The challenge of re-creating a very recognizable aircraft for ‘Pluribus’. An excerpt from issue #59 of befores & afters magazine.
A meeting between Carol and the five other immune English speakers from around the world in Pluribus is arranged at Bilbao Airport in Spain. Shots of planes arriving were facilitated via background plates filmed at Bilbao Airport, with the planes realized in CG, including the Airbus that Carol arrives in. One of the immune, Koumba Diabaté (Samba Schutte), arrives in Air Force One. This surprising moment was made possible with a close collaboration between several departments on Pluribus, including visual effects. Here, practical plane pieces would be crafted and a CG Air Force One built, enabling scenes to be orchestrated of the plane on the tarmac and for passengers to go in and out.
“We always knew what Air Force One needed to be,” states visual effects supervisor Ara Khanikian, from Rodeo FX. “It was going to be a big element visually. It’s such a big, recognizable plane. We had a lot of conversations along the lines of, How do we do this? One thing is, Vince is an expert in terms of airplanes and helicopters. He’s very sensitive to anything that has to do with aviation. So, we knew straight away that Air Force One and all the airplanes needed to have a certain minutia and accuracy to them.”
An early idea was to purchase an actual 747 and dress it up as Air Force One. “Logistically,” recalls Khanikian, “that ended up not being a viable option, but it was something that was very seriously looked into. In the end, we decided to go with a digital build for it, although even there, we had this approach of, well, we can’t just go fully CG. There’s a big scene around the plane and you need that interaction. You needed something grounded that the actors, the lighting, the framing—everything—needs to tie in with something that’s actually there on set and you can build around that.”
Instead of a full plane, a small section of the front landing gear was sourced. Then, part of the front fuselage and plane door was constructed and painted. It was positioned against a base of moveable greenscreen pieces. This set-up was principally utilized for shots of an aircraft stair truck to ferry passengers on and off. “There’s always something about seeing that color, that blue color with the white, that you just know is Air Force One,” marvels Khanikian. “It was very important for everyone to see it, to be able to touch it, and then we expanded on top of it with CG.”
Rodeo FX embarked on a major Air Force One research effort (“I’m sure I’m on a list somewhere,” jokes Khanikian), which included looking into the schematics of the plane, how it was built, and what particular details made it unique. “We did a very accurate build. We’re very proud of that one. The art department and production was building that set and we were building it in parallel in CG. We wanted to make sure everything aligned properly. So, at some point, I said, ‘Can you just send me a couple of pictures of the build that you have, even though it’s not finished yet?’ We had the schematics as well, the set plans, and we had our plan. We took all these things, lined them up and were wiping between them. Well, thank God, everything lined up!. Everything was very accurate. We knew then that everything was going to line up and that we were going to be able to extend it properly.”
The visual effects studio further previs’d and postvis’d the Air Force One scenes. For this, they took in raw geo from Google Maps of Bilbao Airport to help plan out the choreography of the plane as it was taxiing. Ultimately, the characters were filmed outdoors in Albuquerque on a concrete section. Bilbao Airport background plates were captured months later. “To make sure all that would hook up, we actually made a detailed techvis for the scenes,” explains Khanikian. “That let us see where we could place cameras at certain heights with certain tilts, and what framing we’d achieve. The techvis also had top views of Bilbao Airport with all the fingers for the passageways to show where all the planes were. We were able to really design all those shots in a way that made it very straightforward.”
Dialing in the right blue paint for Air Force One proved tricky for the final digital plane shots, notes Khanikian. “That was a very big challenge, to be honest, because it’s such a recognizable blue. We had a lot of photo reference, but when you start looking closely at it, it always reacts differently in terms of the lighting. We would push these colors and the contrast to a point where sometimes you look at it going, ‘Is it too much?’ And then we’d look at it on different monitors with different settings and say, ‘No, that feels good. That’s visually how we all remember Air Force One.’ They just really are such recognizable iconic colors and color schemes.”
The previs further sought to determine the speed and impact of Air Force One as it taxis around the airport. “Air Force One is huge,” shares Khanikian. “I think we’re always used to seeing it in wide shots, but when you’re up close to one, it’s a massive airplane. So, it needed to move in a way that needed to sell its weight, but at the same time, it needed to tell a story. You can’t wait for five minutes in a shot for it to come in and park. There were two specific shots where it needed to move, which is where a bunch of people were watching it covering their ears, and then that classic shot of when Carol runs in front of Air Force One with her hands waving and she stops it.”
“That shot of Carol,” continues Khanikian, “was one that we did a lot of experimentation for, because we had a couple of constraints. So, you’re looking for one shot where you’re putting the camera down on the floor, tilted up a little bit, and you want to see a couple of things happen in the same framing. You don’t want that camera moving around too much, you just want one balanced framing that shows Carol running into a shot as Air Force One is coming towards camera, and she’s waving it and makes it stop at the last minute. But, at the same time, you can’t have her framed in a way that she would only be in front of a landing gear—you need to establish that eyeline between her and the pilot. This is where having that model early on and being able to do all the techvis was very valuable, so that we could determine how fast it’s coming in, how quickly it stops, what framing you’re going to get.”
The shot of Carol running in front of the plane was achieved by shooting Seehorn outdoors in front of a greenscreen. “Our planning helped everything to be lined up for that,” says Khanikian. “There, we did a lot of techvis to see at what speed they would come in, and how easy it is for a plane like that to just stop. We may have exaggerated just a little bit the amount of suspension and shock absorbers that it would have, just so it could come to a hard stop. You see the plane bouncing just a little bit in a very subtle way to give it a little bit more visual.”
