Industrial Gases Argon and Oxygen Help Make Cinematography For George Clooney Film “Up in the Air” Possible
George Clooney may be the lead star of the new Hollywood film Up in the Air, bu
t a major supporting role was provided by planet Earth through some amazing footage shot by the movie’s aerial director of photography, Dylan Goss.
Clooney plays businessman Ryan Bingham, a man who spends the majority of his life in airplanes and hotel rooms as he crisscrosses the country for his job as hatchet man for corporations that are downsizing and laying off employees.
During many of the airplane scenes, the audience shares Clooney’s airline-window view of the dazzling Earth below.
To capture these images, Goss spent a week in the ice-cold backend of a Cessna airplane flying at 15,000 feet (aerial photography is typically filmed at less than 1,000 feet), wrapped in winter clothing and breathing oxygen through a mask connected to a gas cylinder.
To keep his camera lens from clouding over in the frigid temperatures, Goss sealed the camera in a glass sphere that was attached to the plane’s fuselage. The sphere was then pumped full of argon gas to prevent the lens from fogging.
The result? Some amazing aerial cinematography that would not have been possible had it not been for Goss’s resourceful industrial gases applications.
Tags: argon, argon gas, gas cylinder, gases, industrial gases, liquid oxygen
August 23rd, 2010 at 10:35 am
Do you know that this is a picture of? What are these large circular objects?
Thanks.