Paul Russo

bauldoff:

MakingOf has posted a video clip of the Up In The Air film title sequence, created by Shadowplay Studio. Shadowplay was also behind the titles to Jason Reitman’s Juno and Thank You For Smoking films.

In this interview, Reitman said this about collecting the aerial footage seen in the titles:

(Shadowplay) came up with this idea of vintage moving postcards, the most complicated element of which was getting this aerial footage that seems like film. I figured you put a camera in a plane, you put it up in the air, you point down, you get aerial footage, right? I really thought it would be that simple. It was so complicated. Every time you see aerial footage in a movie it’s from a helicopter at 12,000 ft. To get it from 25,000 ft, first we went up with a jet and we had a camera that was going through this bubble system, except the optics weren’t good enough and atmosphere was giving us trouble. Then we went up with a propeller plane and the pilot had to wear an oxygen mask to get up that high; we took a camera out on a wing, we went digital instead of film, and then the camera would not go straight down, so they’d have to put the plane into a dive to get the camera to go down. I mean it was just like unreal how hard it was to get this footage. But I’m really happy with the results and of course it made for fun opening titles.

Additionally, Apple has a short featurette about Shadowplay and the Up In The Air titles.