MovieChat Forums > Airport (1970) Discussion > Difficult special effects good, easy one...

Difficult special effects good, easy one bad

posted 12 years ago by nabo7
12 replies | jump to latest

The easy one that was badly done in my opinion was the opening scene, in which some fake snow appeared to be falling in the foreground in what otherwise looked like clear weather. I realize they might not have been able to hold out for real snow in every outdoor shot, but shooting through a foggy sheet of glass would have reduced the contrast of the background and subdued the overall colors. I have seen such an effect when looking through a fogged window during a snow flurry, and it gives a fairly decent simulation of the appearance of heavy snowfall. Such a measure would not have been expensive. I realize it would not be perfect, as it would subdue everything equally instead of being stronger for distant objects as in the case of real snow or fog, but it would have been a big improvement.

On the other hand, the explosive decompression following the bomb blast was very convincing. I heard by the grapevine that they had the cabin set in a chamber which was partially evacuated, and did a very real sudden decompression, though much less violent than the real thing would have been. That must have been an expensive shot. They did not attempt the sudden fog that Patroni mentioned earlier, but that could have been done with the fogged glass trick.

[–] rorysa 12 years ago

According to articles I remember reading when the film was first broadcast on ABC,they did not simulate a decompression--they used air cannons and other devices.

[–] DingelBerry 12 years ago

The flying plane looked like a plastic model. ..

[–] hobnob53 12 years ago

Patroni didn't say they would literally have fog in the cabin. He was referring to what would happen to the passengers when he said, "And then, everything fogs up", then snaps his fingers -- meaning people go into a "fog" and start to black out within a few seconds as they lose oxygen at the high altitude. You don't have actual fog at 30,000 feet.

The decompression sequence, which another poster has described very accurately, apparently simulated what would actually happen very well, according to a couple of pilots I knew.

[–] lwi101 11 years ago

well, things do fog up in a rapid decompression. Time of useful consciousness at 30,000 feet is around 15 seconds, maybe more, enough time to get an o2 mask. but the sudden lack of pressure causes all the moisture to condense and cause a fog! So Patroni wasn't being metaphorical.
lou

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

That's interesting. But how much of a fog would the moisture aboard a plane really produce, and how long would it last? At 30,000 feet wouldn't the sub-zero temperatures turn the condensed moisture -- the fog -- into ice particles? Which might be worse.

To the thread topic, the shots of the plane flying above the clouds are the really fake ones. The clouds are pretty unrealistic.

[–] lwi101 11 years ago

While ambient air at 30,000 ft is dry, the passengers exhale a lot of moisture. The fog doesn't last long, a few seconds. Under certain conditions manuervring aircraft will have fog streamers due to the pressure differential on the wings etc. Although I think the inflight shots were more or less state of the art at the time, I also think audiences were less demanding. The idea was to"remind" the audience that the plane was in flight, and the passengers were at risk. Big screen theaters were larger in those days, and the resolution wasn't anywhere what you get today.
L

[–] hobnob53 11 years ago

Yes, the air itself is dry at 30,000, but there is a lot of moisture within the cabin (as you said before), besides whatever moist air the passengers exhale. Point being, if there is a literal fog, regardless of how brief its duration, if it hangs long enough it would have to begin to turn into frozen particles as the temperature within the damaged aircraft drops below freezing. Of course, the fog may dissipate before temperatures drop that low, in which case it may not be a significant problem for long.

Audiences may or may not have been less demanding in 1970 but the three or four pilots I knew all thought the decompression was pretty well simulated. If fog is something that should be there I assume it was omitted because it was technically too clumsy to achieve properly, and if it's a relatively momentary phenomenon, it wouldn't have played much role in the scene.

Also remember that during the decompression sequence they cut to a couple of shots in the cockpit. Maybe the fog was supposed to have come and gone during those segments!

[–] rjvstudios 10 years ago

If you read the trivia, they had to use fake snow initially due to a lack of snow in Minneapolis (where it was filmed) until they had a snowstorm hit while they were filming.

[–] essex9999 10 years ago

It wasn't so much the fake snow; it was, as the OP commented, the clear blue sky during the opening scene. There was no effort to make the sky look cloudy or the view seem gray and dark as it does on a day when snow is falling heavily. What we saw at the beginning looked more like blowing snow on a clear, windy day after a big snowfall.

In fact, when the plane is coming into the airport near the end, doesn't the air traffic controller tell them that runway conditions include "blowing snow"? And yet, during the nighttime scenes throughout the bulk of the movie, it appears to be actually snowing. For there to be that much blowing snow, it would have to be very windy, and the outdoor scenes don't show much wind at all.

Maybe the people who made the movie had never lived in a snowy climate. :-)

[–] rjvstudios 10 years ago

The movie was filmed at the Minneapolis airport. They actually had a shortage of snow until partway through the production. I knew someone who was a pilot for Braniff and was there when they filmed the movie. It did snow during part of the filming so that's what you see on screen. They had to make do with whatever weather they had and fake it if necessary. Movies, for the most part, aren't filmed in sequence. Scenes are shot depending who's available, what weather conditions are, and so on. They filmed most of the movie after 11 pm, after things slowed down.

[–] essex9999 10 years ago

Yes, I read about the shortage of snow, but what I was referring to was the opening scene (which could have been shot at the end of filming - I am aware that scenes are usually shot out of sequence). The sky is a bright, clear blue, even though they are supposed to be in a snowstorm.

[–] rorysa 10 years ago

Henry Hathaway directed the exterior, mostly second unit, scenes when his friend George Seaton came down with pneumonia. He wanted no screen credit.