Were the upside-down airplane passengers played by extras or by stunt people?
Typically in movies, most of the passengers on an airplane are played by extras. A few will be cast or costumed to be a "type", and some may have lines and get paid more, but most are just poorly-paid seat-fillers who are cast to look like unexceptional travelers.
In the 2012 movie Flight, Denzel Washington famously turns the plane upside down to avoid crashing. During that amazing sequence, all the passengers are shown hanging upside down in the inverted cabin. My question is whether all of those people were stunt actors (which would have significantly increased the cost of the flying sequence since there were so many of them), or were they untrained extras (who would have been paid a lot less, but could have gotten hurt because of the unusual conditions).
It's worth noting that extras in movies "fill seats" on roller coasters and other wild amusement park rides. It seems as though the inverted airplane set in Flight could have been just as safe as a roller coaster.
Best Answer
There's nothing definitive but the number of people credited with "stunts" at IMDB would seem to indicate that these were, in fact, stunt actors.
The additional cost is probably marginal given that they'd probably only be required for a single scene probably shot in a single day.
The scenes showing general turbulence were filmed in a complete aircraft fuselage but the inverted scenes were filmed on a much smaller piece of equipment with room for only a few "passengers" ...the rest is greenscreen work.
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Is the flight crash scene realistic?
The accident in the film was inspired by a real-life disaster, the crash of Alaska Airlines 261 on January 31, 2000. Some dialogue in the film closely resembles the CVR transcript. Like in the film, the pilots of Alaska 261 rolled the airplane to an inverted position to try to stabilize the flight.Why did Denzel Washington fly the plane upside down?
A plane in distress is put down in an open field by a great pilot who uses a very unusual maneuver to save the day: He rolls the plane inverted to arrest an uncontrolled dive, saving 96 of the 102 \u201csouls on board.\u201d Denzel Washington plays the Captain, \u201cWhip\u201d Whitaker, in Flight and that's enough reason for me to see ...Can a plane fly upside down like in flight?
Depending on the aerofoil this could restore level flight and even allow the plane to climb. But wings on aerobatic planes are curved on both the upper and lower sides. With this symmetric design, the plane can fly either normally or inverted. The pilot can flip from one to the other by altering the angle of attack.Why did they speed up stayin alive in airplane?
According to the DVD commentary, the song "Stayin' Alive" was sped up by 10 percent for the dance scene of the film. Permission from The Bee Gees had to be obtained to speed it up.Passenger Plane Flies Upside Down - Flight | Hollywood vs Reality
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