- For the moment shooting a scene in an airplane in France is akin to an obstacle course.
- But the shortage will soon be filled with the opening in spring in Toulouse of a new film studio.
- Its star will be an aircraft decor, fully modular.
Two airplane seats and two portholes caused a sensation last week at the Paris film shoot. This piece of aircraft from Toulouse is a small part of the grand decor under construction in a new 1,200 m2 filming studio called Le Grand Set and located in Colomiers, in the heart of the aeronautical area.
This “neutral and transportable” aircraft decoration, at full size, will be operational in April 2020, says François Cadène, the director of the Grand Set. It can be configured on demand "in business class or single aisle", its partitions and the ceiling will be removable in order to gain depth of field or film from a low angle. And if this novelty has fascinated professionals in the capital so much, it is because this setting allowing interior scenes to be filmed from an airplane, as can be done in major Hollywood studios, is a rare find in Europe.
The writers will be happy
"At the moment, the only possibility for the teams is to rent a plane nailed to the ground from a company or a manufacturer, without really having the choice of the date or the configuration," explains Delphine Comin, director of studio production. Not to mention the frustrating narrowness of places. She even suspects that the writers censor themselves to circumvent the difficulty by being satisfied with scenes "where one is satisfied with going to seek or deposit a character at the airport".
"In fact we are opening up the field of possibilities," sums up Bernard Birebent, the boss of Master Films, a production company hitherto well known to companies and institutional players for its aeronautical filming and parent company of the Grand Set. It will also assume the role of executive producer, capable of designing decorations on demand thanks to its in-house carpentry, or of recruiting technicians, make-up artists or extras.
Until the French version of Is there a pilot on the plane? or a catastrophic film, the Toulouse Métropole filming office welcomes this new equipment. "It will be an undeniable additional asset to attract projects," says Isabel Birbes, responsible for audiovisual projects in this organization whose mission is to encourage as many filming as possible in Toulouse.
She recognizes that, for the moment, it is rather the natural decorations, like the banks of the Garonne, that catch the eye of the directors, as for the feature film which will see Laetitia Casta shoot in Toulouse in February and March. Not the real fake airplane cabins yet.
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- Plane
- Toulouse
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- Aerospace