)