after watchin this movie (which is soo underated! its gr8! lol) i was wonderin if the 747-200 used (exterior shots in the air and ground) was a real plane or just very detailed models?
sharehmm, I dunno. But the plane looked so gorgeous! The movie was awesome and I agree, it is way underrated.
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When filming movies, it's really hard if a real airplane was used. There's so little room for us when we sit in a plane, so how is a large film camera suppose to fit in there? I believe there's this guy who has planes that are specifically used to filming movies in where the seats can be taken out and such.
shareVery true. They never used a realk airplane. Just a flight simulator. I mean, we really wouldn't want Lauren Holly flying a plane in the air and attaching a Jeep to the wheel of the plane. hehe
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A real airplane was used for some of the ground and air-to-air shots (most of which were recycled for the two sequels). As the airplane is taxiing out to the runway toward the beginning of the movie, the registration number N614FF is clearly visible. N614FF was a real-life Boeing 747-238B which flew with Tower Air at the time of filming. Tower Air, when they were flying, never had a problem with movie appearances: one of their 747s was prominently featured in the climax of the film Liar Liar, and it was a Tower Air pilot that talked Teri down in this movie.
If you take a look at http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0401564/L/, the photo shows the fuselage appearing whiter just above the window line. The photo was taken just after filming, and the cheatline had been quickly painted over with white. The location of this whiter area corresponds exactly with the location of the grey/red cheatline on the airplane in the movie (which, incidentally, was inspired by Japan Air Lines's old color scheme).
Although Wikipedia isn't exactly a reliable source, their article on Tower Air states that the film "featured one of their 747 aircraft in the full colors of fictional TransCon Airlines. The aircraft was flown by Tower Air pilots and filming conducted by Aviation Photographer Clay Lacy."
Models were used for parts of the movie such as when the aircraft flies inverted, but a lot of the shots were of a real airplane.
Fantastic answer - well done, very informative. Out of interest, I know that 'World Airways' supplied the Boeing 707 used in the 70's film 'Skyjacked'. You are correct when you say that 'Tower Air' often leased their aircraft to film production companies and you can often see them mentioned in the end credits of a film when a 747 aircraft has been used.
shareThank you for this post. I know I'm reading this over 4 years late but I'd like to make people aware of the Internet Movie Plane Database. Site specialised to list planes in movies. The information you provided would fit great to the site. There isn't a page about this movie on the impdb site yet. http://www.impdb.org/index.php?title=Turbulence
I'm not an affiliate or anything of impdb. I just went there to find info about the plane used in the movie. Didn't find it there but luckily the proper imdb site helps.
There were some outside of the plane shots that looked obviously blue/green screen to me. You could see an obvious outline around the cockpit windows and around the outside of the plane.
Kind of cheesy but matches the movie.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share
It's a real plane. Tower Air was a charter service and they owned a few 747s. I know it's a real airplane because when I was in the Army and was being deployed to the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia we flew over there on one of the Tower Air's airplanes.
Somebody broke that!
Just because a plane is real doesn't mean the movie couldn't have changed the background.
Not like you can either have a real airplane or a fake background. You can have both at the same time.
No two persons ever watch the same movie.share