Hijack,, a seven parter starring Iris Elba as a corporate negotiator whose flight from Dubai to London is taken over by an armed gang, is the latest production to be shot mostly inside an LED volume, in this case a huge 270-degree one at Apple’s new studios in Buckinghamshire. To achieve maximum authenticity, an entire Airbus was built from scratch. To make the cockpit scenes look realistic, that part of the plane was mounted on 6-axis motorised gimbal. A separate soundstage was used to house a large composite set that doubled as the UK security services’ and main Air Traffic Control Centre.
Tight shots inside the passenger area were achieved using a mixture of Steadicam and a DJI Ronin drone with Zeiss lenses, to supplement the main cameras; Arri Alexa Mini LFs with DNA glass.
“I would go as far as to say we probably couldn’t have made the show without the Ronin 4D. We started from a place of thinking, oh, we’ll get one. It’ll be useful here and there, but it ended up being so versatile. Just for things like rigging a top shot in a toilet cubicle. It takes a quarter of the time, because the grips could just throw up a tension bar and attach the Ronin and then it can be operated obviously from a remote head”
Jim field-Smith, Director, Hijack
Shots completed on the stage-based Airbus, which involved creating a sense of motion using specialist lighting (see original article) were supplemented by film of a real airborne Airbus that were captured using ‘camera ships’.
Source: TVB Europe