This week has been completely nuts and I still can’t believe I get to do these things! In the last few days, I got to the BAFTAS, meet Sir Paul McCartney, have dinner with multiple Hollywood legends and now this evening (or last night by the time you’re reading this), Colin and myself got to go to the set of a new movie which was shooting on the Jumbo Jet which you’ll probably have seen in the background of multiple shots if you’re a fan of the BBC TV show, Top Gear.
Wednesday is actually the day that Top Gear is filmed and as we arrived at the aerodrome in Surrey, there was amass of 200 odd cars leaving the airfield as the Top Gear show had just finished filming for the day. It was quite surreal being the only car going in while everyone else left! The Boeing 747-200 I mentioned earlier now sits on the tarmac all year round and is actually now used for shooting TV shows and movie. You’ll have seen the insides of it recently if you watched the Matt Lucas / David Walliams TV Show, ‘Come Fly With Me’ but this evening, the 747 is being used for new horror / thriller movie, Airborne which was written by Paul Chronnell. The movie boasts a fantastic cast which includes Star Wars, James Bond and Indiana Jones legend, Julian Glover, star of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrells and Snatch, Alan Ford, Dead Man’s Shoes and This is England star, Andrew Shim, Hollyoaks star, Gemma Atkinson and the star of the ‘Jack’ trilogy, Simon Phillips. The movie cast also includes Fiona Ryan, Kimberly Jaraj, Raji James, Jazz Lintott, Sebastian Street, Craig Conway and Dominic Burns who also directs. There’s also a potential big name coming up so watch this space for more info on that!
This evening we got to meet just some of them to talk about their roles in the movie and what we can expect and over the course of the coming days and weeks, you’ll get to see our interviews. In a nutshell, Airborne tells the story of a group of passengers who board a plane in London bound for New York. The plane is also carrying some dangerous cargo in the hold, unknown to the passengers. Throughout the flight, various strange and unexplained occurrences being to happen on-board which begin to send the passengers mad. Not knowing who to blame, they start to blame each other with fatal consequences.
I thought I’d kick off the posts by showing you some images from the evening taken by Colin’s fair hand and you can see the bulk of them below. During our time on set, we got to see one scene being shot which saw the ‘precious cargo’ being loaded onto the plane watched very carefully by George (Glover), Agent Moss (Street) and Laura (Jaraj). This all took rather a long time to set up since the scene consisted of three or four rain towers powered by one of the airports resident Fire Engines. It really does astonish me how patient you have to be to work in film and I likened it to working on HeyUGuys. From the outside, seeing the finished product looks very glamorous and slick but really, the work it takes to get to that point can be exhausting and extremely time consuming. But we all do it cos we love it! My hat goes off to all the people who working in the film industry who do this day in and day out, especially when you’re working on a night shoot for two or three weeks!
Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I’ll bring you interviews with the cast and crew of the movie who will explain a little more of what the movie is about and what we can expect. Airborne has massive potential and I can’t wait to see the finished product. It’s also great to see British film becoming more and more prominent and this movie is definaltey one that will fly the British flag!
Airborne is due for release in the latter part of 2011.